harold pinter....

ok, so call me myopic........when i heard the announcement of the nobel prize for literature....i was shocked......because i thought he was an actor.......the guy who played sir thomas bertram in the most recent rendition of jane austin's mansfield park.......played it well, too......who knew he was a playwright.....?......an anti-war playwright...?.....and a screenwriter.....and a director........i say it was the austin connection that attracted the nobel committee...............it always comes down to jane.........of course, my interest in this year's prize was piqued by the abrupt resignation of a committee member.......still upset over last year's winner.......the following is an excerpt from her works, from the nytimes......

The New York Times
October 8, 2004
Excerpts From Novels by Elfriede Jelinek

Following are excerpts from novels by Elfriede Jelinek that have been translated into English: "Lust" (1989), translated in 1992 by Michael Hulse; "The Piano Teacher" (1983), translated in 1988 by Joachim Neugroschel; "Wonderful Wonderful Times" (1980), translated in 1990 by Michael Hulse; and "Women as Lovers" (1975), translated in 1994 by Martin Chalmers.

Every day the daughter punctually shows up where she belongs: at home. Mother worries a lot, for the first thing a proprietor learns, and painfully at that, is: Trust is fine, but control is better. Her greatest anxiety is to keep her property immovable, tie it down so it won't run away. That's why they have the TV set, which prefabricates, packages, and home-delivers lovely images, lovely actions. ... Time passes, and we pass the time. They are enclosed together in a bell jar: Erika, her fine protective hulls, her mama, The jar can be lifted only if an outsider grabs the glass knob on top and pulls it up. Erika is an insect encased in amber, timeless, ageless. She has no history, and she doesn't make a fuss. This insect has long since lost its ability to creep and crawl. Erika is baked inside the cake pan of eternity. ...

The comfy TV chair spreads its arms wide, the lead-in for the evening news plays softly, the anchorman stirs soberly above his tie. The side table sports an exemplary wealth of colorful bowls containing goodies and gumdrops, of which the two ladies partake, alternately or simultaneously. An empty bowl is promptly refilled; this Never-Never Land, where nothing ends and nothing begins. - "The Piano Teacher"
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All around, oppressed people are falling, cascades of water, down steps and ornate porches into the uncertain consciences of their oppressors. Tame-spirited creatures that they are, they don't overshoot their mark. Every morning the boisterous radio bawls that it's time to get up, wakey wakey. And instantly the warmth of love is yanked away from under their feet and their sweat-soaked sheet taken from them. They grope about their wives, they dirty their precious belongings. Time breezes gently by. ...

Who can rival the senses for feeling pain? In rattling pots, with the steam lifting the lid to sing out, we cook our emotions. But what of those battered by the threat of redundancy? They bang their heads against the wall of the paper mill, which the mother company may have to write off because it isn't turning any profits. ..."The more profound people's happiness, the less they speak of it in these parts, so they don't lose their way in it and the neighbours aren't envious. Those who are cast out by the factory have to cast about for somewhere they can get credit from those on whose largesse and mercy they cast themselves. In the darkness dwell their lordsandmasters, the eagles, who can change their prey's fate with a single nod of the ballpoint. ... - "Lust"
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what is it, that's shining there as bright as ripe polished chestnuts, heinz asks himself one day on the way to work. it is brigitte's hair, that has been newly tinted. ...

i love you, says Brigitte. her hair gleams in the sun like ripe chestnuts. ... i love you so much. that is the feeling of love this inescapable feeling. i feel, as if i had always known you, even in my childhood, which is long past. Brigitte looks up at heinz.

heinz too is immediately gripped by the feeling. apart from that he is gripped by a sensuality, of whose existence he has already heard.

it is new and terrifying at once. - "Women as Lovers"
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Anna despises two classes of people: first, those who own their own homes and have cars and families, and second, everybody else. Constantly she is on the verge of exploding. With rage. A pool of pure red. The pool is filled with speechlessness that talks away at her nonstop. In her there is nothing whatsoever of a lass with a perm or a bobbing pony-tail listening to a hit in a record store and restlessly tapping her foot because the rhythm gets to her. ... What she talks about with her brother is of a philosophical or literary nature, but what speaks from within her alone is the language of the sounds produced by the piano. ...Autumn always did have a good deal on its conscience. Especially when someone still young in years is responding sensitively to it. Old people are forever thinking of death, young people do so only in autumn, the season of universal decay in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. ... - "Wonderful Wonderful Times"

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company


she may be no austin......but few are.............