Reading Harold Pinter is certainly a different experience. He is a contemporary playwright, actor and director who has come to represent a style almost all his own. People sometimes refer to pieces as Pinter pieces and to actors who take pauses in scripts as acting out Pinter pauses. His work is vastly different from the other authors we have read so far. Some find it, frustrating upon first reading. Others find it a perfect reflection of people and life as they know it.

Of course Pinter, as an Englishman, writes with about people we may not know intimately. This requires a "leap of faith" and a an ability to imagine a foreign culture and to hear the rhythms of another language. But our imaginations have been stretched so far this quarter that one more leap should be no problem,.

The biggest leap, however, comes from the lack of information we will be given. In our television and movies today, we are told everything and more. We are left with few or no questions about who the characters are and how they got that way. Certainly, in most of plays , we have receive similar information. Even Sophocles helps us to fully know our protagonists. Not Pinter. He has a different theory about what we know and what he should tell us. After you read The collection, read the two Esslin essays and see if they help you to deal with this very different style of writing - the style of Harold Pinter.

Esslin - an introduction

Esslin: The Collection: an essay

Markus: The Collection -** this essay is quite helpful