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DO NOT PANIC

Even bigger news than the previous biggest news ever:

Playwright Harold Pinter revealed yesterday that he has given up writing altogether.

Posted by Tim B. on 08/27/2006 at 12:14 AM
  1. About time.

    Posted by Newman on 2006 08 27 at 12:22 AM • permalink

  2. Is he going to take over for Margok?

    Posted by 68W40 on 2006 08 27 at 12:23 AM • permalink

  3. Wait… Harold Pinter is still alive?

    Posted by MikeTheLibrarian on 2006 08 27 at 12:32 AM • permalink

  4. Good.  His plays are dreck.  Now if he’d only give up speaking, as well…

    Posted by Polish Frizzle on 2006 08 27 at 12:37 AM • permalink

  5. That didn’t take long.

    Posted by Bruce Rheinstein on 2006 08 27 at 12:45 AM • permalink

  6. There is a God!

    Posted by Razor on 2006 08 27 at 12:54 AM • permalink

  7. “I recently had a holiday in Dorset and took a couple of my usual yellow writing pads. I didn’t write a damn word. Fondly, I turned them over and put them in a drawer.”

    There is a God! Now, if only we could convince Phatty Adams, Mike Cretin and a few of the others to fondly hang up their keyboads. Pinter’s last decent screenplay goes back to the early 60’s, The Servant.

    Posted by Bonmot on 2006 08 27 at 01:23 AM • permalink

  8. While he was putting the writing pads back in the drawer he didn’t happen to find a revolver did he?

    Posted by Bonmot on 2006 08 27 at 01:28 AM • permalink

  9. can i use those yellow pads to write out my grocery list?

    Posted by missred on 2006 08 27 at 01:43 AM • permalink

  10. Damn. Just damn. That means it’ll be the talk of the smoko room tomorrow and no-one will be discussing footy and hot chicks.

    Posted by Crusader rabbit on 2006 08 27 at 01:44 AM • permalink

  11. Surely this has convinced you to take up religion, Tim! :D

    Posted by Sortelli on 2006 08 27 at 02:14 AM • permalink

  12. Harold Pinter ceasing to right is exactly equal to me ceasing to slaughter pigs in my back yard.  Both pig and public are happier for the occasion.

    Posted by Holden McGroyn on 2006 08 27 at 02:18 AM • permalink

  13. “I recently had a holiday in Dorset and took a couple of my usual yellow writing pads. I didn’t write a damn word. “
    He needs to get out more. A holiday in downtown Baghdad should fire up his synapses.

    Posted by Observer on 2006 08 27 at 03:03 AM • permalink

  14. I thought he had given up many years ago.

    Posted by robf on 2006 08 27 at 03:14 AM • permalink

  15. Suicide bombings are “logical and inevitable until we take a different view of our political responsibility.”
    Perhaps our political responsibility is massive and totally debilitating attacks on the regimes of states known to sponsor this sort of jihadist mentality? Like Chirac said, but would not do.

    Posted by blogstrop on 2006 08 27 at 03:51 AM • permalink

  16. Great post Crusader (#10)! You have put everything into context just nicely.

    Posted by AlphaMikeFoxtrot on 2006 08 27 at 03:56 AM • permalink

  17. he never wrote worth a damn.  his drivel will not be missed

    Posted by KK on 2006 08 27 at 04:51 AM • permalink

  18. Finally, a permanent Pinter pause.

    Posted by Softly on 2006 08 27 at 05:16 AM • permalink

  19. Pinter wrote plays did he?

    Posted by Harry Buttle on 2006 08 27 at 05:40 AM • permalink

  20. Kitchen sink drama generally appeals only to miserable bastards anyway. You don’t go to a Pinter play to be entertained, amused, distracted or enlightened. You go to a Pinter play so you can smugly see how the other half lives, and still come out feeling dead miserable.

    Now Pinter has stopped writing the next step is for him to pull his head in and shut up.

    Posted by walterplinge on 2006 08 27 at 07:13 AM • permalink

  21. I fear this may be be just an extended…................................................................................................pause.

    Posted by David Morgan on 2006 08 27 at 08:20 AM • permalink

  22. Next stop: His autobiography, in which he reveals that he was a member of the Waffen-SS.

    Posted by PW on 2006 08 27 at 09:56 AM • permalink

  23. Sigh.  Read that old thread and thought, “Bryla as a troll was so much better than oh, say, Addammo, or Ender…”

    Oh, wait, Pinter’s given up writing?  Gee.  Darn.

    Posted by ushie on 2006 08 27 at 10:58 AM • permalink

  24. Playwright Harold Pinter revealed yesterday that he has given up writing altogether.

    Would it be insensitive to say I just don’t care?

    Posted by RebeccaH on 2006 08 27 at 11:04 AM • permalink

  25. Isn’t “Playwright Harold Pinter revealed yesterday that he has given up writing altogether,” a line from Airplane or Airplane 2?

    Posted by andycanuck on 2006 08 27 at 01:12 PM • permalink

  26. Playwright Harold Pinter revealed yesterday that he has given up writing altogether.

    Oh, I thought it read…“writing in the altogether”!

    I blame Bush!

    Posted by Patricia on 2006 08 27 at 03:48 PM • permalink

  27. Harry Buttle—he had to write plays.  Can’t structure a paragraph worth a damn.

    So an Angry Young Man Becomes a Bitter Old Man… what are the odds?

    Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 08 27 at 06:17 PM • permalink

  28. There was one original Pinter work I liked quite a lot: Betrayal. It was very well done and the devise of telling the story from the end was most effective. It’s said to be auto-biographical and I’ve always wondered if Pinter was Jeremy Irons or Ben Kingsley (Kingsley’s my guess). And I thought his screenplay for French Lieutenant’s Woman was brillant. I loved the play-within-a-play aspect he brought to it which allowed him to effectively handle Fowles’ silly, cop-out ending(s). And, yes, the screenplay for The Servant was quite good also. Strange and disturbing and utterly fascinating (loved Dirk Bogarde).

    But, as far as I’m concerned, Harold should have put that yellow pad away some time in 1984. And sown his lips together at the same time. Feh.

    Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 08 27 at 07:06 PM • permalink

  29. News that is 20 years late.

    Can’t write; can’t act.

    Posted by mr magoo on 2006 08 27 at 07:19 PM • permalink

  30. Now, if we can only get him to give up breathing.

    Posted by joe bagadonuts on 2006 08 27 at 07:27 PM • permalink

  31. For anyone worried, DON’T PANIC.

    a favourite Pinter poem.


      Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
      Thy micturations are to me
      As plurdled gabbleblotchits
      On a lurgid bee.
      Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes
      And hooptiously drangle me
      with crinkly bindlewurdles,
      Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon
      See if I don’t.

    Posted by Rob Read on 2006 08 27 at 07:54 PM • permalink

  32. My local KFC has an opening for a trainee if he is interested… what does a writer do once he stops writing?

    Posted by william°­ on 2006 08 27 at 08:55 PM • permalink

  33. Yay!

    Posted by kcom on 2006 08 27 at 10:04 PM • permalink

  34. You missed the even bigger than bigger news: his decision was retroactive.

    Posted by Mitch on 2006 08 27 at 10:26 PM • permalink

  35. #31 - was that poem by Pinter or the Vogon Captain in Hitchhiker’s Guide?
    #32 - many of them become full time blotters.

    Posted by blogstrop on 2006 08 28 at 04:54 AM • permalink

  36. #31 Harold -don’t talk with your mouth full.

    Posted by crash on 2006 08 28 at 09:54 AM • permalink

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