Fraser on Pinter: A Eulogy of Sorts

January 19, 2010

Antonia Fraser has written what sounds like a fascinating and beautiful book about her life with the late great Harold Pinter. The Guardian’s account of it made me feel quite weepy, actually; I had never pictured Pinter as the sentimental type, but with his second wife, apparently, he very much was.

At the same time, however, Fraser apparently makes clear that she was no muse, in a refreshingly honest fashion.

From The Guardian:

“In principle I can’t bear it when ­artists’ wives say ‘It was all me . . .’” Fraser writes, and her memoir refuses to play that game. She records Pinter’s exchanges with fellow playwrights (Beckett, Stoppard, Simon Gray), traces the evolution of plays such as Betrayal and Celebration, and offers some sharp observations (“the half of Harold which is not Beckett is Hemingway”), but doesn’t claim to be a muse or amanuensis. “Harold calls me his editor. Not so. I was the midwife saying ‘Push, Harold, push’, but the act of creation took place elsewhere and the baby would have been born anyway.” There’s even a suggestion that he might have written more plays had they not met: “Happiness is not dramatic,” he once told her. But after the misery of his first marriage, it was a bargain he didn’t mind making.

I haven’t read Fraser since my college obsession with English monarchs, but I think I’ll have to pick this one up. It sounds wonderful and sweet and sad and celebratory, just like a eulogy should.

h/t to Arts and Letters Daily for the link.