Cynics have said that Harold Pinter only won the Nobel prize for literature this year because he's become such a Lefty (his earliest and best plays were written before he'd been wholly seduced by the Left). Wrong. Despite appearances, Pinter actually deserves the prize says Terry Teachout. I mostly agree, although I think Teachout is correct in saying Tom Stoppard is a better playwright (but Stoppard will never be considered since he's sort of Conservative). If the prize gets people reading Pinter's early plays, maybe the committee will realize how conservative they are and rescind it?
The rightest thing Teachout says, however is the clincher
by now it doesn't much matter. A prize that has been indiscriminately bestowed upon V.S. Naipaul and Dario Fo, after all, can no longer be taken very seriously, no matter who gets it after that.
