Death Etc. - Harold Pinter

Death Etc. , is a collections of his previously unpublished works. Contains few of his speeches, few short plays and few poems. His speeches and an open letter to The Prime Minister are very open and clear in his criticism against the US and British governments and the war in Iraq.

Almost all of the poems in this book are on the Iraq war (first and second), and he uses very blunt and hard hitting language. These are political poems and thus aren't of any great poetic values.
Few samples;
Well, there was no problem.
All the democracies
(all the democracies)
were behind us.
So we had to kill some people.
S what ?
Lefties get killed.
..
Just kill them.
Well,my wife wanted peace.
And so did my little children.
So we killed all the lefties
to bring peace for our little children.
(from The old days )

Hallelujah!
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
....
Praise the lord for all good things.
We blew them into fucking shit.
They are eating it.(from American Football)

*
There are few plays, which are pretty interesting. The common theme in all of them are on the atrocities committed by those in power and the helplessness of the common man. Naturally, its the 'power' does all the speaking, and the victim is 'silenced' in most of the time, barring few feeble one liners of submission.

Its a good read if your political views are in line with that of the writer. Otherwise, its another rhetoric against the war on terror. But it does, confirm to his style of writing and his convictions.

--------------------------------------------
Death Etc

Harold Pinter

Grove Press , New York

125 Pages

Rs 380
---------------------------------------------

Further read : Timeout review