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Harold Pinter

The preeminent playwright of his generation, Harold Pinter honed his literary skills during his twenties, traveling the lonely countrysides of Britain and Ireland as the actor David Baron in different repertory theater companies. Though certainly influenced by the spare, oblique wry dialogue of spiritual mentor Samuel Beckett and to a lesser degree the French absurdist school (i.e., Eugene Ionesco), Pinter's plays seem much more reality-based, grounded in the daily give-and-take of marriage, male friendship and family politics of English commoners. He became a master of "subtext," of that which is unsaid, the psychological life running just under the normal life, which calls the tune.