For those who recently took me to task for attacking Somerville, MA, it appears that I was indeed wrong. Massachusetts is the smartest state in the union. My own state, California, is 43rd on the list. In other words, we’re the seventh dumbest state in the union. Dumber than Oklahoma, Texas, and Tennessee. Far dumber than Ohio and South Carolina.

Of course, we also have a hell of a lot more people (33,871,648 of them in fact). So we you consider the law of means, it’s quite likely that, numerically speaking, we may have a larger cadre of smartypants to draw from. And we still have the world’s fifth largest economy and very nice weather. And where would you be without all the vapid movies coming from Hollywood? Resorting to low-budget Canadian films, no doubt. And as dumb as we are, we didn’t vote for Bush in the last two presidential elections.

If there’s any bright side to this, pun fully intended, this should put an end to the whole red-states-they-dumb, blue-states-we’re-enlightened argument. Intelligence, it seems, is entirely relative. Now pardon me while I try to white-out this grammatical mistake on my monitor.

Immaculate gaiters, svelte form prepped for genteel debauchery
Throat cleared, quorum present to reproach murderers
Renowned and redoubtable, he dug into his deepest pockets
To empathize with these wild-eyed machine haters
Interferring with the steady flow of industry
Monied but knowing the worth of a dime
And the starving mouths motivating the massacres

Lone but unfazed, he trivialized the phase
That the expensive parts mulching up and down could not suspend
Gordon pled that perhaps they were going a tad too far
The life of a man not worth the life of a machine
Would they exact vengeance upon these irreplaceable specimens
These ad hoc homicidal men destroyed by progress?

Torrents of commiseration rippled through the great hall
But his listeners were the captains of the ship
And these men o’ war could not accept
Masting down the price of doing business
Where Gordon stayed a sobriquet for unfettered beauty
These others sailed upon avaricious waters

While Gordon stirred the few observers
The mongers relented their time to ferment
It went down, deadly and predictable
Leaving Gordon to weep quietly
For the lives lost in the name of melodramatic justice

Unto a dive I go; I crawl, I creep
   Her lustre shining brighter in the eve
Visage provoked a feeling in the deep
  And if I press the throw, she may bereave
The diff’rence here is one provoked by terms
  But abstract words pollute my gushing soul
Releasing dormant care perceived as germs
  A breakfast poured before a shaky bowl
And should she touch I know I don’t know why
  The quaver seen, disguising proper place
The bootstrapped battles turning out a sigh
  Reveal commiserating face, sere pace
Middling shadows flocking for the light
I hope two hands departing in the night

Source A: John Simon, “Ignoble Nobel: Let Us Pause.

Source B: Dale Peck, “The Moody Blues.”

CRITICAL FUSION:

Harold Pinter is the worst Nobel Prize winner of his generation.

As I made my way through Pinter’s incomprehensible labyrinths, all of them laden with pregnant pauses which kept me perplexed, wondering all the while why the Nobel Committee had not given me the prize, I contemplated my own considerable grace in how to broach this seminal problem in a Radar Magazine essay — which is to say, without humility or nuance.

“Do you have the pepperpot?” “Yes, I have the pepperpot.” This is the stuff of meaningful dialogue? I think not.

Yet another false start: What are we to say to such widespread acceptance of a playwright who specializes in the banal? Are we to cut off the forefingers of every fawning Pinterite to prove a point? Sad to say, this may be the only solution. If we are placed in the position of identifying those who are poorly educated, the dupes and charlatans, by counting nine fingers on their two hands, then it will become that much easier to avoid callow banter at a cocktail party.

For the enlightened members in our society are those who refuse to give Harold Pinter credence. They are the ones who will be invaluable during the upcoming eugenics war, when we wipe the anti-Pinterites from the face of the earth, allowing them to language through slow torture. Who needs the Geneva Convention when so many people are willing to love Harold Pinter? When indeed those pesky Swedes, who have invaded our homeland with their precious IKEAs, give this diabolical menace their highest award?

As to the question of who shall lead this cadre of torturers, I shall be only too happy to put my name at the forefront. I shall lead by example, storming into Greenwich Village apartments (in particularly, those easily amused theatrical types) and start hacking off fingers with a machete after administering a government-devised TTE (Theatrical/Torture Exam).

The salient problem here is that Pinter is no longer writing plays. He insists upon tossing off hastily composed poems as he is dying of cancer. Here is one such poem titled “Malignant”:

Smoked too many fags
Now the scrotum sags

Sags

I ask: is this even poetry? I have passed notes in class that have been more significant. And let’s be perfectly clear about the issue: never once has my scrotum sagged. And how does this even pertain to cancer?

If the Nobel people must encourage such doggerel, then the time has come to cut off their forefingers, ideally throwing them into a burlap sack and hanging this collection of fingers from the highest pike. This will set an example for those proud Pinterites who believe they sit safely behind their Playbills. I call upon our Attorney General to begin counting Pinterites, for they are the greatest threat to our country’s democratic fabric.

PINTER — GENERAL:

• Harold Pinter: the official site.
• Harold Pinter timeline.
• Contemporary Writers: lengthy critical perspective on Pinter.
• The Harold Pinter Society: publisher of The Pinter Review.
• BBC Four: Harold Pinter page (includes Pinter quiz).
• Internet Broadway Database: Pinter credits.
• Internet Movie Database: Pinter credits.
• The Harold Pinter Collection: University of Texas at Austin.

PINTER — EXCERPTS:

• “Girls”: “‘Girls like to be spanked.’ But do they?” (Granta)
• Pinter on Samuel Beckett: “His work is beautiful.”
• Excerpt from The Dumb Waiter.
• Excerpt from Old Times.

PINTER PERSPECTIVES:

• Review of “Betrayal.”
• Review of “The Caretaker.”
• Curtain Up: an overview of Pinter’s career.
• Ian Mackean: “Winners and losers in the plays of Harold Pinter.”

PINTER — INTERVIEWS:

• The Paris Review: Fall 1966.
• The Independent: Pinter on creating a radio play for his 75th birthday and fighting cancer.
• The New Statesman: November 8, 1999.
• The Guardian: August 3, 2001 (mostly political).
• BBC: Harold Pinter vs. Arnold Wesker.

PINTER — POLITICS:

• “The War Against Reason” — Pinter arguing against the war in Iraq (Red Pepper, December 2002).
• “Carribean Cold War”< ?a> — a Pinter pro-Cuba piece (Red Pepper, May 1996).
• “The American administration is a bloodthirsty wild animal.” (The Daily Telegraph, November 12, 2002).
• Pinter on NATO (BBC, June 1, 1999).