Harold Pinter (post 4): He said he was not Harold Pinter. But he had come to be interviewed as Harold Pinter. He both was, and was not, Harold Pinter.

In previous posts, I quoted Pinter as saying in an interview that he was not Harold Pinter. Pinter also said that things could be both true and not true. Let me explain his double-talk.

Since Pinter published his plays under the name “Harold Pinter” and not any pseudonym, I assume that “Harold Pinter” was the name of his one or more writing personalities. But such personalities normally do not do interviews, which is the job of the “host” personality.

I don’t know what Pinter called his host personality; perhaps “Harold.” So if you arranged to interview Harold Pinter, it was probably Harold who showed up.

Harold knew that from the interviewer’s perspective, he was Harold Pinter. But Harold also knew that he was not Harold Pinter.

Harold, who was socially adept and may have read the plays, could handle most interviews. There were things he did not know, such as what was really going on in one of the plays, but he was good at evasion.

However, if the interviewer did not accept the evasion, or if the interviewer had been so friendly that Harold felt guilty about being so evasive, one of the alternate personalities may have come to Harold’s rescue.

If the question was about what was really going on in a play, one of the personalities who wrote that play may have decided to answer, and could have done so in either of two ways. He could have remained behind-the-scenes and whispered the answer to Harold. Or he could have come out and briefly replaced Harold in the interview. (In the latter case, he would have done so incognito.)

But suppose there had been two (or more) alternate personalities involved in writing that play, and suppose they had different interpretations. And suppose one of them offered his interpretation on one occasion, and another offered a different interpretation on another occasion. That is apparently what happened in regard to the contradictory interpretations given to the interviewer as to what was really going on in the play Old Times.

I discussed a similar situation in my posts on William Faulkner. He also did not like to give interviews. One reason was that different personalities gave different answers about his military record.