Old Times (post 2) by Harold Pinter (post 3): The reason it does not make sense is that more than one personality wrote it, and they did not agree with each other.

Asked about what was really going on in this play, Harold Pinter gave contradictory answers—evidently from two different personalities—within the same December 1971 interview:

“In fact, it’s true that in Old Times the woman is there, but not there, which pleased me when I managed to do that, when that came through to me” (1, p. 18).

“I’ll tell you one thing about Old Times. It happens. It all happens” (1, p. 43).

This is the reason that he does not like to be interviewed:

“I might say something totally different tomorrow” (1, p. 41).

Moreover, he (at least the personality speaking for him in an award acceptance speech) doesn’t really have a conceptual understanding of his plays:

“I can sum up none of my plays. I can describe none of them, except to say: That is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did” (2, p. xiii).

People take it as a joke about his public reputation when Pinter repeats the following kinds of statements:

“…I remain bewildered by praise and really quite indifferent to insult. Praise and insult refer to someone called Pinter. I don’t know the man they’re talking about” (2, p. x).

Interviewer: Who’s Harold Pinter?

Pinter: He’s not me…(1, p. 25).

In the context of plays like Old Times, why would anyone think that Pinter is joking when he acknowledges identity issues?

1. Mel Gussow. Conversations with Pinter. New York. Limelight Editions, 1994.

2. Harold Pinter. Complete Works: Four. With an introduction by the author. New York, Grove Press, 1981.