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Pinter, Art, and StateDecember 09, 2005 Heard at the end of each public radio program that receives funding from the National Endowment for the Arts: "A great nation deserves great art." The slogan makes my teeth itch. I think it bugs Georges Collinet too; he's the host of Public Radio International's Afropop Worldwide program, which I catch every Sunday afternoon at 6. He amends the tagline slightly and concludes his roll call of sponsors with "and the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that great nations deserve great art." Nations are generally deemed great because of their power or their wealth, and often both: they conquer the art or they buy it. Or both. I like to believe that in a great nation most citizens are engaged with art in some way: making it, responding to it, inviting it into their homes. Could such a nation exist on this troubled planet? Nations like certainties. Art is about wildcards. Over Thanksgiving weekend, after hearing "A great nation deserves great art" for the sixth time in two days, I began to ponder an amendment to the U.S. Constitution calling for the separation of art and state. British playwright Harold Pinter, this year's Nobel laureate in literature, is making me think harder. The United States is a rogue nation, a base nation, a terrified and terrifying nation. Like it or not, and no matter how firmly I proclaim myself a New Englander first, USian second, it's also my nation. I am a writer, an artist of sorts; I've learned to live with cacophonous, contradictory truths. I know what I can do, but what should I be doing? In his acceptance speech Pinter said, about political theater: "The characters must be allowed to breathe their own air. The author cannot confine and constrict them to satisfy his own taste or disposition or prejudice. He must be prepared to approach them from a variety of angles, from a full and uninhibited range of perspectives, take them by surprise, perhaps, occasionally, but nevertheless give them the freedom to go which way they will. This does not always work." Novice though I am at the novelist's art, I know this is true for us too. Key to our success (whatever that is) is the ability and willingness to stay the conscious mind and let the spirit, the sub- or unconscious, whatever it is, run the show. "Political language," said Pinter, "as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed." As used by politicians, political language does "confine and constrict" -- in a word, it frames. It doesn't allow ideas to breathe. Politicians and other power-brokers can't afford such open-endedness for it leaves the outcome in doubt. I'm not even sure that maintenance of power is the most important thing: power may be actually a means to an end, the end being control, predictability -- something coveted by nearly everybody at least some of the time, no matter how much or how little power we wield. Whatever the goal, they can't leave it up to chance, or to truly free elections or a truly free marketplace. The thought of losing power is the root of their terror, and their terror is the root of their drive to control the whole world. And they couldn't do it without our complicity, our cooperation, our collaboration. The U.S. leadership -- meaning not just our high elected officials but also those who maintain them in office and whose interests they serve -- is like a big blundering alcoholic bully. The rest of us are the family members whose fear keeps us silent, and whose silence eventually persuades us that nothing is wrong. (The shorthand for this is denial.) Anyone who claims not to understand why a woman stays with her battering husband would do well to ponder why so many USians are unable to withdraw our support from a monster willing and able to stifle all dissent, all diversity -- all life -- until he/she/we feel safe. The monster is insatiable; it will never feel safe. All the alcohol, all the oil, all the blood in the world will not quiet its fear. As a writer, I dance with fear, and with loss of control. Writing terrifies and exhilarates, often at the same time. "A writer's life," said Harold Pinter, "is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection -- unless you lie -- in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician." Hellfire and damnation worry me not, but the prospect of becoming a politician is scary indeed. Said Pinter, "Unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all." I've known for a long time that this is what I am doing. I needed to be reminded of how crucial it is. Harold Pinter's Nobel acceptance speech can be found at http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html. Highly, highly recommended. There are plenty of commentaries on it out in cyberspace, but Jane Smiley's is particularly good. It's at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/realpolitik_b_11922.html.
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