excerpted from a Dec 9 2005 article in Haaretz
by Michael Kustow

About Harold Pinter,
upon his receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature:

Every considerable writer is born with a core voice. Their greatness comes from what they do with this voice, how they refract and extend it, how they argue with it. I have always thought that the core voice of Harold Pinter is Jewish. He doesn't accept this identity readily, won't be co-opted into given allegiances, says he's a man and a citizen first and last. Out of his core voice he's spun voices with an Irish energy, an upper-class reticence, the crushed monosyllables of the underdog. Last but not least there's the rage of his political speeches, actions and poems, notably his sustained opposition to Israel's 18-year imprisonment of Mordechai Vanunu, for revealing nuclear "secrets."