![]() ![]() Throughout the book, contributors refer to each other's chapters, which does indeed make for a kind of dialogue (albeit one which, in practice, largely involves the exchange of compliments). The volume belongs to a series called "Dialogue," one aim of which is to offer upcoming academics the opportunity to engage in print with better-established scholars. ![]() Given the reams of Pinter criticism published in the last fifty years, however, it cannot be regarded as an especially neglected text, so that this volume of fourteen critical examinations of a single one-act play may risk seeming superfluous. It combines the classic characteristics of early Pinter - a paucity of information and an atmosphere of menace, working-class small-talk in a claustrophobic setting - with an oblique but palpable political edge and, in so doing, can be seen as containing the germ of Pinter's entire dramatic oeuvre. Small but perfectly formed, The Dumb Waiter might be considered the best of Harold Pinter's early plays, more consistent than The Birthday Party and sharper than The Caretaker.
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