"Everyday prattle"

It's finally been announced: British playwright Harold Pinter is the recipient of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Academy says that "in his plays [he] uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms."

And a quote from the winner (from Pinter's play, "Oh Superman):
"Does reality essentially remain outside language, separate, obdurate, alien, not susceptible to description? Is an accurate and vital correspondence between what is and our perception of it impossible? Or is is that we are obliged to use language only in order to obscure and distort reality - to distort what happens-because we fear it? We are encouraged to be cowards. We can't face the dead. But we must face the dead because they die in our name. We must pay attention to what is being done in our name."

Congratulations to Harold Pinter!