Recommendations
Books Like Old Times
Best books to read after Old Times by Harold Pinter
Readers who love Old Times by Harold Pinter are drawn to its combination of extreme formal elegance, the disturbing investigation of memory as a territorial claim, and the slowly emerging suggestion that the past being contested may not exist in the way any of the three characters claim — they want plays and novels that deal with memory as weapon, the possession of other people through stories about the shared past, and the tradition of the Pinteresque investigation of power.
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The Homecoming
by Harold Pinter
The companion organized around the return home and the disturbing realignment of relationships. The companion Pinter play as an investigation of the same dynamic: a household of men, an arriving woman, and the question of who will possess whom
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Betrayal
by Harold Pinter
The companion organized around memory and an adulterous affair told in reverse chronology. The companion Pinter play as an investigation of the relationship between memory and possession: both are organized around the question of who knows the true story of the past and what that knowledge gives them
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No Man's Land
by Harold Pinter
The companion organized around two ageing men and their competing versions of a shared past. The companion Pinter play as an investigation of the same question: what happens when two people claim the same past? Spooner and Hirst cannot agree about whether they have met before, and the uncertainty opens onto the same abyss
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Landscape
by Harold Pinter
The companion organized around two figures who speak about their memories but not to each other. The companion Pinter play as an investigation of the isolation of memory: Beth's memory and Duff's memory occupy the same room but do not meet
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The Birthday Party
by Harold Pinter
Pinter's first full-length play — Stanley at his seaside boarding house, and the arrival of Goldberg and McCann. The ur-text of the Pinteresque: two strangers arrive, the existing household is disrupted, the relationship between past and present becomes impossible to establish
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Arcadia
by Tom Stoppard
Stoppard's companion investigation of the relationship between the past and the present — two time periods sharing the same table and objects. The companion play as the opposite strategy: where Pinter makes the past impossible to recover, Stoppard makes it physically present, and the tragedy is that they still cannot connect
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The Go-Between
by L.P. Hartley
Hartley's companion novel about the relationship between the past and the present — Leo Colston returning at the age of seventy-six to the summer of 1900. The companion investigation of the same question that organizes Old Times: how do we possess the past, and what do we do when the past possesses us?
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Atonement
by Ian McEwan
McEwan's companion novel about the relationship between memory, narrative, and possession — and what happens when a false story about the past destroys three lives. The companion to Old Times as an investigation of the power of narrative to define and destroy: where Pinter's characters use memory as a weapon, McEwan's Briony uses narrative as one
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