SOURCE: “Reflections on Pinter's The Birthday Party,” in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 13, No. 1, Winter, 1972, pp. 34-43.

In the following explication of The Birthday Party, Lesser compares Pinter's worldview to that of Kafka's.

One cannot, and probably should not, write about Pinter without facing his similarity to Kafka and his acknowledged indebtedness to him.¹ In the course of telling stories which are apparently objective and up to a point even pretend to be realistic, both writers tap subjective concerns, many of which go back to infancy. Both deal with experiences which at first glance seem commonplace, even paltry, but which turn out to be battles for high stakes, sanity, for example, or sometimes life itself. Both share a conviction that the essential aspects of experience are ambiguous if not unknowable, yet both write simply and lucidly. Both achieve drama and poetry, without too many departures from colloquial speech and material...