Roger, I consider myself lucky to have been inculcated in the Theatre of the Absurd in private school in West L.A. Few if any of my contemporaries who went to public school knew of those writings or any of the playwrights. Pinter was not one of my favorites (Ionesco was, actually) but I developed an appreciation for his works to an extent.
I’m one of those who can more easily accept anti-American and anti-Western politics from Europeans, for whom, despite my Anglophilia (and fairly intense French studies) while growing up, I have a healthily-developed disrespect now. (For me they are all Weasels.) IOW, Pinter’s politics do not surprise and are of a piece with the lesser intellectual lights of Europe.

I would say that the Theatre of the Absurd, including Pinter, is my fondest memory of high school. It taught me a new way of viewing life that has never left me. That it was taught by my favorite teacher is secondary. A part of that has died, and that is sad. Pinter’s politics were execrable but all too normal for his class, but his works stand on their own, as it should be.