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BOOK REVIEW
The most bitter writer on
earth
The Writer and the
World, by V S Naipaul, edited by Pankaj
Mishra
Reviewed by Kedar Deshpande
"Indians are proud of their ancient,
surviving civilization. They are, in fact, its
victims."
- V S Naipaul, 1967
At
some point in his life, V S Naipaul turned into a
bitter, cynical man. Some say this transformation
occurred in the late 1970s, when he conducted an
extended tour of the world and witnessed the degradation
of nations in Africa and Asia and elsewhere. His 1979
novel A Bend in the River, with its bleak,
horrifying description of an unnamed, newly-independent
African country, contrasts sharply with his 1960
breakthrough tragicomedy A House for Mr Biswas.
Now a Nobel laureate, the Trinidad-born Naipaul
somehow manages to reintroduce himself as a writer who
has always been without hope for the world. The
Writer and the World shows that Naipaul's
metamorphosis from a dark comedy writer into an
apocalyptic prophesier was not a gradual occurrence or a
product of any journey or revelation. Indeed, the essays
in the book prove that Naipaul is cold at heart.
Spanning four continents and three decades,
The Writer and the World collects many of
Naipaul's essays, which have long been out of print. The
book is conveniently divided into three sections:
"India", "Africa and the Diaspora", and "American
Excursions".
The section about India is the
shortest of the book, which is perfectly fitting for a
man who has largely shunned his Indian heritage. Naipaul
does not mince words, and his essays about his ancestral
home of India show that he has nothing good to say about
the nation. But he writes fluidly and in broad terms,
with a prose so strong that one cannot ignore its
confidence and grace, regardless of its content.
An initial reluctance
Perhaps tactful,
or perhaps careful, Naipaul is not so heartbreaking and
ruthless in his first assessment of India. He is,
however, critical and honest, but has no specific
vendetta against the country. The first essay of the
book, "In the middle of a journey", shows Naipaul
writing of India in relation to his own life and
experiences. He avoids gratuitous generalizations, and
as such, many of his impressions of the country are
sharp and simple, yet capture the at times startling
grandeur and insanity of India. Even still, Naipaul
takes a stab at the underdevelopment and sense of death
he detects. "For here is a vastness beyond imagination,
a sky so wide and deep that sunsets cannot be taken in
at a glance but have to be studied section by section, a
landscape made monotonous by its size and frightening by
its very simplicity and its special quality of
exhaustion: poor choked crops in small crooked fields,
under-sized people, under-nourished animals, crumbling
villages and towns which, even while they develop, have
an air of decay". (p3)
The concept of "decay" is
an important one to Naipaul, and it appears frequently
in his essays. He is trying to tell us that India may
bustle, but general economic growth cannot hide its
overwhelming deficiency in maintenance and
"sensibility", as he calls it. And immediately after
making this observation, he adds, "from this endless
repetition of exhaustion and decay one wishes to
escape".
Coming off of the success of A House
for Mr Biswas, Naipaul still retains the humor that
characterized that book. In the course of his travels
through India, many people ask him where he is from.
When he replies Trinidad, the people can only reply,
"But you look Indian." He tries to explain that he is
Indian, but his family has for several generations lived
in Trinidad. The only response is bewilderment,
eventually Naipaul abandons honesty and opts to simplify
matters by saying, "I am a Mexican, really."
Dialogues and anecdotes such as this one make
The Writer and the World a funny, engaging book.
Naipaul is writing essays, but his essays read like
novels, without losing the scholarly air of more
collegiate writings. Here Naipaul proves that he is a
gifted writer, and more importantly, an acute observer
who knows how to tell a story.
When he keeps the
essays personal, Naipaul comes across as more genuine
and less angry. He is critical of India perhaps because
it is too strange for him and makes him feel less
important: "An Indian, I have never before been in
streets where everyone is Indian, where I blend
unremarkably into the crowd. This has been curiously
deflating, for all my life I have expected some
recognition of my difference and it is only in India
that I have recognized how necessary this stimulus is to
me, how conditioned I have been by the multiracial
society of Trinidad and then by my life as an outsider
in England. To be one of four hundred and thirty-nine
million Indians is terrifying". (p5)
And at
first, Naipaul seems content to allow India to be a
mystery. "Perhaps India is only a word, a mystical idea
that embraces all those vast plains and rivers", he
states (p7). Such was possibly the case in 1962, when he
wrote this essay about India. But the next few essays
prove that he is restless and maybe even bitter, and
holds nothing back concerning his impressions.
A general idea
For a writer who has
said, "To me situations are always specific" (p503),
Naipaul does not hesitate to generalize, especially when
something bothers him. In a visit to Calcutta, now
called Kolkata, Naipaul suddenly becomes a bitter man
describing the Westernization of India. He is not so
angry that India is seemingly embracing the West, but
more so because India denies that it is doing so.
"There in air-conditioned offices may be found
the young Indian business executives, the box-wallahs,
the new Indian elite ... The box-wallah culture of
Calcutta is of a peculiar richness, and if it has not
yet been explored by Indian writers this is because they
have been too busy plagarizing, or writing harrowing
stories about young girls drifting into prostitution to
pay the family's medical bills and stories about young
girls, poor or pretty, who inexplicably die." (p12)
Naipaul started out by stating the appearance of
a new subculture in India, and for no reason drifts into
an attack of Indian writers. Rest assured, though, that
he does not forget the box-wallahs; indeed, he spares no
general expense in describing this new breed of Indians:
"The Calcutta box-wallah comes of a good family,
ICS, army or big business; he might even have princely
connections. He has been educated at an Indian or
English public school and at one of the two English
universities, whose accent, through all the encircling
hazards of Indian intonation, he rigidly maintains. When
he joins his firm his first name is changed. The Indian
name of Anand, for example, might become Andy ... Where
the Indian name cannot be adapted, the box-wallah will
most usually be known as Bunty. It is a condition of
Bunty's employment that he play golf; and on every golf
course he can be seen with an equally unhappy Andy, both
enduring the London-prescribed mixture of business and
pleasure". (p13)
Never does Naipaul specifically
mention any of these box-wallah youths that he has met.
One gets the feeling that he is stereotyping because he
cannot control his rage or cynicism. In either case,
such generalizations undermine the strength of his prose
and the talent he has for thorough observation.
The neutral eye
Clearly, Naipaul had
repressed his deep-rooted feelings during his first
trip. In 1967 he returned to India and wrote the
scathing and broad essay, "A Second Visit".
"We
go [to India] with a sense of tragedy and urgency, with
the habit of contemplating man as man, with ideas of
action; and we find ourselves unsupported." (p16) The
reason for this is India's blindness to its destitution
and lack of any tangible goal to improve; famines come
and go, disease destroys the people, but ultimately,
"India was infinitely old and would go on. There was no
goal and therefore no failure. There were only events.
There was no tragedy." (p17)
Instead of trying
to find solutions to its problems, India perpetually
falls back on "magic", thereby escaping any
responsibility. "[Indians] abandoned intellect,
observation, reason; and became mysterious". (p18) And
the West does not help matters any, as its beatniks and
youth travel to India in search of mysticism and cheap
living; in the meantime, real life and concerns go on in
the background. "The West [comes] returning
mysteriousness and negation to the East, while . . .
humiliating deals are made in New Delhi and Washington
for arms and food: it is like a cruel revenge joke
played by the rich, many-featured West on the poor East
that possesses only mystery. But India does not see the
joke." (p19)
Naipaul obviously sees the joke,
but as a bitter man, will have nothing to do with it. He
is not the crusading liberal writer; Naipaul admits that
he is past any impassioned despair for India. No,
instead he claims to be in a state of "neutrality".
While Naipaul has given up hope (not that he had
any to begin with), some Indians do find a semi-solution
to their eternal woes. According to Naipaul, Indians
abandon responsibility, thereby abandoning their
problems, by fleeing to the West. "[It is] a flight to
the familiar security of second-class citizenship, with
all its opportunities for complaint, which implies
protection, the other man's responsibility, the other
man's ideas." (p32)
Conclusion
Naipaul
is similarly critical of Africa and the Americas. The
book, at over 500 pages, is a long read, but a worthy
one for anyone trying to escape the world outlooks of
liberals and conservatives. Naipaul has no political
agenda: he is simply an extreme cynic, bitter at times,
humorous at others.
While the essays suffer from
generalizations of varying degrees, they do contain
excellent anecdotes and colorful, all-encompassing
descriptions of Asia, Africa and the Americas. Naipaul
never makes for a dry read, and his unscholarly writing
style makes this book engaging.
One can doubt
the conclusions Naipaul makes, but one cannot argue with
his observations, told in strong, clean prose. Clearly
Naipaul deserves praise for his talent, and even if his
non-fiction can be biased, his fiction is direct. No
matter his anger, he is a superbly gifted writer with a
sharp eye for the world.
The Writer and the
World by V S Naipaul. Alfred A Knopf: New York,
2002. 524 pages, US$29.95.
(©2002 Asia Times
Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contactcontent@atimes.com for
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