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The collection of essays is a fine
balance between Naipaul’s admirers and critics, his prose and
politics and his fiction and narratives. It covers the vast —
if complex — gamut of his works.
The first essay, The
House of Mr Naipaul by Pankaj Mishra, is really a pictorial
representation of Naipaul’s roots in Trinidad, his background,
his family and, above all, the deep influence of his father his
making as a writer. In fact, one of the few times that Naipaul’s
now famous clichéd persona of a ‘cussed, bigoted political
analyst’ or a ‘cantankerous curmudgeon’, seems to lift off
is when one reads the letters he wrote to his father from
Oxford. He writes, "I feel nostalgic for home… I long for
the nights falling blackly, suddenly without warning. I long for
the showers of rain at night. I long to hear the tinny tattoo of
heavy raindrops on a roof, or the drops of rain on the broad
leaves of that wonderful plant, the wild tannia…" You
read these lines and realise Naipaul, too, can be sentimental!
Amit Chaudhuri’s
lyrical essay on Naipaul’s mentoring of young writers is a
treasure-trove for all wannabe writers. Bringing out vignettes
of his classical pieces of prose – and also citing works of
other famous writers like Dickens, Seamus Heaney — Chaudhuri
deliberates on the educative value of eminent writers in showing
the light to others following in their footsteps.
And then follow
the fireworks! His transition from fiction to explorations of
lands and civilisations was a turning point. Beginning with the
discovery of the land of his ancestors, India, his An Area of
Darkness earned the sobriquet of ‘the gutter inspector’s
report’! Farukh Dhondy in an essay with similar title and
Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s, A Terrifying Honesty attempts to
dispel the bias in Naipaul’s scathing and disturbing accounts
of India, Islam and the Caribbeans. The bottomline in their
essays is that too much is read into Naipaul’s travel
narratives "By recognizing truths that the rest of us would
prefer to avoid, Naipaul has put himself an angle to the
civilized society. He continues to walk alone… terrifyingly
honest," opines Wheatcroft.
Perhaps the most
pungent and acerbic piece is A Million Neuroses, by Akash
Kapur. His searing criticism of Naipaul’s absurd ‘grandiose’
political judgments is both prickly and thought provoking. He
writes, "Naipaul’s books have never really been about
politics or history; they have always been about one man and his
position in the stream of history… his political stands should
be read for insight into Naipaul himself…" However,
Kapoor makes up for his tirade by concluding, "For there
is, in Naipaul much to admire. The me-centred approach to the
world… is also the sign of profound individuality, an
intellectual integrity that imparts a measure of moral authority
to his work."
However, J.M.
Coetzee’s The Razor’s Edge, a long-winded review of
Naipaul’s most recent famous return to fiction Half A Life,
is a trifle disappointing. Coetzee, whom I greatly admire as a
writer, somehow seems out of his depth, especially when viewed
against the yardstick of his brilliant Booker Prize-winner
Disgrace.
Quite
appropriately the last essay in the book is Tarun J. Tejpal’s In
Sir Vidia’s Shadow. It echoes the sentiments, even if
somewhat over-amplified, of millions of Naipaul fans, that he is
perhaps the finest living writer of English, and is a validation
of the epithet "a writer’s writer." Tejpal recalls
his own discovery of Naipaul: "There was an architecture to
the prose that, in its simplicity and design was classical. The
words stacking up, the sentences stacking up, the paragraphs
stacking up had an air of profound inevitability. Good readers
could spend years unlocking their peculiar wisdoms and
secrets."
In this otherwise
elegantly produced volume, comprising excellent cover design,
printing — not a single printer’s devil (Sir Vidia would be
pleased) — one sorely misses a woman contributor. For, who
else would take him on for his now infamous – even if
flippantly made – remarks about the traditional bindi on
Indian women’s foreheads! But let’s not turn a ‘small dot’
of aberration into the focal point of our discourse on Naipaul’s
gravitas.
"The world is
what it is, men who are nothing, have no place in it,"
wrote Naipaul. His own place is now legendary. And this book is
a befitting tribute to the genius who transcends both ‘the
humour and pity’ of his concerns by enlarging the sphere of
literature for all of us.
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IT
has been a long journey for Vidiadhar Seepersad Naipaul. From
the grandson of an indentured Indian labourer in Trinidad to a
Nobel Laureate is a grand arrival. No wonder Sir V. S. Naipaul
has become as much a subject matter for others to write on as
is his literature.
