May 2014: V. S. Naipaul

For May we have V. S. Naipaul at bat. Quite a popular and prolific author, and one who I have yet to sample. What have you read of his? Any noteworthy titles to suggest?

i think he's most known for a bend in the river? my book group read it but i missed that meeting so didn't join in on the read. can't speak to anything else...

Naipaul has three books on the "1,001 Books to Read Before You Die" list:

In A Free State
A Bend in the River
Enigma of Arrival

I don't know the first thing about any of them, but after I do some digging, I'll probably end up picking one of these three.

Damn, I'd prefer to read a 1001 book too, but my library has 11 of his in English and those are not any of them. :( My options are: Half a life, A way in the world, An area of darkness, A turn in the South, Literary occasions : essays, The suffrage of Elvira, The nightwatchman's occurrence book and other comic inventions (which my library has typoed as "occurence"), The writer and the world (which stupidly brings up Jane Eyre as the first touchstone option), The masque of Africa : glimpses of African belief, Mr Stone and the Knights companion, and A flag on the island. Now I will have to look into them and see which to pick! I already know I will be staying clear of the two books of essays for sure. That leaves 9! Haha.

And now I have hit upon why "The Night Watchman's Occurrence Book" was so familiar to me as a title (minus the other half)-- I've read that title story in the Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories! It was one of the ones I marked out as a favorite, even. :)

I think I might read A House For Mr Biswas.

I'm not really into travel literature, so I'm thinking I'll go for Suffrage of Elvira or Mr Stone and the Knights Companion.

After looking at the synopses and reviews, I've decided I'm going to tackle The Enigma of Arrival.

I'm a Naipaul newbie too. I think I'll read A Bend in the River.

A House for Mr. Biswas is already on my Kindle, so I will use this group read as an excuse to actually read it! It will be fun to have you all to discuss it with.

It's always nice when groups give us reasons to choose something we've been waiting for just the opportune time for! ;)

>11 .Monkey.: — Too true! I've been inactive on LT for a while, so this will help me get back in the swim.

ETA: How did I do that???

I started A Bend in the River yesterday. Too soon to know where it is going, but so far so good.

>12 Poquette: If you mean the linking text, it's a semi-new feature added ;)

Yes, it was the link. Surprised the heck out of me! Still not quite sure how I did it although I have duplicated the phenomenon on my own thread.

>15 Poquette:

just refer back to the number of the post and you'll get the author of the post added in automatically.

When using the pointed bracket. I think she gets that, I mean, she's done it a few times, lol.

>16 overlycriticalelisa: and >17 .Monkey.: Yeah, I had accidentally stumbled into the right way by clicking this way and that. But it took me a while to get exactly which combination of moves was creating the link. hahaha

Have any of you read A House for Mr. Biswas? We need to talk!

I have less than 100 pages to go in this 566-page tome and I have been tempted to abandon it multiple times. Finally, in the 4th chapter of Part Two something happened that made me want to keep reading. This after slogging through 450 pages! I won't know what my final assessment will be until I finish, but at this point I have more questions than answers.

>6 Oandthegang: How are you coming with Mr. Biswas?

"Biswas" is one of my favorite books. Naipaul is a splendid writer. It really is worth your reading time.

Where did everybody go??? Anybody still here? I finished and reviewed A House for Mr. Biswas but I've been waiting for the lively discussion. ;-)

>21 Esta1923: Unfortunately — and I am very sorry to disagree — I could find nothing to admire in Mr. Biswas. I was disappointed as I have enjoyed Naipaul's travel writing from time to time.

Been terribly behind in my reading so I didn't even pick up a Naipaul book. I think I may be several months' authors behind.

A writer's people. Ways of looking and feeling
Finished reading: 8 May 2014



A writer's people. Ways of looking and feeling is a singularly unfocused and self-indulgent collection of essays. It seems that winning the Nobel Prize for Literature enabled V.S.Naipaul to shed the last shred of modesty and elevate his writing to the level of l'art pour l'art in which only the writer counts, and the reader is reduced to an optional accessory.

It is quite likely that winning the Nobel Prize in some sense devastated Naipaul. Since winning the prize in 2001, he has not produced any major works, with only Magic Seeds appearing in 2004 and this collection of essays A writer's people. Ways of looking and feeling in 2007. fans of Naipaul had to wait till 2010 for his next book, The Masque of Africa.

The essays are very well-written, and, going by their titles could have been very interesting. "Worm in the bud" outlines Naipaul's growth and genesis as a writer, but his self-centredness makes his appear the central axis of the universe. While one might argue that within his world, that is the world of his creation, the author is, in fact, the central creating force, real-life references to his father and contemporaries make this first essay seem overly self-centred.

The second essay, "An English way of looking" consists of an uncalled for cowardly back stabbing beyond the grave of Anthony Powell, whom Naipaul elsewhere called his friend. The author describes how soon after coming to England as a beginning author, he met Anthony Powell, and it is clear that to some extent, this friendship benefitted Mr Naipaul. It is all the more strange that he goes on to describe his disappointment in Powell. Whatever the merits or demerits of Powell's work, Naipaul's condemnation of that work as a pinnacle of mediocrity is futher proof of the bad taste of this essay collection.

Naipaul has written extensively on India, but the third essay, "Looking and not seeing: the Indian way" adds nothing to it. It is a longish, boring essay, mainly on Indian history, which reads like an occasional piece pulled of the shelf to act as a filler, as with the fifth essay "India again: the mahatma and after". It is therefore puzzling why the two essays about India are separated by the essays called "Disparate ways", which mainly deals with the work of Gustave Falubert.

Some of the essays feel as if they have been "prepared" for this collection. this is noticeable by a sudden swing in the focus of the essay, as if a number of introductory paragraphs or pages was added. The result is a sense of disorientation, as the main focus of some of the essays is different from what the first two pages lead in to.

Readable, but unfair.



Other books I have read by V.S.Naipaul:
The masque of Africa. Glimpses of African belief
Literary occasions
A flag on the island
The night watchman's occurrence book. And other comic inventions
Mr Stone and the Knights Companion
The suffrage of Elvira
India. A wounded civilization
The loss of El Dorado. A colonial history
The Middle Passage. Impressions of five colonial societies
Half a life

I love your reviews and how detailed they are. Did you have any thoughts on the other Naipaul books you read?

FYI, some articles of interest:

https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1069/v-s-naipaul-the-art-of-fiction-no...

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/08/21/redux-v-s-naipaul/

Also, by the way, the book I finally ended up reading by Naipaul was Magic Seeds and I hated it. Must have been missing something is the only thing I can think....

I read In a Free State this year (for the Golden Booker) and it was my first Naipaul. I loved his writing style but I was confused by the story. It started and ended with connected stories by the narrator and in the middle were three other unconnected short stories. It all felt random and disjointed.

>27 sweetiegherkin: I think I found out after the fact and very far in at least that Magic Seeds was the sequel / follow-up to another book, so that may have been part of my dislike / missing something. "Random and disjointed" is an apt description.