RIP Sir Vidiadhar S. Naipaul
V.S. Nipaul literally put Trinidad on the map (outside cricket and long before Rihanna) although his eventual British citizenship was a loss for Trinidad. But then, that’s the nature of migrant writers. Ask India about Rushdie.
IT WAS only a few weeks ago that I decided to pursue V. S. Naipaul’s “Hat” right here in this column. It was only a few weeks ago that I referred, twice, to a poetic line by one of V.S. Naipaul’s characters, B. Wordsworth, who writes: “The past is deep.”
This is a complete poem by the way, and its effect is like quicksand. And then on the 11th of August, I received the sad news of Naipaul’s passing.
I first encountered V.S. Naipaul when I was in Form 2 at Rukovo Seconday School (during sports trips, we usually christened it Kyle View High School for mysterious reasons). I had by then breezed through the “Hardy Boys” and “Nancy Drew” collections that had found their way to our school library through the philanthropic work of some expats.
By the way, one of those expats had emblazoned the periodic table on the wall of one of our classroom blocks so that from afar, it looked like some Disney production. But that’s a story for another day.
So after writing a series of compositions in which the fast-paced fights of the “Hardy Boys” and intruders made the bulk of the plots, I started to feel this emptiness, like the “Hardy Boys” stories were not true to my village existence. I tried Louis L’Armour’s cowboys, and took the central role in my essays in which I delivered a couple of haymakers and one-two punches to the bad guys. It worked for a while (my English teacher always waxed lyrical concerning my compositions) until the day I fought with Workie and the haymakers refused to be delivered.
I wanted something that reflected the mundane drudgery that we try to hide behind adrenaline jolts of manufactured happiness. Then, one day, I bumped into a Form 1 pupil holding “A House for Mr Biswas”.
I asked him about it and realised that he belonged to that league of book collectors who do not read books but are only in search of the satisfaction of having many books in their possession.
At least the good thing was that he lent me the book.
At first, I struggled to flip to the next page. There was no action. No fisty deliveries and bloodied faces. There was only the decades-long search of Biswas for a house he could call his own. When he finally finds it at the end of his life, you are reminded of when scales fall from your eyes two hours after purchasing a phone paXimex, Food World yepaCopacabana or paGulf. The scales always fall from your eyes two hours later, I don’t know why.
With an old notebook, I plodded along with Biswas in his search for an elixir, a point in his life when he would say, “I have arrived!” I also remembered to scribble phrases and words to use in my compositions. Suddenly, my teacher started to see some changes in the subject matter and tempo of my essays. Instead of fists running riot, my deliveries became more reflective and introspective. Up to today, my favourite essay, written 16 years ago, is ‘Memories of Childhood’.
Six years after reading Naipaul’s “A House for Mr Biswas”, I met him again at university. This time, it was “Miguel Street”. At Honours degree level, the interpretations centred around the alienation of the characters, their lack of agency and their claustrophobic existence that made them victims of an exilic consciousness. We attacked Bogart regardless of his grotesque parody of a muscular movie star; we made fun of B. Wordsworth’s poeticide (killing poetry); and we ridiculed Hat for being a pretender and lay about.
At Master’s degree level, the focus was on Naipaul himself, especially when reading his works with his travelogue, “Middle Passage”, in mind. I remember writing an essay titled “Pleasures of Exile” and questioning Naipaul’s effrontery of representing the West Indian story while safely ensconced in the land of the Queen’s knights.
I most seriously reserved my extreme academic vitriol for his audacity to declare, while visiting the West Indies with the arrogant air of a tourist, that, “History is built around achievement and creation; and nothing was created in the West Indies.” Where did he, to borrow some clichéd words from Nollywood, get the effrontery, the audacity, the nerve to depict his own kinsmen using such contemptuous descriptions?
If West Indians really lacked agency, so whose agency was he using to write award-winning literary texts? And why did he not think of George Lamming, one of the most popular writers to ever walk on earth, and Eric Williams, whose “Capitalism and Slavery” is like a Bible for development studies students? And when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, why did he omit Trinidad from the press release? I am telling you, the kind of Naipaul-bashing that took place in that essay was of Concourt proportions.
At PhD level, the focus was on the celebration of homelessness, at least at the epistemological level, a homelessness that allows one to look back at home with fire in the eyes, a homelessness that allows one to hit home with some fiery truths. It was this strangerhood, this ability to look at home from outside, that I began to celebrate in Naipaul. So I can say my relationship with Naipaul has not always been rosy, it had its highs and lows, but I guess, to pseudo-quote him, “that’s life as it is”.
Naipaul was certainly a controversial figure. I guess being a writer attracts some kind of “madness”, according to a Kenyan friend of mine. But the controversies bulk small when compared to the literary empire he left behind. He literally put Trinidad on the map (outside cricket and long before Rihanna) although his eventual British citizenship was a loss for Trinidad. But then, that’s the nature of migrant writers. Ask India about Rushdie.
Napaul’s influence in my interpretation and potential creation of literature is immense. That is why it is with a sad heart that I say, “Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, may your dear soul rest in eternal peace.”