ON A GOOD BOOK WITH BITE

NO HOLDS BARRED

Yes, I know how bad the market fared again today and how the economic news turns grimmed by the day.  But wanted not to focus on the relentless stream of bad news for a tiny bit of time. 

Instead, I choose to take pleasure from the review of a biography on one of my favorite authors for a long time, V. S. Naipaul.  Here's now the New York Times review introduces said book:

"In 1998 Paul Theroux published “Sir Vidia’s Shadow,” a memoir about the crumbling of his long friendship with V. S. Naipaul, the great Trinidad-born novelist. Mr. Theroux’s book was a potent, carefully mixed cocktail, served ice cold.

It laid bare Mr. Naipaul’s racism, misogyny, vanity, stinginess and (most distressingly) his emotional cruelty to Patricia, his first wife.

Now, 10 years later, comes “The World Is What It Is,” Patrick French’s authorized biography of Mr. Naipaul. It’s a handsome volume, jacketed in silver and black, with a disarming cover photograph of Mr. Naipaul stooping, with a gap-toothed grin, to tie a loose shoelace.

Flip Mr. French’s book over, however, and you confront this Voldemortian clump of words from Mr. Naipaul’s old nemesis, Mr. Theroux: “It seems I didn’t know half of all the horrors.” Cue the scary organ music..."

Sounds, pretty good, huh?  It gets better:

"It is to Mr. Naipaul’s credit that this crafty and inquisitive book exists. “He believed that a less than candid biography would be pointless,” Mr. French writes, “and his willingness to allow such a book to be published in his lifetime was at once an act of narcissism and humility.”

Mr. Naipaul gave Mr. French access to his archives , including journals of his first wife that he’d not yet read. Mr. Naipaul was allowed to examine the completed manuscript but requested no changes.

Mr. French indicates, early on, that he is not playing softball. On his book’s second page we read that Mr. Naipaul “said, or was said to have said, that Africa had no future, Islam was a calamity, France was fraudulent, and interviewers were monkeys."

No punches are pulled by Mr. Naipaul coming back:

“A writer is in the end not his books, but his myth,” Mr. Naipaul has written. “And that myth is in the keeping of others.” Mr. Naipaul was brave to allow this complicated parsing of his own myth into the world. You will finish “The World Is What It Is” wishing to reread Mr. Naipaul’s best books immediately. You will also be glad he is not your friend, neighbor, sibling, landlord or barista."

I've already ordered the book on my Amazon Kindle, and plan to start reading it tonight.  Not to mention keying up some of old Naipaul favorites to dig into next.

Back to real world events soon enough. 

Comments

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