The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul (Vintage)

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Since Mr French had access to all Naipaul's papers, he apparently felt the need to include them all, down to grocery lists and bills. This is a shame as this book would have been better and an easier read if he had edited more. I grew up in the Caribbean where Naipaul is alternately respected, particularly for his hilarious earlier work, and reviled for his dismissive attitude to the region (One of his books says something like "Nothing good ever came from the Caribbean."). I think he would approve of this reputation and probably even revel in the very negative portrayal he has received from someone he gave extensive interviews to as well as access to his papers. I kept reading the book in hopes that Pat, his first wife, (who he told the day after they married, "I should not have done this") would leave him. But no, she stayed to the bitter end, along with his mistress of 25 years, who he also overthrew for a completely different woman after Pat died. I can't imagine what any of these women saw in him. Maybe he is different in person. This biography has ensured I never buy another Naipaul book.

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Patrick French has worked hard to produce a definitive biography of V.S. Naipaul--the quintessential Westernised Oriental Gentleman--in clear, economical prose, but he does not often achieve the thoroughly detached, magisterial effect he seeks. Unable to completely suppress his astonishment at the famous author's impoverished family background in colonial Trinidad, he fails completely to capture the richness of Naipaul's crucial high school experience at the elite Queen's Royal College in Port-of-Spain, which endowed the bright little `coolie' boy with important advantages over the British students he would compete against at Oxford University. And in striving to be fair to the complexity of his subject's psychology, French offers only feeble objections to Naipaul's ferocious contempt for black West Indians and his one-sided view of the ongoing racial conflicts in the Caribbean. The book underplays Naipaul's family connections to the stridency and intrigue of Hindu party politics, and leaves the distinct impression that Trinidad's most famous academic and `Negro' politician, Dr. Eric Williams, was a vulgar opportunist and racial demagogue. This is nothing less than an execrable falsification of Trinidadian political history.
French reserves much quiet finger-wagging for Naipaul's exploitive treatment of the women who are credited with bringing comfort and inspiration to his often-tormented life, particularly when the young writer was `floundering' in post-war Britain, after failing to achieve the coveted First at Oxford. In particular, Naipaul's first wife, Patricia Hale, is venerated as a dignified, long-suffering, maternal figure, who generously sacrificed her own promising fortunes for a supporting role in Naipaul's writing career. This is the weakest part of the book, because French does not adequately explain why a fiercely ambitious girl from the provinces would surrender her chances so easily, and incur the strong disapproval of her family and her society to consort with--and then marry-- a penniless, sexually awkward `coloured man,' who suffered from asthma and chronic depression, as well as from his own inability to avoid public rudeness and embarrassing temper tantrums. We are simply not getting anywhere near to the truth here, and it is hard to believe that the biographer has not succumbed to the fashionable distortions of conventional feminism.

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Author Patrick French has created a tour de force portrait of a great writer whose worldly success and emotional vulnerabilities eventually combined to push him off the deep end as a human being. I read this book for a chance to revisit the fine work that I remember admiring so much when I started to read Naipaul in college in the late 1970s (at the suggestion of a friend and fellow Duke student from Mexico City). A House for Mr. Biswas, A Bend in the River, The Return of Eva Peron--I still have all the dusty paperbacks, and eagerly pulled them open to compare the text with what was in the biography. It was extremely, even intensely interesting to see French reveal the nuts & bolts of Naipaul's writing techniques and find out how these perfectly crafted works were created. So that's where that line about the Argentinean death squads driving Ford Falcons came from! For that alone, French's book is one of the best portrayals of the writing process I have read.

I also remember the tone of pungent cruelty right under the surface of Naipaul's books. I remember tasting the same kind of barbed emotional aggression in Paul Theroux's books and the style went on to become very fashionable at the time. Now I understand how the many "follower" authors mimicked the leader. At the time, in the 1970s, many reviewers and established intellectuals welcomed the abrasiveness as authentic. I did not like the cruelty for it's own sake, and never read Theroux's books for that reason. Nevertheless, Naipaul was irresistible in spite of his meanness--he was just so damn smart you had to find out what he had seen and how he would write about it.

Now about Naipaul's honesty--it's a twisted variety. He's honest in everything that is angry, cynical or critical. In our world, that is unfortunately a very long list, and this makes him look "good" as a truth teller. However, he is so profoundly dishonest about those places where goodness is real, that he destroyed his heart and soul in the process of reaching the apogee of his career. The book's title sums it all up--You have to be willing to sacrifice anything and anyone to get ahead in this world--that's the way the world is. That's the way Naipaul is. That's why he is famous. We should all think about that for a minute.

As to the gossipy part about the three-way marriage (in truth, something beyond your average adultery, more like polygamy jury-rigged for the monogamous west) French has dared to give dignity to a cuckolded literary wife and to her suffering. These women usually get tossed out with the dishwater by macho literary lions (who glorify the thrill of outside passion) and women critics (who can turn on their own kind and be very contemptuous of sensitive women who cannot protect themselves). Some of these characters appear right in the book making condescending observations about Pat Hale's suffering, or cheering on Naipaul's kinky and self-centered sexual preferences as an "awakening" necessary for his literary output.

I suspect that he was cruel to Pat because he was and still is profoundly insecure about his masculine pride and he could never forgive her for having witnessed his early weakness. The more I read, the more I was actually embarrassed for him. In the photo of him strutting for Margaret Gooding with one leg up on a railing, he looks like one of those cocky, insecure little guys who would drive a Honda Civic Pocket Rocket with a loud muffler and think he was impressing girls. Ouch.

I would suggest that this biography is a conscious, artistic coda for Naipaul's writing career in the same way that Picasso's final self-portrait captures his belated and horrified recognition of the toll his fame has taken on the people around him. Picasso finally let the guilt emerge and looked at the truth of his inner self-loathing. Those two horrible burning eyes stare back at the artist in inexorable recognition of the human wreckage left behind him in his life-long pursuit of dominance, sexual pleasure and fame. We're part of it too--after all, we bought his pictures and fed his glory. In that picture, Picasso's even gone beyond shame--it's only fear left in his future. Luckily for Naipaul, he never had children to torment into committing suicide as Picasso did, so he hasn't quite gotten to that level of horror yet...

I celebrate French's courage in letting the facts speak for themselves. At the end, he gives Naipaul and Nadira the rope, and lets them hang themselves. French loves the truth as much as Naipaul.

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A completely satisfying biography--the subject and the biographer combine to make a book that is relentlessly interesting. Unlike many biographies of famous and accomplished people, like Einstein, this one keeps its level of interest right through to the very sad end. Because VSN is so protean, talented and driven. Lots of things happen to him, he produces a lot of amazing books and has great insight. The book is written with a great deal of skill and somehow keeps its balance in all things. Lots of information, but not too much. Handles a very touchy and difficult, tricky and evasive person very well. VSN is a remarkable subject, from beginning to end.

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This is a must read for Naipaul fans.
Extremly well researched and full of literary gossip.
Not flattering for Naipaul who is portrayed as a nacissitic genius but gives a great deal of insight into the colonial or rather post colonial mindset of intellectuals who grew up in the colonies at the time of the decline of British Empire. Might also be seen as potraying the changing societal values in Britain and the west in genaral during the 20th century-- espechially the changing racial prejudices.
Many insights into Naipaul's ouvre'.