El escritor y el mundo

by V.S. Naipaul

Con este volumen el lector podrá abarcar cuatro décadas de escritura y cuatro continentes. En estas páginas, V.S. Naipaul, uno de los observadores más sensibles, cultos e indescriptibles del mundo poscolonial, analiza las sociedades, desde la India hasta Estados Unidos, y observando cómo cada una afronta los desafíos de la modernidad y las seducciones de su pasado, real o mítico.

En esta recopilación de ensayos inéditos, ya sea escribiendo sobre una cadena de asesinatos raciales en Trinidad, el loco y corrupto reinado de Mobutu en Zaire, la Argentina de los generales o Dallas durante la Convención Republicana de 1984, Naipaul combina su chispa intelectual con el dolor y la indignación, ofreciéndonos un análisis lúcido y una perspectiva dotada por una implacable inteligencia.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Travel, History, Literature, Africa, Writing

733 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

V. S. Naipaul was a British writer of Indo-Trinidadian descent known for his sharp, often controversial explorations of postcolonial societies, identity, and displacement. His works, which include both fiction and nonfiction, often depict themes of exile, cultural alienation, and the lingering effects of colonialism.
He gained early recognition with A House for Mr Biswas, a novel inspired by his father’s struggles in Trinidad. His later works, such as The Mimic Men, In a Free State, and A Bend in the River, cemented his reputation as a masterful and incisive writer. Beyond fiction, his travelogues and essays, including Among the Believers and India: A Million Mutinies Now, reflected his critical perspective on societies in transition.
Naipaul received numerous accolades throughout his career, including the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded for his ability to blend deep observation with literary artistry. While praised for his prose, his often unsparing portrayals of postcolonial nations and controversial statements sparked both admiration and criticism.

Reviews

[Dmitri · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of 21 essays, including:

~ New York with Norman Mailer (1969)
~ Columbus and Crusoe (1972)
~ The Overcrowded Barracoon (1973)
~ Steinbeck in Monterey (1972)
~ Argentina and the Ghost of Eva Peron (1972-1991)
~ New King of the Congo: Mobutu & Nihilism in Africa (1975)
~ Michael X and the Black Power Killings in Trinidad (1979)
~ Among the Republicans: An American Tribe (1980)
~ The Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro (1984)

************

V S Naipaul was controversial in his views of post colonial nations. He traveled widely in India, Africa and the Americas for this book and wrote what he saw in the 70’s and 80’s. His impressions were of intellectual paralysis and people struggling to maintain modern advances made by former European colonists. In each location he examines the realities on the ground and is unsparing in his criticism. Many of these essays were published in the NY Review of Books and New Yorker. It's good to have them under a single cover and they stand together as unified body of work.

India:
Naipaul paints portraits of Calcutta's anglicized Indian businessmen who call themselves Andy, Danny and Jimmy. Golfing after work they impose a westernized caste system in their lifestyles. He contrasts the religious follies of Vinoba Bhave and Vivekananda against the social transcendence of Gandhi, and sees the hoax of India as an inability to improve conditions, a reliance on magic and worship of a fabled past. He visits a raja in a rundown palace and follows a Rajasthan election between the Jan Sangh and Indira Gandhi parties. His later India trilogy books went into further depth.

Africa:
Naipaul covers the African diaspora on the Carribean islands of St. Kitts and Anguilla and a feud between local despots. Shipwrecked and isolated former British slave colonies go it alone. Belize is revisited, a ruin of empire where Mexico and Guatemala vie to repossess their former lands. Michael X, an emigre to England, evolves from pimp and drug dealer to founder of a Black Power movement in 1965. After jail time for inciting hatred he returns to Trinidad and is executed for racial murders. The Mauritius sugar cane island, Mobutu's Congo kingdom and the Ivory Coast get their just deserts.

Americas:
Naipaul also takes aim at the new continents. The avarice of Columbus is compared to the myth of Crusoe's desert island cannibals. An apologist for French Algeria doubles as an anthropologist of the Aztecs. Naipaul trails Norman Mailer on his quixotic campaign to be mayor of NYC in 1969 and attends Reagan's 1980 Dallas Republican convention where Eldridge Cleaver sells out to the establishment. He stays at Steinbeck's Cannery Row in 1970 and finds it reinvented as a schlocky tourist destination. Peron's Argentina is seen as an indigenous regression of 19th century European conquest.

As Pankaj Mishra notes in his introduction, Naipaul was twice displaced himself in the age of empire. Born in Trinidad as the grandson of an indentured laborer from India he won a scholarship to Oxford and the Nobel Prize. As a writer-in-exile, bearing the weight of lost glory and past tragedy, Naipaul had humor and compassion for his fellow colonial refugees. It has been said his prose is admirable but perspective skewed, yet he can be read differently. Although voiced in a critical language his insights are worthy to be heard. Flawed as a hero, he is a hero nonetheless.

[Khush · Rating 5 out of 5]

I give an excellent rating to this book for its language. Just like Naipaul's other works, this book is, too, in parts, quirky. The book has five essays. The first two essays 'The Worm in the Bud' and 'An English Way of Looking' are engaging. In the first one, he writes about writers from Trinidad, and their struggles, including his father's, with writing. The essay, in fact, traces the history of significant writers who came from that part of the world – those who became successful and known, and those who vanished. I liked reading about what he has to say about his father's work, and how that has shaped him. Since I have read letters between Naipaul and his father, I liked reading this essay.

The second essay is about his life in England and his friendships with editors, publishers and other writers. He writes with great care, concern, and honesty about the author Anthony Powell. The essay gives a peep into the nature of friendships and politics that prevails in the literary world. He also wrote in detail about his own grappling with words and deadlines, but once he established himself he gave up writing book reviews. It came as a pleasant surprise that Naipaul usually took a week to write a thousand-word book review.

The rest of the essays are on India. He writes about India, its culture, politicians, and his own relationship with India. Of course, the picture that emerges is a fascinating one no matter how much one dislikes some of the stuff Naipaul writes, he cannot be easily dismissed. He writes about India with great understanding. Many Indian people bash him for his views on India because they think that he panders to the western audience. There could be some truth in these accusations, however, there is a lot in his critique that is significant.

Naipaul writes effectively about caste and the immigrant experience, and how immigrants when living far away from their native lands turn reality into myths. Here he talks about his own family. For instance, when his family could travel back to India, his mother visited her village. She was hugely disappointed in them. The way this visit is described in the book makes it clear that both mother and son get disgusted by the dust-ridden Indian landscape, and the muddy tea the poor relatives offered his mother. The Brahmin relatives are looked upon as if they were untouchables. It is fascinating to see that Naipaul is harsh with almost every aspect of Indian life, he never gave up his caste. There is a lot in Brahmanism that he seems to admire: in fact, in the book he claims that almost all human nature can be expressed by the Hindu epics. He confesses that religion has a huge impact on him, and in very important ways, in a foreign land, his ancestors could maintain their sense of self by practicing caste and religious rituals.

Coming back to the experience of the mother rings perfectly true, but the conclusions drawn from the experience are not convincing. I have seen very poor people, especially the so-called upper castes, who are clean and extremely cultured. As I read him, I wondered Naipaul's own ancestors had survived outside India, in his own estimation, due to their religion and what they knew in terms of rituals, stories, and so forth. The cultural values were strong and remained a guiding force in the unfamiliar land. How come, then, those who stayed back in India, in their own world doing what they have always been doing for centuries, unfazed by conquests and colonialism, turned heathen.

There are several such contradictions I notice while reading Naipaul. It is for these contradictions that I read the amazing Naipaul.

[Murtaza · Rating 5 out of 5]

V.S. Naipaul was as vicious a critic of postcolonial societies as any writer of the 20th century. Part of the reason that Naipaul's critiques sting so much, for me at least, is that he himself was the child of impoverished Trinidad. Unlike so many other people who have had "literary careers," Naipaul did not come from wealth, privilege or prestige. He was a Hindu man of Indian extraction who grew up in one of the poorest and most remote parts of a decaying British empire, at a time of overt prejudice against people like him. Through his great gifts, he somehow made the most of these unpromising beginnings. In doing so never let the people he grew up with off the hook. To the contrary, Naipaul knew very well the secret pathologies of us brown and black people, the global proletariat of popular imagination, and let everyone know about them, even to the point of exaggeration.

In this book of essays, Naipaul travels across India, the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, South America and even the southern United States, giving a kind of ad-hoc world tour. Normally I am not a fan of books of essays, but somehow these otherwise disjointed travel dispatches tie together quite well. I suspect they manage to fit together because the writings and reflections in each one are absolutely striking. Naipaul is as gifted a writer of English as anyone I've ever read. More so than many others — Christopher Hitchens comes again to mind — Naipaul lives up to the hype around him. His writing is so powerful that the aesthetics of the book transform from a mere ornament into something like the main attraction. He paints such a vivid picture of the places and peoples he visits, that he acutely made me want to visit Maldives, St. Kitts and Argentina, countries that I hadn't thought deeply about before.

Suffice to say that Naipaul was a raging pessimist when it came to the developing world. The picture he paints of all the countries he visits in this book (save for the United States) is one of unrelenting fatalism and decay, punctuated by bouts of hysteria. If I were a British or French official reading these essays in the 1960s and feeling angst about my recently lost empire, I'm sure I'd derive some comfort from these dispatches. Naipaul has never met a postcolonial country that he hasn't experienced as a lurid phantasmagoria of violence, mysticism, melancholy, corruption or disorientation. In retrospect his judgment of the supposedly doomed nature of these societies was too harsh. It would also be described as racist by today's standards, when the people who live in these places have developed voices to speak back.

Naipaul does have an undeniable point though when it comes to the legacy of imperialism. Far-flung places like St. Kitts and Nevis and the Maldives were formed as minor economic appendages to empires. Once the empires that created them crumbled away, the places no longer made any sense. In the absence of the metropole many people in the former imperium have been left confused and drifting, unsure to do with the massive institutional and physical detritus that was left to them. As we have seen many times and in many places, the void created by the lost metropole has often been filled by military rule, monarchical despotism, or worse.

Even India seems hopeless in Naipaul's appraisals, which date from the 1970s. He seemed to have been quite wrong in condemning that country to fatal backwardness, which is ironic given that he also later on expressed sympathies with Hindutva ideology, perhaps drawn to it by his own Brahmin background. His famous antipathy towards Islam comes out strikingly in his last essay, which, unlike the rest of the book, is actually a speech that he delivered to a conservative New York think tank in 1992. That speech about "Our Universal Civilization" also seems to strongly reflect Hindu nationalist beliefs about Muslims across the world being merely colonized Arabs of the mind. This address reflected a remarkable ignorance and superficiality of thinking. It also made me wonder how blinkered his other political views were, about places and subjects that I don't know as well.

Naipaul should be read with an alert skepticism, not unthinking acceptance. With that caveat though, I would say that he's one of the most brilliant writers I've ever read. He is an absolutely scathing critic, a kind of intimate enemy, of the recently emancipated peoples of the Third World. I personally find its better to be criticized — even criticized unfairly — and kept alert and tenacious as a result, rather than being lulled into complacency by condescending praise. Naipaul was a legitimate genius, and I can see now why he has had such a massive psychological impact on so many Asian and African writers. I'll certainly continue reading his vast corpus of books. Even if his politics ultimately fail, he was one of the greatest travel writers ever and every chapter he penned still feels like a mini-vacation.

[Buck · Rating 3 out of 5]

For decades, V.S. Naipaul has played the part of sassy gay friend to the Third World. (Never mind that he’s actually straight). He’ll come swishing into some post-colonial backwater, give the place the once over, and then start in with the home truths: your society is sick, your economy is a joke and your government is a horror show. And I don’t know what they told you at the store, but those jeans make your ass look ginormous.

Naipaul is a writer of many virtues, but cultural sensitivity is not one of them. Wherever he goes, he can be counted on to find something incredibly tactless to say:

On India: The absurdity of India can be total. It appears to ridicule analysis. It takes the onlooker beyond anger and despair to neutrality.

On Argentina: ...an artificial, fragmented colonial society, made deficient and bogus by its myths.

On a group of black American women serving as missionaries in the Ivory Coast:

They were ill-favoured, many of them unusually fat, their grossness like a form of self-abuse, some hideously bewigged, some dumpling-legged in short, wide, flowered skirts. They were like women brought together by a common physical despair.

So is Naipaul a hater? Indubitably. Should this worry you? That depends on your politics. But before you go putting him on your personal Index Librorum Prohibitorum, I’d just point out that half the writers worth reading are haters in some respect, from Christopher Hitchens all the way back to Yahweh himself. You know who’s not a hater? Deepak Chopra. Make your own decision.

[Alok Mishra · Rating 4 out of 5]

A part of Naipaul's writing can be admired at any moment, without any hesitation! You will just love it. However, there is a part of his narrative that drags you, dumps you and drags you again - and that part, to be honest, is rough, versatile and something that compels you to ponder. It is available in his writing - fiction, non-fiction - each day!

[Clivemichael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Densely detailed observations from a perceptive perspective. Well written, engaging and stark.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a bad collection of essays. To be sure, this book is not as good as it thinks it is, but this a common problem. Naipaul as a writer is someone who was very certainly overpraised, seeing as he approached life with a solemn air, had a fondness for making everything political and in having a certain strident sort of leftist political perspective that plays well among cosmopolitans who think themselves above tradition and above arrogance. There are few so unrighteous and arrogant as those who think themselves to be above arrogance, who look down on Christianity and religion in general but think themselves to be united across borders and across boundaries in love. The fact that the author is a hypocrite with little taste for irony, largely because he takes himself too seriously, does detract considerably from the message he is trying to get across. Yet the author's fondness for victim tales and his extreme self-seriousness and lack of a sense of the absurdity of life or of his own flaws that prevent him from making the world a better place than he found it, while they do detract some from the enjoyment of this work, provide a separate level of enjoyment for those who are fond of absurdity and irony, and that is enjoyment enough to make aspects of this work worth reading, even if the book as a whole is a bit of a slog.

This book is a hefty one at more than 500 pages, and a book with this much physical weight and mass deserves to show some sort of progress in the mind of the person who traveled and wrote without seeming to see what was going on, making the praise that the author has received from the intellectual world somewhat strange, as if they could not see his blind spots because they mirrored their own. The first part of this book contains some essays on India, and these predictably discuss matters of politics and the author's own background, most notably in "The Election In Ajmer," where the author is one of several people whose political insights are limited. The second part of the section looks at Africa and the African diaspora, where he comments on the black power killings in Trinidad, Mobuto as King of the Congo, examines the crocodiles of the artificial capital Yamoussoukro along with some trenchant observations about the fate of black West Indians who return to Africa as wives of native African men, as well as the economic troubles of Mauritus. The third and final section of the book then explores America, including the author's experiences with Norman Mailer, some criticism of Europeans and the nature of power, the author's lack of respect for the Republicans in the 1984 convention, a clueless look at the crisis of Grenada, and the author's thinking of the revolution in Guyana, after which there is a postscript on the author's universalist thinking, and an index.

One of the more tragic aspects of this book is the way that the author does not appear to have learned very much about the problems of leftist politics over the course of decades as a writer. Over and over again the author goes to a country and explores its politics and writes as if things will be different this time, as if one could follow the idiocy of socialism and end up with anything other than a disaster for one's country. While it is no doubt true that the author's status as a fellow traveler of sorts made it easy for him to go to places like Granada and the Ivory Coast and Congo, he appears not to have come to any insights about why it is that socialism fails and why it is that intellectuals like himself make such terrible rulers. It is one thing for a writer like this to fail to appreciate the wit of a Jane Austen. That is, while lamentable, certainly easy enough to understand. What is unpardonable in a book like this composed of political essays is that the author cannot apparently recognize the insights of a George Orwell, whose directness and honesty would have given the author insights that he could not learn from decades at watching the failure of nations and blaming neocolonialism for the failure of the political systems he held so dear.

[AB Freeman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m slowly working my way through Naipaul’s oeuvre, and having read A House for Mr. Biswas, The Mimic Men, and In a Free State, I felt it time to turn to his non-fiction, and this series of essays published in his later years seemed appropriate. Full disclosure: I found the book on sale at the local second-hand bookshop. 

The book is divided into three sections: India, Africa and its diaspora, and the Americas. I was grateful to discover in-depth examinations of political and historical circumstances of countries of which I’ve read little. For example, his choice to feature Grenada, Guyana, and Anguilla represents my first engagement with any analysis of their internal history and role in the broader world.

In fact, each essay was like this, in that he chose to deeply examine internal circumstances of a wide variety of countries and his impressions of them. Essays I particularly enjoyed include:

“In the Middle of the Journey” – in which his analysis of the India of the 1960s features a scathing critique of the colonised identifying so wholly with their coloniser. To-wit: “How strange to find, in free India, this attitude of the conqueror, this attitude of plundering…[which] is that of the immigrant colonial society.” Such a statement presents as if the lessons of India having been colonised were never adequately learned. It’s a topic I’m fascinated by.

“Michael X and the Black Power Killings in Trinidad: Peace and Power” – a fabulously detailed and sensational story of 1970s Trinidad. His attention to Michael X as a character empowered by his experiences in the UK serves as a model of the opposite to Sir V.S. Naipaul, who despite what criticisms may arise of his personal life and intimations toward women and members of other races, did not enact the same force of violence as Michael X and his followers did. This is not an apology for Naipaul’s personal failings; however, I found this essay to be the supreme highlight of the entire collection.

4 stars. After finishing this text, I took an hour and watched the BBC Documentary “The Trouble with Naipaul” (link below), which examined arguments for and against reading this divisive author, but that did not diminish his legacy as a superior craftsman of the written word. I firmly believe we can divorce the power of the writer from the failings of the man. In Naipaul’s case, this must be done to discover what we might learn from his rich engagement in criticising the colonising and colonised worlds. A rewarding read overall.

The Trouble with Naipaul
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000...

[Sathiya Moorthi · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best things that happened to me in recent time, is stumbling upon this book.
Naipaul is complex, both as a writer and a traveller. He doesn't show you black and white but only shades of grey. The author's view, though controversial at times, is brutally honest and doesn't treat history with that "romantic" element. Be it the expedition of Colombus or the mindset of free India, he doesn't try to make it sound good when it actually wasn't. He doesn't give you conclusions, only perceptions. After finishing an essay, you got a lot to ponder about. The essays are raw, gritty and constructed with exquisite language and understanding unique to the author. On the whole, thanks to his unparalleled language skills, not only it imparts the insight of the author but also an undying enthusiasm to travel and experience the world outside.

[Wiss Ana Vivancos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muy interesantes los ensayos de este escritor. Descubres por qué no ha triunfado nada en ciertos países y que hay lugares que fueron, son y serán muy difíciles de arreglar porque sus creencias antiguas y sus fanatismos los llevan a terminar en dictaduras opresoras. La historia y las políticas no cambian. Entiendo que Naipaul se llevara el Nobel de Literatura en 2001. Chapeau por su valentía al narrar la realidad de lugares tan problemáticos y gobernados por gentes muy peligrosas.

[Camila Fuentes M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

el autor, se dedicó 40 años a escribir estos ensayos.
no es una lectura fácil, es bastante densa pero no por eso menos fascinante.

con mucha postura política, lenguaje irónico a ratos y un ojo muy crítico nos relata la historia de civilizaciones alrededor del mundo, historia antigua, o quizas no tanto. Nos hace reflexionar sobre como a pesar de los avances significativos, algunas cosas cambian muy poco.

destaco los ensayos sobre India, una lectura obligatoria.

[Mark Singer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good collection of essays from 1962 up to the early 90s. Naipaul shows why he was both a great prose stylist and an acute observer of politics and human foibles.

[Gabo Azurdia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Naipul es un navegante de la historia y la cultura del mundo.

[Vijay KUMAR · Rating 3 out of 5]

.

[Aman Shah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Naipaul is lowkey racist but writes great

[Afrodeity · Rating 2 out of 5]

Naipaul is ultimately more cynical and derisive than he is revealing, and this book is a prime example. At best, there some kind of enchantment you experience when he lines the words up just right, but more often you wonder why he bothers at all since everything is so screwed.

Perhaps my discontent with this work has to do with my understanding of (or hope for) the human condition. This book allows little of that really, except for the peculiar speech included at the end where he weighs in on the "universal civilization" as it deems it, while never truly defining it. My interpretation is that this is 'Western civilisation' in its most tolerant of manifestations. What a wholly unsatisfying addendum, which raise more questions about the author's loyalty to American and British publishers, that it answers or postulates about just about anything. I suppose it doesn't help that in person he happens to be supremely disagreeable and arrogant and apparently believes that his work, as with all literature is "not for children" as he informed an initially eager audience of high-school students during a recent visit to his homeland, Trinidad and Tobago.

[Deborah Schuff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Decades ago I was a member of the Book-of-the-Month Club. One month they featured V.S. Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas, and I bought it out of my usual insatiable curiosity for all things new and unknown. I no longer own the book nor remember many details about it, aside from my enjoyment of it, but I have never forgotten the title or the author. Mr. Naipul went on to write many other books, but I remember hearing about his "travel" books most.

At the last AAUW used book sale, I came across and bought his The Mystic Masseur. I thoroughly enjoyed this slim novel and afterwards remembered I had picked up from somewhere this book of essays. It was first published in 2002; the essays included were published from 1962-1991 and are written about places and countries with which I am, shamefully, not familiar. Not exactly current events. And yet. I was enthralled by this book and Mr. Naipul's writing. This is not a dull book of old politics and events. It reads like a novel thanks to Mr. Naipul's skill, interest, understanding, and truth-telling. I highly recommend this book to everyone.

[Mattias Appelgren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Naipaul travels and writes giving a whole lot of insight from all the corners of the world. Wherever he goes he seems to have a way of finding out the just how the past influences the current and what have gone wrong and what will go wrong. Whether in India, Trinidad, Ivory Coast or Argentina. Not always an easy read of course, I found myself struggling on some of the longer essays. Some of these essays are written a long time ago. Especially the ones in India that regards certain events and politicians that are now almost 50 years back in time and no matter how well Naipaul writes I just have a hard time knowing just what do with them. I found the book most fascinating when you could tell how he used some of the experiences from his travels later on in his fictional books. Like how Michael X and Gale Benson from the commune in Trinidad appears in Guerillas or how he describes using a certain feeling he got from the dirty wars in Argentina but putting it in a African setting for A Bend In The River.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

V.S. Naipaul is a wonderful author. No one disguises his biases better. He simply records observations. Only at a few key points will he more than hint at a his personal response. Still his sensibility comes - and it is strange to observe that in spite of the subtlety one knows that he's not got a gentle edge.

This is a collection of essays I read and owned several years ago. I wanted to re-read his bits on Argentina and the Ivory Coast, but found him again so readable I went ahead and re-read everything but the essays on India.

text #1: how to observe.

[Saurav Chakravorty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I confess the only Naipaul work I had read was A house for Mr. Biswas.

I started this book (a collection of essays) by reading the essays on Africa. However, his essays on on India had me hooked. Lovely prose and very interesting observation on India during the late 60s and 70s. The observations are so symptomatic that are as true today as they were when Indira Gandhi split the congress.

He does paint India in a poor light. Specifically his commentary on Indian civilization.

Still, this collection are a must read.

[Luis Morales · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book to give you a perpective on various parts of the world, in the recent past. I feel like I understand a bit about more about the world and neocolonialism after reading these essays. Also a great book to work on your vocab.... I had to look up so many words!!!!

[Marianovsky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting collection of essays by Naipaul. I liked the ones about India (many parallels with other regions such add Latin America), the one about Argentina, and some of the African themed ones. The one about the republican convention in Dallas could have been written yesterday.

[Abhi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Naipaul travels the world and gives us a slice of history along the way in his own
inimitable style

[Smiley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read 7 essays.

[Kobe Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is there anything cooler than a short essay on Yamoussoukro by a bitter old man? No there isnt

[Khateeb Sabil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vintage Naipaul....The most brilliant writer of our times.