Finding the Center

by V.S. Naipaul

Very RARE edition!! UNIQUE offer!! Don’t wait to be OWNER of this special piece of HISTORY!!!

Genres: Travel, Memoir, Nonfiction, Essays, Literature, Nobel Prize, Africa

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

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

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two short narratives - which to me looked like assorted pieces that could not find another home - comprise this book. That said, the narratives have interesting insights into life lived between the Caribbean, Europe and Africa.
The first part - Prologue to an Autobiography -reconciles Naipaul with his father. The elder Naipaul was also a writer, a journalist in Trinidad, who bound by circumstances, geography, a tiny and fragmented population,superstition, discrimination and all the other restrictions of a small colonial island, never realized his potential. His son achieved literary greatness (including the Nobel prize for literature) by leaving the nest and forever travelling the world thereafter to record his experiences and try to re-discover home. Some of Naipaul's interesting observations include:
1) The colonial writer lives in historical darkness
2) The colonial writer is spared knowledge, unlike his English and French counterparts. He writes to learn. Every prior book appears to heve been written with less knowledge

The second narrative - The Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro - takes place in the former French colony of Ivory Coast in Africa. The ruler builds roads to connect villages to the capital and transforms his own village, Yamoussoukro, into a palatial white elephant, replete with luxury hotel, royal palace, golf course and...a pond for live crocodiles who have to be fed several times a day, No one knows why the crocodiles are there, but several have theories - only the ruler knows! And therein lies Naipaul's dissection of the differences between the African and his colonial rulers:
1)The cult of the personality works better than democracy in Africa
2)Marriages are between families, not couples, and infidelity is acceptable
3) When a man dies, his wives and servants must be buried with him
4) The good life is on earth. The spirit world is a tough one with no money, no heat, no food and no clothes
5)The European only inhabits the world of the day (work, earning a living, the pre-occupation with material things ) whereas the African inhabits both the world of the day and the world of the night (the world of spirits and magic)
6) When an old man dies, a library burns down

Naipaul is bold in recording and telling the stories of the people he meets on his travels, even exposing their prejudices and fears. I wonder whether his hosts would have been leery in inviting him for fear of their privacy. In this African sojourn, he associates with locals, expats and a number of West Indians who have come back to mother Africa via their common colonial parent country, England or France.

I found the second narrative a good primer on the Ivory Coast, an area of the world I know so little about.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Literary autobiography, the first half of this, in fact titled "Prologue to an Autobiography." A fine account of the discovery of his subject while a cub reporter, and his typing out the stories of Miguel Street in the old foreign office of the BBC. This, the year after his graduation from Oxford on the scholarship he had won in Trinidad. The un-named protagonist of Miguel Street wins the scholarship at Oxford. But on the way, he meets and describes a fascinating array of characters, the central one being the ironist and "older brother" type, Hat. There is the teacher of Latin, Titus Hoyt. There is the poet who has written nothing. There is the crazed Man-Man who has trained his dog to defecate. There is the mechanic who destroys new cars and trucks, his chapter titled, "The Mechanical Genius." There is the fireworks afficianado whose obsession blows up his house, in the "Pyrotechnicist," which begins with the central point of the book: "A stranger could drive down Miguel Street and just say 'Slum!' because he could see no more. But we, who lived there, saw our street as a world, where everone was quite different from everybody else." (63, Vintage 1984)

At one point, VSN says, "To write was to learn. Beginning a books, I always felt in possession of all the facts about myself; at the end, I was always surprised" (20). As a colonial in England, he says he fell into a common mistake, "the error of thinking of writing as a kind of display." For an example of how VSN brings his ear and cultural subtlety to a simple calling of a name:
"There was much in that call of 'Bogart!' that had to be examined. It was spoken by a Port of Spain Indian, a descendent of nineteenth-century indentured immigrants from South India; and Bogart was linked in a special Hundu way with my mother's family. So there was a migration from India to be considered, a migration within the British Empire. There was my Hindu family, with its fading memories of India; there was India itself. And there was Trinidad, with its past of slavery, its mixed population, its racial antagonisms, and its changing political life; once a part of Venezuela and the Spanish Empire, now English-speaking, with the American base and an open-air cinema at the end of Bogart's street" (19).
This is almost Sternean in its rambling, colloquial complexity.

I often assigned some of this for college freshman writing papers on Miguel Street. It's a rare glimpse by an author of a discovery phase in his authorial life. It improved my students' papers.

[Brian Griffith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe the book has no point, but for Naipaul the point always seemed to be curiosity itself. He just journeys into various corners of the world and finds what he may, giving an assortment of unforgettable perceptions.

[Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is fascinating, especially having just read Graham Greene's Journey without Maps. Naipaul, having traced his writing passion back to his own father's work and subsequent depression, now journeys to the Ivory Coast in search of magic and power. In so doing he is disturbed by the notion that people are not who they appear to be, that a man can be both a slave and a king, that life is sand, that what someone is in the day may be different at night. That magic, possession, spirits, and symbolism can be wrapped together in a confusing tangle, and that even then, people's fatalism, their belief, their acceptance, can swallow this and not be concerned by it. It is what it is, nothing can change it. We are given insights into how this apparent tangle worked out in the Slave Revolts of the 18th and 19th centuries, where folk were magically poisoned, could travel using doubles, could be a slave in the field by day but a slave king at night. Noone gets off well here: Europeans, who might be seen to have power, are viewed as 'enfants terrible', and looked down on somewhat. Some Africans are shown to be wild fools, just chasing after money, short term gains overriding what might be long term advantage, other Africans are seen worse, others gullible, others still wise as serpents. The visit to the presidential palace at Yamoussoukro, to the sacred village with its palaver tree, its crocodiles, its golf course hacked out of the bush, its university with 600, or perhaps 60 (noone is quite sure…), its wide avenues is a key event and is used to explain the holding on of power in some presidential incumbencies.
Well worth reading, challenging stuff, and something to ponder over.

[Mr.david · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro" alone makes this volume worth reading. I've gone back and read this account of Houphouët-Boigny's Cote D'Ivoire several times.

[Stuart Aken · Rating 2 out of 5]

A strange read in so many ways. The two essays I found rather dry in style, a little impersonal. And the style of the writing was more plain and less poetic than I expected. But the content was interesting and I learned a good deal about two communities I was not familiar with. In particular, I came away feeling I had a better understanding of the African way of being. Certainly, this book wouldn't encourage me to pick up another by the same author; it's lack of any emotional content left me feeling I had been dealing with an academic observer rather than someone with feelings about his experiences. Such distance does not make me inclined to start a novel by the author.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

Interesting, with a few poetic passages, but generally reductive and repetitive (esp. The Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro)

"It was a story that might have come from a Caribbean slave plantation two hundred years before. White men, creatures of the day, were phantoms, with absurd, illusory goals. Power, earth magic, was African and enduring; triumph was African. But only Africans knew." p.165

ugh.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book contained two narratives concerning starting a career as an author and traveling in French Africa. Both were autobiographical, providing pleasant and insightful narratives. V.S. is a Hindu and the first story related how his father found work as an imigran to Guyana. In the second story V. S. made me excited for black Africa. It was enjoyable reading because it was well written and concerned travel.

[Carmen Thong · Rating 3 out of 5]

An oddly centre-less book considering the title. Split into two very distinct parts, and does not even live up to its claim to be coherently united pieces through their themes of writing. Not amazingly written in terms of language, and comes across as rather self-indulgent for long time Naipaul readers who are so extremely tired of his sequences/episodic/collective "novels".

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book in two parts. The first is about the author's early life in Trinidad and how he used that material to write his first novels. It was interesting and enjoyable but I have read and knew about much of this before.

The second part, an account of a visit to Ivory Coast was a masterpiece on every level. Timeless, penetrating and powerful

[Don Annand · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always enjoy Naipaul. This book provides some great insights into why he became a writer and where the story of ‘A House fro Mr Biswas’ came from. The second part provides a fascinating look at a West African culture and beliefs

[Tom Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

both stories are precursors to several of Naipaul's major books. Both are worth reading. Can't really go wrong with a V.S. Naipaul book.

At the moment, I'm struggling with reading - eyes hurt - the mind wanders - not good

[drd · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first essay is quite good, a beautiful investigation of both his own creative genesis and a jaunty investigation into his father's sociocultural downfall.

The second essay is a disaster that shows Naipaul at his weakest, though to his credit he at least lays his weakness bare. He arrives in the Ivory Coast with one goal: to spin a lugubrious just-so story about the "African" soul, something to do with the world of the day and the world of the night. In a way, his narrative is boldly self-revealing as he shows all the painstaking steps he takes to nudge his sometimes-unwilling subjects into telling him some version of his day-night fairytale.

Judging this book from the perspective of woke litcrit seems utterly besides the point, as he immediately admits "The kind of understanding I am looking for comes best through people I get to like", which in this case turns out to be "expatriates". Roughly three locals get respected speaking parts while the rest are relegated to colorful (and sometimes menacing) oddities. This is below even the caricature of a 19th-century anthropologist (though again, Naipaul will escape responsibility by saying he is not an anthropologist or journalist, merely a highly speculative autobiographer with no theory of mind for any African that is not highly educated in his view).

A single example will illustrate the problem. Naipaul is sitting in a restaurant and doesn't like the waiters' vibe. That's it, and the entire following analysis emerges from that lone data point:

Someone was missing, perhaps the French or European manager. And with him more than good service had gone: the whole restaurant-idea had vanished. An elaborate organization had collapsed.

Again, V.S. doesn't even bother to check whether the French or European manager is "missing". The suspicion is enough for him. A solipsistic perspective which suffocates any attempt by the reader to get a sense of Ivory Coast ca. 1980.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favourite thing about this book is it's structure. Two distinct halves tell seemingly unrelated stories, but they are bookended (or more accurately, bookhalved) to offer different perspectives on Naipaul's emergence as a writer.

The first half deals with Naipaul's ancestry and fated place as a man of letters from otherwise unpromising beginnings. This forms what Naipaul refers to as 'material' from which we can start to understand (as a 'Preface to an Autobiography') how we came to write on Caribbean and intercultural life in different settings. The second half takes us to the Ivory Coast in the 1970s, and Naipaul's interviews and observations in the East African nation. We see how Naipaul reaches beneath the seeming capitalist modernity of its straight roads and forest-based export industries to a substrata of magic and animist beliefs.

This is a short book that managed to convey a good sense of Naipaul's influences and method.

[SheMac · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh ... Just not to my taste. The book is actually two brief pieces. I wish the first had been more autobiographical. Instead Naipaul writes more about his father, but not in any straightforward way, and a neighbor. The second piece is a travelogue set in Cote d'Ivoire. I guess it was somewhat interesting but, as the piece was written forty years ago, there's little to be learned of modern Africa. In fact, almost all the countries mentioned have undergone name changes in the intervening years. I think if I had been more familiar with the author's books, I might have enjoyed this more

[Sochi Azuh · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little underwhelming. There were bright sections of this autobiography. Reflections on his father’s mental illness with origins in sacrifices made or unfortunate circumstances in his childhood, for example. This might have been a gem for potentially compelling narrative(s). However, it was not pursued and so ended abruptly or fizzled into another narrative with similar deficiencies.

[LuigiDeluxe · Rating 2 out of 5]

It sort of drones on infinitely. I had a hard time finding a meaningful message in the story and didn't finish it.

[Michalina · Rating 4 out of 5]

ciekawe dla mnie z przyczyn akademickich, ale w zasadzie jest to książka o tożsamości, kulturze i podróży. jest okej.

[Suraj Alva · Rating 5 out of 5]

i thought after reading the first section that Naipaul must be an ENFP, or the next Shakespeare.

[Tazar Oo]

i'm new to Naipaul!

[Auntie Pam · Rating 1 out of 5]

davvero deludente per essere un premio nobel. Si salva forse la prima parte, la seconda ho fatto davvero fatica a leggerla!

[Ed Hayden · Rating 1 out of 5]

two boring personal narratives

[Salvatore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Damn, Naipaul and non-fiction are a great combination. Notably the essay on the Ivory Coast during its recent golden age. I look forward to the day I come back to that piece.