Customer Reviews

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

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The much anticipated and eagerly awaited biography of the Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul by Mr. Patrick French is now in print. It is fascinating, gripping, deeply shocking, humorous, and hugely entertaining as well.

Readers who shook their heads in disbelief when they read Mr. Paul Theroux's "Sir Vidia's Shadow" can now read this book and shake their head some more in disbelief at some of the cruel and unpleasant incidents described here in raw and unvarnished detail. Given an opportunity to comment and suggest changes to the manuscript, Mr. Naipaul, to his credit, did not suggest any changes and allowed the book to be published, wrinkles, blisters, cuts, gashes, bruises and scabs intact, which is precisely the reason that this book is so gripping and shocking to read.

The details of Mr. Naipaul's life, often, are not very pleasant to read. In fact, I cringed when I read some of the passages here. Even though I had read about several of the unflattering incidents in various articles, books, and also on the Internet, I was quite shocked, nevertheless, when I read those passages here. This biography confirms that, yes, Mr. Naipaul is a great and fascinating writer, but he is also a flawed man.

Mr. Naipaul comes across as a funny, witty man, a racist, misogynist, a married man with a young mistress whom he beat up many times, a man who patronized prostitutes, and also a writer who experienced racism from other writers such as Evelyn Waugh. If you have read any of his novels and non-fiction, while reading this biography you will vividly recall some of the brilliant passages from those books, especially "A Bend in the River", "The Enigma of Arrival", and "A House for Mr. Biswas". I did.

To write a biography of this great but much maligned and misunderstood writer and novelist, and a living legend, it takes a competent writer with good command over the English language, to complement and reflect Naipaul's elegant and mellifluous prose. After all, Naipaul is universally acknowledged as the world's preeminent stylist of English prose. Mr. Patrick French doesn't disappoint the readers. Written in crisp, clear, and lucid prose, the book fascinates and captivates the reader from the very beginning:
"He likes the look of the sixteen-year-old girl behind the counter, Droapatie Capildeo. Not realizing she is a daughter of the house, he passes her a note. It is discovered, the formidable Soogee intervenes, and on 28 March 1929 Seepersad and Droapatie are married at the warden's office in Chaguanas. They have a daughter, Kamla, the following year, and on 17 August 1932 their son Vidyadhar is born. He is named for a Chandela king, the dynasty which built the magnificent Hindu temples at Khajuraho in northern India. His name means "giver of wisdom."

Actually, there is a minor error here. The name Vidyadhar doesn't mean "giver of wisdom"; it means "one who possesses knowledge", the root word Vid, from Sanskrit, means "to know" and dhar means "to hold" or to possess. It's indeed a very apt name for a great writer like V. S. Naipaul.

"The World Is What It Is" is like a wonderful and potent medicine; it is brightly colored and slightly bitter, and it might even get stuck in your throat, but once swallowed it will open your eyes and compel you to see Mr. Naipaul in new light, and also make you think and ponder and shake your head long after you have finished the book. This book is a marvel.

I take several objections to the previous reviwer's criticism: it shows a serious lack of understanding and feeling.

Patrick French's biography is essential in understanding Naipaul, the man, behind Naipaul, the writer, who is so famously divisive and often caricatured. Unlike Paul Theroux's "Sir Vidia's Shadow" which is a bit fictionalized and sometimes factually wrong, French draws extensively on interviews and correspondences to narrate a realistic account of Naipaul's life until the late 1990s (French doesn't chronicle the Nobel Naipaul won in 2001).

Naipaul's life is full of violent relationships with people, places, and history. French doesn't let this material degenerate into sensationalism or melodrama. Remarkably, French also doesn't budge in to Naipaul's forceful personality and holds him responsible for his behavior towards
several people. It is quite fascinating to read French's account of some event which is at odds with Naipaul's own skewed recollection of the same event.

Unlike the other reviewer noted, French does connect the dots between Naipaul's life and work. For ex, Naipaul's affair with Margaret enabled him to write the sex scenes in "A Bend in the River," not to mention the rejuvenating effect it had on Naipaul's life and work.

Overall, this book is far from a dissappointment. I enjoyed reading it as much as Naipaul's books. I can think of no better compliment.

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.

When V.S. Naipaul was given a copy of the completed manuscript of this biography he returned it to the author without comments or corrections; that surprising fact appears on page xi of this book; and by the time one reaches page 490, two hypothesis about why he would not change, or at least comment upon, a book that draws him in such repulsive terms remain standing: One, he never looked at the manuscript for fear of a disagreeable and emotional entanglement with it (a habit of avoidance he had carefully honed throughout his life) or, Two, his corrections would have been so massive that they would have forced an entire rewriting or rethinking of his biography, something that neither he, nor the author, would have found tolerable since truth would per force suffer deeply in any effort to redraw Naipaul as an acceptable human being. So he is here, warts and all, for all to see and sneer at.

Patrick French was given unlimited access to the entire and heretofore highly restricted Naipaul archives at the University of Tulsa; this included "his notebooks, correspondence, hand written manuscripts, financial papers, recordings, photographs, press cuttings and journals,(and those of his first wife Pat, which he had never read.)" The materials were massive and thus the book is hefty; unfortunately it is also dull. Quite possibly the sheer quantity of material led to the huge stretches of uninteresting prose which dominate the narrative.

The author remains aloof and non-judgmental about the tortures that Mr. Naipaul's narcissism inflicts on his many victims, thus depriving the story of the emotional vibrancy and color it deserves. Although the author does not condone Mr. Naipaul for his repulsive and cruel treatment of others, his detachment is at times irritating for its very coolness in the face of the dreadful situations that are being described. One thing is to shrugg off the sadomasochistic games he played with a consenting (more or less consenting) mistress, and quite another is to be neutral about the years of torture Naipaul inflicted upon a passive but adoring wife whom he eventually killed with his nonsense.

That such a profound character disorder would coexist with the capacity to write exquisite English prose remains a mystery, even though it should not: character and temperament are, perhaps astonishingly, quite independent from artistic genius, and examples abound: Picasso, Wagner and Beethoven quickly come to mind. This biography only indirectly and superficially presents the irony of a person combining a supreme mastery of writing with a miniscule sense of human compassion. Great writers are not necessarily great people.

One cannot help but draw a comparison with that other book devoted to Naipaul by his one time friend Paul Theroux: "Sir Vidia's Shadow" is flawed because if its many inaccuracies, and its motives (revenge, certainly); but never a dull momemt there. Theroux's comment upon reading the current biography was a rueful "It seems I did not know half of all the horrors." Indeed.

I would recommend this book only to the serious Naipaul scholar, for whom it is frankly an absolute necessity in terms of the historical facts it displays. I would not recommend it to the average reader or to the Naipaul fan looking for an understanding of the man.

I am a huge fan of Naipaul, I want to say that first. The book was released in India 6 months before it was in North America. This is a big book. Once in a while, I have to admit, I skipped some pages. But, it helped me understand Naipaul in a way I couldn't have unless I read it. French's expertise in pulling together all the pieces of Naipaul's life is enormous and admirable. Te book is bold, frank, highly personal, political and has so much history over several continents. It is a personal and political story of migration, the people left behind and the people Naipual goes to. His complex relationships with his wife Pat, his mistress and his second wife are very well presented. French manages to explore the depth, beauty and pain of all of these.

I empathise with Naipaul. Having lived outside India for 20 years, aware of the migration to the Caribbean and UK, I can sense what Naipaul went through. My life and experience are very different to his, but there is a raw quality to his writing, about any part of the world, that rings true to me. This 'rawness' made him unpopular. He wrote about what he saw and people were upset. It was too close to the bone.

I am amazed that Naipaul handed over his archives to French to write the book. This is an act of ocurage. And, French didn't let him or us down. Read the book!

Luckily for writers, you don't have to be a "good" person to write good literature. Patrick French`s authorized biography of Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul, whose work I have always admired, shows the ambitious author as self-centered, duplicitous, lustful, arrogant, and frequently rude. That is, human.

The World Is What It Is, for which Naipaul consented to extended interviews and allowed French exclusive access to his private papers, transcends polite literary biography. Naipaul, the trenchant reporter and unblinking novelist, sought not to control information about himself, seemingly, but to strive for a full, penetrating portrait for posterity. Thus he does not hide his taste for prostitutes, his callousness towards his dying wife, his selfishness, and countless other aspects and incidents of his life and history that most of us would consider shameful and seek to hide.

But along the way we are treated to a fascinating look at the immigration of his Indian family to Trinidad, their conflicts and struggles, as well as his taut relationship with his father. French, with a deep grasp of Naipaul's oeuvre, ties many of these factual incidents to characters and events in Naipaul's early, Trinidad-based fiction, Miguel Street and A House for Mr. Biswas, both of which are fine books that I enjoyed immensely.

French goes on to investigate Naipaul's Oxford education, the racism he suffered, his work at the BBC, his travels to Africa, India, and other points of the globe, and how they informed his work. Thorough, compelling, and thoughtful, this book is a revelation for those who admire Naipaul or who denigrate him for his alleged racism, insensitivity, sexism, etc. Despite the intimate view of Naipaul's shortcomings, he still shines here as a great artist, capable of great charm, wit and humanity, though without the romanticism and wishful thinking that colors the world views of so many writers.

The book also serves as a mirror of our postcolonial world-the subject matter of so much of Naipaul's writing: on the Caribbean, Africa, India, the United States and elsewhere. It depicts the writer's own search for identity in the ethnic and cultural stew into which he, like many of us, was born.

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.

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'.

While the contradiction between professional success and personal failure is hardly unusual in the world of art and literature, Naipaul's biography provides an extreme example of this incongruity - incomparable gifts as a writer and thinker and abject failure as a human being. As a fellow Caribbean national (though he strenuously rejects the significance of his origins to his work), I have long been fascinated by Naipaul's work and have read all of his books, with the exception of the glacial and impenetrable "Enigma of Arrival" still bookmarked on page 210. He has traveled a long way from the early Mystic Masseur and Miguel Street and his vision and preoccupations have expanded accordingly to encompass observations not only on post-colonial peoples but also on the human condition more broadly speaking. Along the way, he seems to have set scant store by friendship or indeed relationships. This lack of charity towards others he extended even to his longsuffering wife Pat who, when he was still in his early twenties and seeking (unsuccessfully) his way in the world, had saved him from the grim spiral of depression and nervous breakdown. French, who had full access to her diaries and to the author's private papers, provides fascinating insights into Naipaul's personal world, including the context that shaped his many novels and travel writings. Given this unprecedented access, "The World is What It Is" is likely to remain the definitive biography of the 76-year old Naipaul. I vividly remember the author's response a few years ago to the noted broadcast journalist Charlie Rose. When asked in a television interview if with the advancing years he had intimations of his own mortality, he replied that for him death would be a release. A visibly startled Charlie Rose had asked him to repeat what he had just said. This, despite all the fame and fortune he has earned and all the accolades won, including his knighthood and the Nobel Prize. Could it be that his lasting legacy will be not his superbly crafted novels and penetrating insights but his own life story as a cautionary tale?

This book is a brilliant tribute to one of the greatest writers in English of the past few decades. The narrative pace is good and it is gripping to read. When I finished the book, I thought it is a 'four star' book; but then on reflection, I felt that it was lacking in a few qualities and hence I ended up with one star less.
Vidia Naipaul emerges as a very complicated persona - narcissistic, intellectually brilliant, insensitive, original thinker, selfish and honest. In his own words, Naipaul writes to his wife, "..I am the spectator, free of the emancipatory fire, who has no wish to reform the human race..".

On the positive side, his fearless thinking and extraordinary abilities to write are well documented. His insight into the societies of the West Indies, Argentina, Africa and some of the Islamic nations in Asia is legendary and is shown through his non-fictional work. Contrary to the image created in the media, he was close to his father, brother, sisters and nephews and nieces. Like Indians from India, he felt the great responsibility and duty to support his sisters and mother through their lives, even though he didn't do it as well as his sisters did. But he was really close only to his sister Kamla. One can see his human side in his grief on the death of his sister Sati and brother Shiva.

On the other side, he was exploitative and cruel towards the women in his life - both his wife Pat and Margaret, his lover of two decades. He was depressed often and even attempted a suicide in his twenties. Prostitutes fascinated him and he continued visiting them even after his marriage. During his marriage, he carried on a twenty-year affair with Margaret with the full knowledge of his wife. He was highly class-conscious and had racial dislike for Blacks and Muslims. He was often rude, intolerant and parsimonious to the point of exploiting others. To cap it all, he starts an affair with a Pakistani woman even as his wife Pat was at death's door due to cancer.

Patrick French has produced an excellent book and he has done as good a job as one can in writing a biography of a living legend like Naipaul. But he has not thrown enough light on why a competent, ambitious and accomplished woman like Pat would be so servile towards Naipaul all her life. It looks as though Naipaul simply destroyed the self-esteem of any woman he lived with by his sheer brilliance. His lover Margaret also was abused physically and mentally but she still was crazy about him. She also comes off as someone whose self-esteem was in shambles during their relationship. French has not given much insight into the psychology behind these events. He hasn't blamed Naipaul's racism on his upper-caste Hindu origins like most people have done. But neither has he given much psychological insight into Naipaul's intense dislike for calling himself a 'West Indian'. Naipaul considered England his home and later on in life, made peace with India, the land of his ancestors. Also, it is not clear as to how Naipaul has been able to charm Margaret for twenty years through an intensely sexual relationship, even though Naipaul himself admits that he was poorly equipped at seduction and sex. It seems that it was his intellectual brilliance that made Pat, Margaret and even Nadira, his current wife, crazy about being with him.

The book contains many of Naipaul's remarks in passing. On the position of Indians in Trinidad, the author quotes Naipaul's father as : .."The difficulty lies in the fact that they are are too much of a majority to assimilate, too much of a minority to dominate..". This applies possibly today to many islamic minority groups in Europe.

On Trinidad, Naipaul makes this punishing comments: "..like monkeys pleading for evolution, each claiming to be whiter than the other, Indians and Negroes appeal to the unacknowledged white audience to see how much they despise each other.."
On Islam, he says, "..it is innately imperialist, requiring its followers to diminish their native culture.....each country has a quarrel with the modern world;and my own feeling is that Islam, in these countries, is as much looking away as looking back. Is it despair, a recognition of intellectual and scientific incapacity? Is it nihilism? Doesn't this kind of anti-intellectual movement...commit these countries to a continuing dependence on the technology and science of the West? Independence then, leads back to dependence.."

This book is a must read for all V.S. Naipaul fans. Those who haven't read Naipaul at all, perhaps should not read this to get an idea of the man.