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Literary Review
In Conversation
Naipaul, as he is
MITA KAPUR
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The World is What it is portrays Naipaul in all his complexity but never judges him, says his biographer Patrick French. Excerpts from an interview…
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‘I’m not a cynical person, but I also believe that idealism can be a form of prejudice. The world is what it is.’
Nerves of iron: Patrick French.
The World Is What It Is is a phenomenal biography which deals with a complex personality’s life with penetrating details and selfless dedication. That’s Patrick French for you. He keeps analysis of any sort minimum, his opinions subtle, because he wanted the book “to be completely readable as a story, while sticking to the facts.” Patrick’s Introduction to the book sets the tone for the biography when he says Naipaul’s “cumulative accomplishment outstripped his contemporaries, and altered the way in which writers and readers perceived the world.....his achievement was an act of will, in which every situation and relationship would be subordinated to his ambition.” It connects us to the first line of Naipaul’s A Bend in The River: “The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.”
It must have taken “nerves of iron” to deal with its panoramic range — “nerves of iron is probably accurate. I had a clear intellectual or philosophical idea about how a biography should be written before I started. My ambition was to hold back nothing, to show the man to the reader in all his complexity, but not to judge him. The best biographies reveal the subject in full, rather than praising or condemning,” Patrick says. “I wanted to let the readers make the decisions about how they viewed Vidia Naipaul as a person. Because he is such a subtle and contradictory figure and skilled at self presentation, I had to work hard to make sure that I remained in full control of the research material,” he adds.
Naipaul has always evoked paradoxical views as a literary figure, the experience of writing his biography was, according to Patrick, “singular, strange, fascinating. A privilege.” Patrick agrees with Naipaul when he quotes Proust — “A book is the product of a different self from the self we manifest in our social life, in our vices,” adding that “A good biography can show you how the creative process worked or the circumstances that generated a book like A Bend In The River, but the actual creation will remain mysterious. There are few creative writers, and their books are the result of a kind of alchemy.” The detailed research is skilfully interwoven in the book, revealing the man but also the larger stories of mass migration, cultural fault lines, which Patrick feels comes in quite naturally for him because “once you’ve been a writer for a certain amount of time, it conditions all your responses, all your perceptions. Naipaul’s background is extremely interesting, being Trinidadian, Indian and British. Fifty years ago, that sort of mixture was rare but today it is normal, which is why the biography shows so much about how the world works.” For Britain’s greatest living writer, his un-Britishness has been a tactic, which Patrick explains, “Naipaul is sometimes seen, particularly by American journalists, as a wannabe English gentleman, but I don’t believe this is right. He uses Britain as a country out of which he can work, and I don’t think his un-Britishness is a tactic of self-presentation. He has always kept detached from Britain, part of it but at odds with it.”
A fable
How different was this biography from what Naipaul would write, if he were to write an autobiography of himself? “He has written Prologue to an Autobiography. It is a beautiful piece of writing, but tells you very little about him. He is naturally very secretive and not especially introspective, so I find it hard to see him writing an autobiography,” says Patrick. “I was always clear, I would write as I saw.” As a writer, to separate Naipaul the man from Naipaul the writer, Patrick “tried to integrate the two and show how they fuelled each other. His life makes such a remarkable story, a kind of fable. I kept myself detached, beady-eyed through out. Although he and I are interested in similar subjects, we have significantly different temperaments.” Naipaul talks about living, risking, travelling, experiencing being the prerequisites of a great writer, “I think static writers — who only operate inside their own culture — can write a couple of interesting books, and then they start to repeat themselves. A frightened writer tends not to be a good writer.” Not feeling out of depth with the subject’s thoughts and motivations, “I never felt like that and could perceive his motivation — though any interesting biographical subject will sometimes do things that are out of character.”
On finishing the biography, “I understand him a little better or know what he is all about,” says Patrick. “he is opaque and enigmatic and part of the point of the biography was to show that it is not necessarily possible to fully comprehend a person’s life. As with a good novel, you must be left with some element of mystery.” Younghusband to Naipaul, biographies set in the 19th and 21st centuries, in contructing the journey, "my method was the same : find out information, let it sit for a while...and then write by instinct. The brain is the best filing system.”
Patrick’s books have centred around Central Asia, Tibet, India, “I found them interesting places.” The book on Tibet is as riveting and as unsparing, focusing on the actual Tibet and not what has been presented to the world.
Committed to truth
This commitment to truth, empathy, sharp perceptions can make elements of cynicism grow on a writer or can remain a pattern in his writing. “I’m not a cynical person, but I also believe that idealism can be a form of prejudice. The world is what it is. Perhaps it should be a kinder place but it isn’t. Presenting things as they actually are can be a relief for a writer and a reader. In the case of Tibet, I think there is greater cynicism in the foreign helpers who pretend they are doing good and that their actions will influence the Chinese government for the better. Most of the people who were waving banners at the Olympic torch on the streets of London or San Francisco have never been to Tibet, and don’t wish to know what is happening there. They have an easy view: Tibetans good, Chinese bad.” Now working on a sequel to Liberty Or Death, for Patrick French, passion means “everything. Good writing depends on passion. I am using the word literally.”
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