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It’s more than what it is
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V.S. Naipaul’s biography, The World is What it is, paints a complex picture of the writer. In spite of the exhaustive research, biographer Patrick French tells DEEPA GANESH that it still remains incomplete
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Photo: bhagya prakash K.
FREE THINKING Patrick French feels that the most important thing about being a writer is having the freedom to write the way you feel
What will a biography of V.S. Naipaul say to alter perceptions from what one has heard and read about the writer already? The abominable episodes from his life, the petulant, pesky, grouchy, cranky persona, not to forget his bigoted positions on writ
ers…all these are a well-established part of literary mythology. “The World is What it is”, the authorised biography of one of the most significant writers in English by Patrick French, released in the city recently, has pulled of the impossible. A touchingly honest and perceptive piece of writing, it certainly is among the best books written in the recent times. Having complete access to Naipaul’s archives, the book does indulge its source, but the biographer’s fair-mindedness is remarkable. He goes close, but never so close to strip him of his critical distance.
Not for the Empire
Patrick French who took nearly seven years to complete the biography, has also written books on Indian and Tibet and won several awards. French, however, turned down the OBE (The Order of the British Empire). “The word Empire smacks of the colonial order. Moreover, the most important thing about being a writer is that you have the freedom to write the way you feel. You can no longer claim any liberty once you accept such an award. And, I’m not even a fan of the Empire,” he says. “I was sure I would work on the biography only if given access to his paper archives and allowed to take extensive interviews of him,” recalls Patrick.
The archives ran into 50,000 pieces of paper and it had been sold to the University of Tulsa in Oklahama in 1993, by the time French embarked on the project. Naipaul took months before he gave French an answer. But once consent was given, there was no interference.
French quotes Naipaul as saying in a speech in Tulsa in 1994: “The lives of writers are a legitimate subject of inquiry; and the truth should not be skimped. It may well be, in fact, that a full account of a writer’s life might in the end be more a work of literature and more illuminating – of a cultural or historical moment – than the writer’s books.”
Living poetry
Writing about Eliot, J.M. Coetzee calls it “self-fashioning” a part of his “lived poetic vocation”. The same could be said of Naipaul too. But Naipaul’s self-fashioning as Patrick puts it, came as rejection, a dismissal of his homeland. If his anxiety and fear of remaining regional and hence a refusal of his roots shaped his persona to become solely ‘the writer’, it was also propelled by his genuine literary calling. “He could be angry, acute, open, self-pitying, funny, sarcastic and tearful, but always intense,” writes French in his introduction. Once Naipaul told him: “I was not interested and I remain completely indifferent to how people think of me, because I was serving this thing called literature.”
The book is interesting and exhaustive: the life of indentured Indian labourers in Trinidad and a second generation young man going on to become one of the most significant writers in English. To Oxford and then to BBC, London. The research is meticulous and sometimes startles you with details. In fact, what leaves you astounded is the amazing clarity with which Naipaul recounts his childhood, from his very early years. “Naipaul is a man of phenomenal memory. You ask him something and he will narrate the incident to you with date, time, day, month and year,” says Patrick. Nevertheless, even with so many details packed, as Naipaul himself philosophically remarks: “All the details of the life and the quirks and friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there. The biography of a writer – or even the autobiography will have the incompleteness.”
The better half
The book discusses Naipaul’s relationship with his wife Patricia in length. While Naipaul was out philandering, she was busy editing his works. The extremely intelligent and competent Patricia was Naipaul’s sounding board. “When we spoke of Patricia during our interviews, he had tears in his eyes. ‘I didn’t treat her well,’ he would say,” avers French . But why did Patricia stay on? “It’s rather strange. But it seems like she had the greatest regard for Naipaul as a writer and also took pride in the fact that he valued her literary opinions… the only reason I can think off,” he explains.
The book ends with Patricia’s death in 1996. Your views of Naipaul are also far more sympathetic towards the end of the book. There is the feeling of having known the writer from when he wore a “mask” to now when it has “eaten into his face.” But did French’s perceptions change by the end of his writing? “Not much changed, it’s pretty much the same. I always was of the opinion that people are too complicated and complex for anything to be singularly true.”
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