VS Naipaul is one of the world’s most horrible persons

Nov 23, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I never liked V.S. Naipaul. In my freshman year at UG, I read “the Mimic Men” and loved it. It gelled with my contempt for post-colonial governments who used their people to get Independence, then, imitate the white man.

I was introduced to “the Mimic Men” by a colleague of mine in the Movement Against Oppression (MAO) who later became my political mentor, Brian Rodway.

When MAO metamorphosed into the Working People’s Alliance, Brian and I became best of friends. As I read more of Naipaul, and understood his chemistry, I began to intensely dislike him.

I shared many of my opinions on him with Brian but Brian confessed that he didn’t keep up with Naipaul’s writings.

By the time I left UG for post-graduate studies in Canada, I thought of Naipaul as a truly offensive person. I saw him with a woolen jacket in the torrid Grenadian sun sitting on the dock for everyone to see that he was V.S. Naipaul.

This was during the American invasion that followed the assassination of PM Maurice Bishop for whom I worked directly. I stood and watched him and contemplated his vanity.

I wanted to go up to him and throw upon him my accusation that he was a tormented man for being born non-white.

I next saw Naipaul at the head office of the Working People’s Alliance. He had come to Guyana to interview Eusi Kwayana. I was told that when he was leaving, he made some obnoxious remarks to those who tried to shake his hand. If I was there, I would have given Naipaul a good cussing down.

At the University of Toronto, I participated in debates on Naipaul, always painting him as a man with Freudian monsters that tormented him. But more than that, Naipaul, even though he was a fantastic writer, was a pitiful creature. His false Oxford accent made him look foolish.

Naipaul will make the news all over the world, literally, all over the world because of his authorised biography which hit the bookshelves this month. The contents will make you sick.

Written by British journalist, Patrick French, who will be automatically catapulted into academic fame because of his immense achievement of shape in this book, “The World Is What It Is” which will go down as one of the literary world’s most absorbing biographies.

If Naipaul was famous in many parts of the world, this biography will make him become known in every corner of the globe. One is unhappy using the word famous but it has to be done because Naipaul is indeed a world renowned personality.

However, the adjective infamous should not be irrelevant after what this biography contains. Naipaul must be admired for permitting the biography.

Given what is carried in those 550 pages, few humans would have that courage to permit such sickening details to be made public about their private lives.

But even here, the Freudian monsters inside Naipaul are at work. It is obvious that the biographer is no admirer of Naipaul when he observed that Naipaul allowed the publication of the book because of Naipaul’s narcissism.

One book reviewer of the New York Times referred to Naipaul as a bad man that writes good books. I don’t know if any of Naipaul’s books is good. What does good mean?

Naipaul’s books are certainly intellectually compelling. Given his bizarre mind, Naipaul will be reveling in the reviews.

But even if his narcissism blinds him from seeing the disgust, miasma, and nastiness that has filled his life for so long, this biography will make people hate V.S. Naipaul.

This book is worth reading by all feminists. It has fantastic insights into understanding why women allow themselves to be so abused. Naipaul’s first wife surely must go down as one of the most tormented wives of any famous man in the past four hundred years. How could any woman reduce herself to such slavery?

It is this angle of the book that will catch the attention of people. It is really a sad tale of a woman so infatuated with a man because of his world fame that she actually chose to allow herself to become a virtual slave.

How can a woman stay in a marriage with a man who carries on an affair on a daily basis with another woman? And he beats the other woman to the point where her face is so swollen that she has to stay indoors for days.

So sad that the Nobel Prize Committee had to give its award to someone who is an unrepentant racist as what Naipaul is. Any self-hater could become a Nobel Laureate. Wonder if Derek Walcott has read the stuff as yet?

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VS Naipaul is one of the world’s most horrible persons

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