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From: reader
Category: Books
Date: 15 November 2004
Naipaul is a reactionary, a racist, a genius, and the clearest thinker of our time. This book: a game of two halves, reprinted stuff, Trinidad shows Naipaul on the wrong side seemingly infected with all the old prejudices against the poor and the black (Negro is enough to describe), and on Argentina and Congo/Conrad his thrilling intelligence is delightful.
"More and more today, writers myths are about the writers themselves; the work has become less obstrusive... Writing has become more private and more privately glamourous. The novel as a form no longer carries conviction... The novelist, like the painter, no longer recognizes his interpretive function; he seeks to go beyond it; and his audience diminishes. And so the world we inhabit, which is always new, goes by unexamined, made ordinary by the camera, unmeditated on; and there is no one to awaken the sense of true wonder. That is perhaps a fair definition of the novelist's purpose in all ages." (.... indicate my own editing)
Naipaul awakens wonder at what can be known, and how the magician can mistake prejudice for insight, and still remain amongst the rarest best.
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