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Magazine
Half a novel
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In the year he has got the Nobel Prize, and nobody deserves it more, V.S. Naipaul has also produced his worst book, says DOM MORAES.
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FIFTEEN years ago I spent a summer in Sweden. I often met the novelist Per Wastberg, who was also one of the judges of the Nobel Prize for Literature. We used to discuss its past recipients and the possible winners in years to come. Wastberg said, ``Maybe, in some years, Naipaul. He has some kind of world view.'' It is no secret in the literary world that Naipaul, though his shoulders were already heavily burdened with laurel wreaths, badly wanted the Nobel, even 15 years ago. Now he has got it, and nobody in English literature deserves it more. It is ironic that in the same year he has published what I think is his worst book.
Naipaul observed some years ago that the novel had become obsolete as a literary form. He has since disassociated himself from this opinion and, more than that, produced this new novel. But the book for me is associated with my memory of his earlier remark, and I wonder why he chose to put this material into the form of a novel. It certainly tells a story, in fact several stories, but they seem unrelated, like events in a nightmare, and the characters are like those glimpsed in one, briefly and horribly. Also like a nightmare, the book leads nowhere, and when it was over left me tired; disappointed too, since I admire Naipaul greatly.
The story concerns Willie Somerset Chandran. His paternal family comes of a long line of priests. His grandfather was an official in a maharajah's court. But Willie's father, in the 1930s, is a confused young student. He wants to help free India from the British, burns his English textbooks, and finally forms a liaison with a girl ``from the backwards,'' i.e. a Dalit. Since she repels him physically and mentally, this seems odd on his part. He has to work to support her. His father, though aggrieved by the situation, finds him employment as a petty court official. He falsifies his accounts and is suspended from duty. He then starts to mooch about in the palace courtyard and, to avoid trial, takes a vow of silence.
At this point the English writer W. Somerset Maugham comes to the state to write a novel, for which he wants to talk to Hindu mystics. The local college principal, heavily sardonic, introduces Maugham to Willie's father as a highcaste man who has retired from the world and taken a vow of silence to escape retribution for his past sins. Maugham writes about this saintly person in The Razor's Edge, and Willie's father suddenly finds himself famous. He tells us all this, very delicately and wittily, in the first part of Naipaul's book: how as a result of it all he was able to set up a home and breed a family with his ``backwards'' mistress. He names his son after Maugham, but is never fully able to accept Willy, who he thinks of as ``tainted,'' still less his daughter, who he finds repulsive.
Having read so far, I expected to be intrigued further, to be drawn deeply into the story of the novel. But the more I read afterwards, the farther the story slipped away from me, and the less I could understand why Naipaul wrote this book at all. Willie grows up to despise his father and hate his mother. The father sends him to college in London. Here Willy, who wants to be a writer, meets a number of people who lead uniformly ineffectual and silly lives. The London literary underground of the 1950s has been efficiently satirised by far worse writers than Naipaul. It would seem a puny target for him. Willy publishes a book of stories, unread by most people. But a girl called Ana reads it, and they meet.
Ana is a mestiza, a Eurasian from a Portuguese colony in Africa that is never named. Willy travels to it with her, marries her, and spends the next 18 years there. Meanwhile, his sister Sarojini has married a German revolutionary and, after travelling around the world on various causes, they have settled in his homeland. On page 137 of this book, Willy leaves his wife in Africa, as the colony is about to explode into bloody revolution, and flies to his sister's new abode. On page 140 he starts to tell Sarojini about his life in Africa. Halfway down page 228 his narrative concludes, and so does the book. Willy's experiences of a ruined and dying colony are often beautifully described. But why are they there?
If a reader started the book blind, without knowing from advance publicity what happens in it, he would often be puzzled. Once he has gone past the witty opening section, the writing increasingly assumes a dense, ominous quality, as though to prepare him for some great and tragic revelation. This does not come, and its nonappearance is the final puzzle. Here and there it seems that Naipaul wants to say that a mixture of castes or races is tragic for the person it produces. But he is surely too intelligent to think this is a point to be proved.
Perhaps he is trying to say that to live in postcolonial countries addles people's minds. This is possible, but it is not a great discovery. And if, as the title suggests, Naipaul is saying that most people, in the true sense, only lead half a life, it is a statement of the obvious. The blurb says how terrific this book is, but does not say what it is about. Perhaps the blurb writer could not figure it out for himself, and in this he will surely not be alone.
Half a Life, V. S. Naipaul, Picador India, hardback, Rs. 395.
Dom Moraes is one of India's leading poets. He received the Hawthornden Prize in 1958 and is currently working on a book on India and translating Hebrew poetry into English.
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