For the record, Theroux has now given his opinion that Half a Life is "the slightest book Naipaul has ever written, and unquestionably the weirdest."
Naipaul's standing in the public eye has not been helped by some intemperate remarks he's made recently. Discussing E.M. Forster's classic novel A Passage to India, he said that Forster was "a nasty homosexual" and the book "utter rubbish." He's likened Tony Blair to "a pirate whose socialist revolution has imposed a plebeian culture." (There are no traditionalists to equal immigrants, it's sometimes said). And he claims he has no time to read Salman Rushdie, despite his own interest in modern Islam, Rushdie's most controversial topic.
It would be answering intemperance with intemperance to make counter accusations in parallel terms, but a quick glance at Theroux's book, which was published in 1997, could supply some useful material.
In a sense Naipaul is a backward-looking figure. Edward Said, author of Orientalism, has called him "a kind of belated Kipling," a mocker of post-colonial pretensions. This is despite Naipaul having once been, as a West Indian of Indian descent, himself a victim of racist colonial attitudes. Now he lives in the English countryside and collects fine wines, though not not himself a drinker.
The Nobel Prize committee appears to be over-fondly attached to the idea of the "great writer" as a reclusive sage who, after musing on the woes of civilization, comes up with a penetrating, somber work which warns us of ills to come if we do not repent of our misguided ways. Needless to say, it is hard for them to find a laureate that fits this austere mold every 12 months. But Naipaul used to be a surprisingly appropriate candidate, and some of his caustic, impatient, opinionated travel books were well-suited to the Nobel committee's tacit criteria.
The last half of this new book does in fact read like an African travelogue. If it was extracted out, it might read as an interesting look, albeit characterized by Naipaul's usual widely-dispensed disdain, at a little-visited part of the world. The novel as a whole, however, falls woefully short of Naipaul's earlier work.
If there's one thing this book prompts you to think, it's that ponderousness carries with it no automatic right to status.
RSS