Tag Archives: v.s. naipaul

Articles I liked: Paris Review interviews of Philip Larkin, Dag Solstad, Sam Lipsyte; the NYRB reconsiders V.S. Naipaul, and others

I also have a strong desire to become one of those people who links to articles, so that's what I'm gonna do.

"The Trouble With Money" in London Review of Books - The economics I learned in college wasn't very self-reflective, on a philosophical level. It never worried about the nature of money or what it represented. Money was merely a medium of exchange: a thousand dollars equals a thousand dollars worth of butter equals a thousand dollars worth of guns. They are the same thing. But a whole class of late 19th and early 20th century economists devoted their time to grappling with the concept of money. What did it mean? How did it function? And not just practically, but psychologically as well. Loved this article on John Maynard Keynes, who wrote about the death-grip money has on our psyches, and the way that after a certain point, saving can become a mania that interferes with the production of goods and services.

"Art of Fiction No. 230: Dag Solstad" in The Paris Review - At various times in my life I've had the ambition to read all the Paris Review interviews. But I inevitably realize that if I haven't read and enjoyed the author, then I don't really care about what they have to say. I really liked Solstad's interview, just as I really like his novels! He seems to have his head on his shoulders--very practical writer, who seems to enjoy his work. I was however amused by his 3-1-3 schedule, where after every third day of writing, he gets blind drunk for one full day. LOL.

"Art of Poetry No. 30: Philip Larkin" by The Paris Review - Larkin is one of the few poets that I truly love. I deeply enjoyed this mildly grumpy interview of his, where he describes his solitary life, how he hasn't read poetry in years, how his only encounters with Auden and Eliot were awkward and terrifying, and how he basically doesn't know anything of life outside Hull, where he's lived for the last twenty-five years. What a genius he was.

"Art of Fiction No. 242: Sam Lipsyte" in The Paris Review - Another deeply likeable interview. Just enjoyed playing around in his mind, same as I enjoy his fiction! No great revelations. I just like the guy!

"2022 was not the year of consilience" by Erik Hoel - I subscribe to Erik's substack. He's both a researcher into consciousness and a novelist. Which is to say, he's researching consciousness from the inside and out. In this post he talks about attempting to bridge the science / art divide, and how most of the resistance to that idea seems to come from artists. I thought he was smart in talking about the one thing scientists can do to maybe help heal that divide, which is not be reductive about art. Even if you can explain some things about art using science, there's still a phenomonological level to it that'll never be directly accessible to science.

"Naipaul's Unreal Africa" in The New York Review of Books - I really like Naipaul's work. I've read a lot of it. His best and most humane books are his early ones, set in Trinidad, particularly A House for Mr. Biswas. His later books, especially those set in Africa, are interesting and evocative, but extremely cruel. He was a cruel man, and he was undeniably racist. This author reexamines the legacy of his Booker-nominated A Bend in the River, and the ways its racism would be received if published today, instead of in 1979.

"A New King for the Congo" in The New York Review of Books - This essay, written by Naipaul and published in the NYRB in the 70s, is an example of the way he wrote about Africa (it's also discussed in the article above)

We should all stop being so self-deprecating

Awhile back, I admonished a friend of mine to not run down her own work so much. But it was kind of a glass houses situation, because I am also frequently prone to fits of self-deprecation. I’ll talk about how my writing has reached the stage where it’s only sort of okay, or I’ll run down my novel as another “vampires in high school” novel. And I know that I’m only hurting myself by saying that.

Because when you say you’re not that great, people will believe you. And even if you think you’re not that great (and I am far from thinking that), it doesn’t help you for other people to think so too.

The worth of self-deprecation is mostly social. We don’t like it when other people are arrogant and have a high opinion of themselves. We want people to like us, so we take pains to avoid being seen as arrogant. And that’s the right thing to do in social situations, when it’s more important to avoid annoying people than it is to impress them (like when you’re talking to your family).

But most of the occasions on which we talk about our work (whatever that work might be) are not social occasions. Insofar as you’re my readers, you’re not my friends. My responsibilities towards you are different than if we were all sitting around the house together. My responsibility is to provide you with some pleasure, and to gain your regard in return. In that kind of relationship, I think that the risks of being annoyed by possible arrogance on my part are lower (though not entirely gone), and that the costs of self-deprecation are higher (because you have fewer friendly feelings towards me to inflate your opinion of my work).

In this regard, I think its part of the performance for me to at least pretend that I think my words are worth your time. Because if it’s not, then what the hell am I doing?

I think that we should all strive to be one of those people who skates by on confidence and braggadocio (even if, in my case, that confidence is backed up by some solid talent).

You know the people I’m talking about, right? They’re the ones who exude a great deal of confidence in themselves, and, in doing so, achieve a reputation that is disproportionate to their accomplishments. That’s because people don’t spend very much time or effort trying to make accurate judgments about other people. Most of the time, they’re just willing to take your word for how much your worth (although that level of worth is, of course, giving a floor and a ceiling by your overall place within society).

 

There are two counterarguments here. The first is that even promotional arrogance can sometimes annoy people when it starts to call their own judgments into question. If I said, “My novel is better than the Windup Girl and you guys were fools not to give it every prize”, then people who disagreed with me might feel like I was being a huge fool.

But I don’t think that’s a big deal. There are writers with massive, outsized egos out there: writers like V.S. Naipaul and Harlan Ellison. For their fans, that’s part of their appeal. And that massive ego often causes otherwise uninterested people to give them a shot (I would not never have read a word by V.S. Naipaul if he was even slightly less bombastic). Basically, any publicity is better than no publicity. Even people who disagree with a writer’s brag usually have to read their work in order to do so. It’s better to be read and hated than not to be read at all.

 

I think the more salient counterargument is that sometimes self-deprecation is merely the outward expression of a person’s unwillingness to be satisfied with the things in their work that are not up to their personal standard.

That unwillingness is very important, and it’s a skill that writers have to greater or lesser degrees. There are a large number of writers who are not very self-reflective about their work (i.e. they think their own work is awesome even though few others would agree), and because of that, they never improve.

Being able to make accurate assessments of one’s own work is something every writer should probably develop, but I don’t see any reason to pollute your potential audience with that self-awareness. What you want is for them to be totally clueless and to think you’re the greatest thing since the invention of ice cubes.

One of the few times I’ve read about Africa without being made to feel sorry for anyone

So, a week ago, I was reading David Markson’s Last Novel (which was predictably fascinating, in a very annoying and highly pleasurable way) and I came across the little factoid:

I think A Bend in the River is much, much better than Conrad

Pronounced the humility-drenched author of A Bend in the River

And somehow, out of all the unfamiliar vaguely literary anecdotes in that novel, it was this one which caught my eye and prompted me to look it up. Well, upon reading the opening lines of A Bend In The River (which is by Indo-Trinidian author V.S. Naipaul) I was totally hooked and had to read the rest. Those lines are:

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

Nazruddin, who had sold me the shop cheap, didn't think I would have it easy when I took over. The country, like others in Africa, had had its troubles after independence. The town in the interior, at the bend in the great river, had almost ceased to exist; and Nazruddin said I would have to start from the beginning.

I have no idea why I found this to be so gripping and resonant. I mean, I’ve always been fascinated by the Indian Diaspora, and I know so little about it (particularly the part that did not end up in the U.S.), but this novel is not really about that (the protagonist is a Muslim shopkeeper of South Asian descent, but one whose family has been in Africa for centuries). It’s just about life in this small town, in a fictional country, that is deep in the interior of the continent.

Any long-time blog reader will know that I love socially-conscious writers: Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, Aravind Adiga, Emile Zola, etc. But these writers often paint in very broad strokes, and end up creating works that are powerful and ring true, but which lack subtlety and thoughtfulness. And they’re the kind of writers who are often derided by those who just look for dense, mellifluous writing and well-observed characters. This kind of reader prefers fairly apolitical, often domestic novels, like those of Nabokov or Virginia Woolf.

This novel feels like a domestic novel. It feels like it’s about an adulterous affair, and about feeling alienated from society. It feels like it’s about dirty kitchen sinks and coming to terms with the death of one’s dreams. But it’s also about analyzing and categorizing entire societies.

It feels, sometimes, like a satire, but if so, it’s one without the broad portraits and the melodrama that I often associate with satire. Oh, and best of all, you know how I keep talking about how terrible I feel for enjoying poverty porn type novels (in my posts on The White Tiger and on The Handmaid’s Tale, for instance)...well, this has none of that. I didn’t feel sorry for anyone. You know how rare it is to hear about Africa and not be made to feel sorry for someone? It felt great not to feel even a slightest call to action emanating from the book. That alone is enough to make me love this novel.