Naipaul Resurrected

Naipaul Resurrected

wiki writes:

A House for Mr Biswas is a 1961 novel by V. S. Naipaul, significant as Naipaul's first work to achieve acclaim worldwide. It is the story of Mohun Biswas, an Indo-Trinidadian who continually strives for success and mostly fails, who marries into the Tulsi family only to find himself dominated by it, and who finally sets the goal of owning his own house. Drawing some elements from the life of Naipaul's father,^[1][2] the work is primarily a sharply drawn look at life that uses postcolonialperspectives to view a vanished colonial world.

I first read V.S. Naipaul as a child, hiding from the scorching Caribbean heat in my grandparents' concrete house.

I picked up A House for Mr. Biswas, as my Uncle Vincent was in Form 5 at Diego Sec and getting ready to do his O'levels- there were many wonderful books such as Wild Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (definitely up there- it's the story that addresses Antonoitte Cosway experiences before  Bronte's Jane Eyre. Wide Sargasso Sea is considered the post-colonial response to Jane Eyre).

wiki writes:

Wide Sargasso Sea is usually thought of as a postcolonial response to Jane Eyre.^[2][3] Rhys uses multiple voices (Antoinette's, Rochester's, and Grace Poole's) to tell the story, and deeply intertwines her novel's plot with that of Jane Eyre. In addition, Rhys makes a postcolonial argument when she ties Antoinette's husband's eventual rejection of Antoinette to her Creole heritage (a large factor in Antoinette's descent into madness). As postmodern and postcolonial literature have taken a greater place in university curricula, the novel has been taught to literature students more often in recent years.^{[citation needed]}


A House for Mr. Biswas, and Wide Sargasso Sea to some extent, helped me to navigate this New World of mine: I was recent refugee in Trinidad from the streets of Brooklyn. A House for Mr. Biswas took me into a world in Trinidad past (at least for me) and introduced me literarily, to this new life of mine that replaced double-dutch with games of jacks.

I fell in love with the book, the characters and I knew Naipaul to be a master. But, I got older and in my age I ended up in Copenhagen, Denmark and no matter what one has to say about this country, one can not say anything damning about its libraries.

My impression of Naipaul however, after reading The Enigma of Arrival is that this man is too colonial! He strives too much to be English.

I always knew, from the time I picked up a book, never to confuse the art with the artist. I don't know why, perhaps it has to do with my consciousness of my own faults, but it never did really bother me to find out that Einstein, for example, was not the most accessible to his family, or that Knut Hansen was a Nazi...human fallibility is a given and art is the closest we will ever get to perfection. That is what makes it so universal--it's a striving that we all can relate to in our faltering, mundane lives.
Alone in my apartment one night, alone and feeling lonely and cursing my predicament which I at times I love to think is only mine, licking away at all my hurts that I believe sometimes that I am the only one privileged enough to have, I found a beautiful article about Naipaul. It was from the New York Times and the title is A Writer Without Roots. I suggest that you read it, if ever you find yourself feeling that universal feeling of not belonging. It really picked me up and motivated me to go to the library and get a book of his which I am reading now. He is a master.

Meanwhile, I realize I have been neglecting my blog. I haven't even written anything for the New Year! Well, welcome to the New Year!