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The World Is What It Is The World Is What It Is The World Is What It Is (2008)

by Patrick French(Favorite Author)

4.06 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0307270351 (ISBN13: 9780307270351)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Vintage Books USA

review 1: How do you solve a problem like Naipaul? I’ll stop the Sound of Music references straight away; but this will be a difficult review to write. Naipaul is a Nobel laureate and is certainly one of the great writers of the twentieth century. Notably irascible and difficult to pin down. Accused of a great deal, including racism and imperialism; more British than the British, a fan of Margaret Thatcher. He wrote some great novels and a good deal of reportage from his extensive travelling. He was an acute observer, especially of ordinary people and their thoughts and feelings. His views have often been controversial and he began writing about political Islam long before most others. He also had a complex private life; marrying Pat Hale, a woman he met at Oxford. He also conduct... moreed a twenty year affair with an Anglo-Argentine woman, Margaret; never deciding between them and making contradictory promises to both. His relationship with Margaret was sometimes violent and she was seen with bruising round her eyes on a number of occasions. He admitted in a newspaper interview in the 1980s that he had regularly visited prostitutes for many years in the 1950s and 60s. Pat found out by reading the interview. When Pat was dying in the mid 1990s Naipaul travelled to Pakistan where he met Nadira, a journalist. They fell in love. It is recorded that Naipaul felt Pat wasn’t dying quickly enough. A few days before she died he told her about Nadira and that she would be his new companion. Nadira moved into Naipual’s house the day after Pat’s cremation and they married a couple of months later. Margaret, the mistress, found out about the wedding from the papers. How do we know all of the private details? When Naipaul agreed to allow Patrick French to write his biography he gave him access to absolutely everything, with no restrictions; including Pat’s diaries which detailed her feelings of inadequacy and Naipaul’s treatment of her. All of the skeletons in the cupboard were to be open to view. That is the contrariness of the man, and that is why this biography is so brilliant. The Guardian review sums it up; “Must be the frankest authorised autobiography of anyone alive and in possession of their senses.”Naipaul is a contradiction; he lived in Britain as a struggling writer, experiencing the racism that was commonplace, and in a relationship with a white woman. He arrived in Britain having won a scholarship to Oxford from his native Trinidad. He is a perceptive observer of people and his writing is at times brilliant. Does that excuse his treatment of others? For me, No. But I recognise his sense of being an outsider and not belonging anywhere, his ambivalent relationship with India; changing from quite negative in his early work, to much more positive in later years. Here is not the place to talk about his work; French does that in detail and he is a perceptive analyst. I admired Naipaul’s tenacity and perception, but I wouldn’t like to know him or be in a relationship with him and Pat Hale’s story is so very sad. She deserved better.
review 2: What an unpleasant man. What a pity given how well he writes and the broad nature of his literary tastes. It might have been better not to know quite so much about the man. Paul Theroux comes off even worse. This book was purchased in Pashigat, Arunachul Pradesh, a tiny and remote town. Who would think they had a dozen book stands. It proved a great filler for the down time there always is when traveling. less

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