Warts and all: 'The World Is What It Is: The authorised biography of V S Naipaul' June 2008
The World Is What It Is:
The authorised biography of V S Naipaul
by Patrick French
Picador, 2008
Practically all of the Delhi literati were lined up at the Park Hotel on the first evening of May recently to hear the British writer Patrick French’s reading of his authorised biography of V S Naipaul. As I listened to recollections of Sir Vidia’s life, I was inevitably transported back to my own first meeting with the man. It was 1988, and Naipaul was in Lucknow doing background research for the project that would become India: A million mutinies now. I had spent the evening introducing him to the upper-middle-class, Western-educated people of the city. “Tell me, Nazear,” he addressed me at one point, “how would you describe your life?” “Well Vidia,” I responded, unsure of what he was asking, “I would say I am leading a pretty rudderless existence.” He suddenly pronounced, “Nazear, yours is the life I would like to write about.” I was surprised, to say the least, and too flustered to refuse.
Little did I know that I had been chosen to serve as a sacrificial lamb for Mutinies. There has long been much talk about what an astute observer Naipaul is, with his “eagle in the crag” look, according to Saul Bellow. I beg to differ. He only uses a subject if it fits into the outline of the book he has already crafted – and I write ‘uses’ in every sense of the word. The next book’s theme is chalked out, and once Naipaul finds a person who fits the cut, the lamb is led smiling to the slaughterhouse, as it were. On the way, the lamb reveals his life story, with all its painful vulnerabilities.
In a career spanning fifty years, Naipaul has perfected the art of networking. Once he has formulated an idea for a book, he starts writing to his contacts for introductions. Inevitably, they fall over each other in setting up meetings; after all, the great Naipaul has asked them for help. Sometimes, they even accompany him to various cities, to introduce him personally to contacts. As there is very little chance of his visiting any particular city ever again, he feels comfortable exploiting his victims to the hilt, pestering them to reveal every little detail of their lives. Having thus milked them, the writer vanishes without leaving a forwarding address or telephone number. This, anyway, is how Mutinies was published.
In the event, I found myself transformed into a character named Rashid. Like the name, my emotions too were distorted beyond recognition:
Rashid, who comes of an old Lucknow Muslim family, walked with me in the Residency on my last day in Lucknow. He had in the beginning been neutral, pleased to show the famous sights of the famous city, and pleased to show that in Lucknow (unlike other Indian cities) there were still places to go walking in. But in the museum building, with its trays of pathetic museum cannonballs, and other carefully tended imperial relics … Rashid’s mood changed. His Muslim sentiments flared up, he became quite agitated at the events of 130 years before, full of rage against the power of the British Resident and the humiliations of the Nawabs, full of rage and grief at the siege that had failed, the chance of Muslim victory, though so near, had not come. He said “Bastards! Bastards!” and he was referring not to the besiegers but the besieged, whose heroism and general predicament, lucky escapes and cruel deaths, were the subjects of the museums display.
Patrick French says that Naipaul honed his interviewing skills during the four years he spent working at the BBC. But I have my doubts on his ability at accurately framing the answers offered by his interviewees. In my experience, the approach is to gently gouge out information, saying “Yes, yes” to urge you on, all the while dropping hints on which way he wants the conversation to head. It was thus that I found myself unwittingly transformed into the staunch Muslim defender depicted in the extract.
Use and throw
My discomfort with Naipaul’s style did not end with personal experience. Another character in Mutinies, known as Parveen, happened to be the wife of a friend of mine belonging to the landed aristocracy of Rohilkhand, and whose sons worked in England. Naipaul was evidently quite impressed with her suggestion that there was no dichotomy between Islam and the modern world. Upon asking ‘Parveen’, for whom I was the translator, how the interview went, she replied, “I could tell what he wanted to hear, and so I gave it to him.” Here was Naipaul’s semi-manufactured antidote to Osama bin Laden: a
woman grounded in Islam, yet who did not observe purdah and was enlightened in her views.
According to French’s biography, Naipaul treats his private relationships in a similarly disposable manner. This is particularly true in his relationship with the three central women in his life: his first wife Patricia Hale, his mistress Margaret Gooding, and his second and current wife Nadira Khannum Alvi. Naipaul carried on an affair with Gooding throughout almost the entirety of his marriage to Hale – the mistress accompanying him on his book-researching tours, while the wife helped with the writing after he returned home.
The relationships with each of these women were unique unto themselves. With Gooding, with whom Naipaul remained for 24 years, the writer seems to have been very possessive. French writes that at one point, when Gooding wanted to be with him but did not have the money to make the journey, she slept with a banker who paid for the fare. When Naipaul heard of this, he beat her until his hand was swollen. Hale, on the other hand, was more a confidante than a wife, and he used to tell her all that happened, including between him and his mistress. Oddly, he was significantly less forthcoming with Gooding. She learned about his marriage to Nadira Alvi from the press.
Alvi, a former columnist for the Pakistani newspaper The Nation, met Naipaul at a party in Pakistan while he was still with both of his previous two romances. At the time, Naipaul was busy filling his plate with salad in a land of meat-eaters, and Alvi was told that he was the famous V S Naipaul. She went up to him and asked, “May I kiss you?” and promptly planted a peck on his cheek. Knees shaking, he told her, “I think we better sit down.” It was the start of a romance that led to a speedy marriage, barely three days after Hale passed away.
With finesse, French also draws out Naipaul’s longstanding troubling views on Islam, made more complicated by his relationship with his new Muslim wife. The difficulties that immediately arose from this new relationship are illustrated by the intense scenes surrounding the death rites for Hale, attended by both Naipaul and his new bride.
They drove to Coopers Hill in the taxi. Vidia and Nadira got out and walked up a broken path with drifts of dead leaves on either side. It had been raining and the path was slippery. Nadira walked ahead towards some beech trees and undid the urn … Vidia wrote, ‘I took off my hat and cried and was grateful and glad that she was able to do this for me. The ashes made a little smoke-like dust.’ Nadira walked further into the woods, alone. [Naipaul said,] ‘I found a beautiful spot. I said a prayer for her, a Muslim prayer, the Fatiha.’
The abundant stories of Naipaul’s personal follies notwithstanding, with 34 works to his credit the title of ‘one of the greatest living writers’ may well be deserved. In The World Is What It Is, a phrase taken from a chapter in his A Bend in the River, we get the writer as he is – the sparkle and warts included. This is, of course, one of the best things that can be said for any work of biography. Indeed, seldom do we have a writer’s life story published during his own lifetime, and certainly one that does not always throw favourable light on its subject. This could leave some readers to wonder about the underlying motive for Naipaul’s willingness to publicise his life to this extent. Perhaps there is the hope that this work will lead to a renewed interest in his writing, which, after fifty years, could do with a new generation of readers. Either way, French has done a competent job with a difficult subject. Based on my own experiences with Sir Vidia, it is French – not Naipaul – who is the astute observer here.
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