V. S. Naipaul: A House for Mr Biswas, A Bend in the River, Mystic Masseur, and more

Extollager

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Thought I'd run up a flag on the island and see if anyone salutes. This Nobel Prize winner has impressed me over years of reading his fiction and nonfiction. A House for Mr Biswas is assuredly an authentic addition to the canon of British literature.

So... does anyone here read him? I could recommend House (of course) as the novel to start with if you've never read him.
 
Are you stalking me or something?...;)

We recently read A Bend in the River here for our local bookclub..and YES A House for Mr Biswas is his masterwork.

Naipul is a very polarising figure as a person as he is one of the least liked authors I know of. Knowing something of the man he is not personally speaking someone I would enjoy spending much time with but there is no doubting his ability as a writer nor his intellect and he remains a key literary figure.....and YES there are several other Great writers whose personalities are not easy to embrace but we remain reading them. I suspect history will see Naipul fall into this category as well.
 
I enjoyed Mystic Masseur. Good story about the transformation of the owner of a rural grocery stall into a politician.
India: a Million Mutinies Now is an excellent non-fiction travelogue,
 
Thanks for the recommendation of the India book, which is one of the Naipaul volumes I own but haven't read yet.
 
Reading again A House for Mr Biswas. It might be interesting for someone to compare and contrast Naipaul's depiction of rural life (Pagotes, The Chase, Green Vale, etc. and also Hanuman House as almost a village of its own) with, say, that of Hardy.

Naipaul displays a number of gifts in this book. For example, that of satirist -- but he doesn't let that gift run away with his book. That's one of the things that makes the book hold up so well upon rereadings, I suppose. He could have let Biswas's period as a writer of cheap sensationalist newspaper copy run away with the story -- I have no doubt of his possessing powers of invention enough to provides page of the stuff -- but he doesn't.

Naipaul's Trinidad is artistically convincing, but he doesn't weigh down his chapters with exposition. Only rarely do I find myself puzzled. I still haven't quite figured out the "soft candle" thing; yes, I googled it, but why Shekhar would threaten suicide by means of rope (hanging) and soft candle, that I wouldn't be able to explain completely.

I'm interested in the contrast between guilt culture and shame culture, and this book provides insight into the latter.

Naipaul could have included a family tree for Biswas's family and, especially, that of the Tulsis, but I can see an artistic justification for not doing so and leaving it to the reader to do so (as I've done) -- namely, a family tree would suggest that these various people possess more individualism than they have sought or desire; the Tulsis especially -- rather, the women especially tend to be guided by the rituals of the household and of a compromised Hinduism.
 
Reactivating this thread. I'm thinking of reading one of VSN's early books, A Flag on the Island, which is available in the omnibus volume The Nightwatchman's Occurrence Book and Other Comic Inventions. Flag appears to be a collection of stories.

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Oh, that's sad - I hadn't heard that an also hadn't seen this thread either. I've read none of his work (I have Guerrillas on a shelf somewhere), but back in the day when I read an awful lot of Paul Theroux, I became aware of Naipaul, because Theroux mentioned him a good deal, and clearly read him widely and perhaps knew him.

This also makes me think I should perhaps start a Paul Theroux thread (I'm not sure there is one).
 

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