What do You think about A Way In The World (1995)?
A complex book with elements of autobiography, "A Way in the World" is on one level a story about a Caribbean writer of Indian descent finding his footing as a writer. Interspersed are three partial stories of would-be conquerors of America, Columbus, Sir Walter Raleigh and Francisco Miranda, stuck in the Caribbean at their point of failure. The historical passages are fascinating, detailed, and heartbreaking, enriching and expanding my previous views of those colonial times. The author builds the South American continent into the sum of dreams, memories, savagery, ingrained prejudices, and ultimate unknowability that is also our own hearts.
—Francesca
There was a cricket player, a spinner called Nagamootoo, some years ago in a West Indian team I saw on television. I was intrigued; the name could only be a version of Nagamuthu, an unmistakable and typical name straight from the Tamil heartlands. And it made me think of how the name could have gone to the islands, would it have been his father or his grandfather who had gone and settled in the West Indies, would they speak some form of Tamil at home, would there be idols of Ganesh (Pillaiyar in Tamil) in a 'pooja' room and so on. He carried a connection to me, a language that he would probably have never known, but the connection was there.It is these connections that bubble up and disturb in what is one of the most brilliant books I've ever read. I must note that if such a book, so far away from the literary forms we know and recognize, would have written by anyone else, we all would have dismissed it as a freak show. But this is Naipaul. So we all pay attention.The book is fiction, non-fiction and autobiography. It is also Naipaul looking at himself through different lenses, a sort of memoir. Whatever it is, it is infinitely beautiful as a portrait of a land and a people.There are several narratives in the book, distinct and yet woven together, like the intricacies of post-colonial West Indian society - the Indian merchant settlers, the African plantation slaves, the fleeing aborigines, the lost Chinese, and of course the English and the Spanish. The major narratives are factual/fictional accounts of 1. Naipaul's own early life as a writer,2. A fellow Trinidadian's (of the left-leaning, revolutionary variety) life and writing3. A fading (but important to Naipaul) English writer 4. Sir Walter Raleigh (whom we see looking for El Dorado in the Caribbean, and failing) 5. Francisco de Miranda ( whom we find trying to liberate Spanish South America, and failing).Each of these narratives has only one thing in common - the Caribbean, and it is through this lens that we look at history and culture and ambition and ultimately, failure. Loss and colonial baggage are what the themes mainly are, but the book is also about other things, bigger than the characters we meet. There are unforgettable characters in each section, beautiful, terrible, impossible characters. And the writing is just magnificent. The words seem to flow like the old stream near the old estates in Port of Spain that Naipaul describes, lonely and cool and dazzling at the same time.This was my first Naipaul, and it has been a tumultuous initiation; this is high class literature.At the end of the prelude, there is this line I loved - "We cannot understand all the traits we have inherited. Sometimes we can be strangers to ourselves."That is what the book is, in the end, an attempt at understanding who and what we are. A attempt that, as the author wants us to understand, will always be doomed to fail. Therein lie the questions and the answers we all seek.
—Sairam Krishnan
I have said in my comments on this site that I think that the millenarian tendencies of some of my more, shall we say, zealous Christian forebears, might have made me keenly receptive to dystopic narratives, among other grim eschatological works. We know there are talents as well as resemblances, not to say cognitive skills and deficits, that pass from one generation to the next. Having said that, and having just finished my second reading of this Naipaul gem, I wonder if Naipaul's own forebears might not have prepared him for a certain hyper-vigilance to status and caste. Naipaul is descended from a high-caste Brahmin family. One of the singular features of all of his work has always been a hyper-awareness of status that is unlike anything I know in any other contemporary writer. Who stands where in the social pecking order, how that standing has altered over time, whether someone is higher in repute, fame, success, than they were in the past, or lower and why —all of these concerns fascinate Naipaul. Now, you could argue, I suppose, 'well, he's a writer, naturally he would have keen observations about character and related matters.' To that I would respond, yes, true, but there is something unique about the content of Naipaul's observations and his remarks upon them. There is a pitiless honesty, yes, but also something more. Is this the result of some kind of genetic hardwiring? This is something the cognitive sciences have only begun to study. So I wanted to think out loud a little here, and ask if my Naipaul-loving GR friends might have any insight into this aspect of his work. Has anyone else marked this penchant of Naipaul's?PS: Please read Brent Staples review of A Way in the World from the New York Times. I think it's excellent.http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/06/07...
—William1
