Let no one fool you into thinking that just because this book is set in the beautiful island of Trinidad, that somehow it will pander to the stereotype of the Caribbean as being an idyllic eco-paradise filled with mirth and tranquillity. In fact, VS Naipaul's utterly bleak and ultra-realistic depiction of war-time pre-independence Trinidad could be summed up as hilariously misanthropic at worst and desperately hopeless at best. I first read this book when I was around seventeen, back when I was temporarily attending school in the Caribbean. It was a book we had to study for our final exams, and oddly enough it has occasionally played on my mind, even six years after initially reading it. The characters in Naipaul's (possibly) semi-autobiographical tale do seem very real, in an albeit pitiful manner. Naipaul perfectly captures the dialogue, the rhythm and atmosphere of Caribbean life and adds his own blend of nihilism. All of the characters fail in their ambitions or just don't have the willpower or brains to drag themselves out of the Trinidadian slums. Naipaul repeatedly reminds us of how fickle, pathetic and at times tragic, the lives of the inhabitants of Miguel Street are. Everyone falls victim to hubris or their own stupidity. The author's nihilism has no time for sympathy.Whilst one could easily construe this as an assault on the common sense and dignity of Trinidad's poorer communities, perhaps the biggest reason the book had such an effect on me as a teenager was because it so accurately portrayed characters who did seem to have parallels with many of the individuals living in the Caribbean's poor communities. Not necessarily to the same extent as Naipaul's rigid misanthropism, but the depictions of the occasional bleakness and 'stuck in a rut' feeling that pervades many living in the slums of Haiti, Jamaica and Trinidad are undeniably well written. Miguel Street's main strength is that it is able to present this nihilist tale and tell it so very well. You never lose interest and even with every subsequent character falling short of their elusive glories, you still can't help but turn the page.Naipaul is a very polarising writer for many. He's either lauded as a masterful author who specialises in realist stories that pull no punches, or condemned as a neo-colonialism hack who only writes stories which 'prove' that those living in post-colonial India, Africa or the Caribbean had it much better under British rule. Maybe it is a little from 'column A' and a little from 'column B'. Whatever the viewpoint, there is no denying that Miguel Street is an amazing book and earns Naipaul the right to consider himself one of the best modern writers.
How beautiful this book is! How simple! How charming!The Caribbean street filled with lowlifes, with dreamers, with quirky, street-smart or naive characters literally comes to life in Naipaul's beautiful, beautiful prose. It is a panoramic narration - we are introduced to people one by one, a chapter at a time, and by the time we are done reading, we have lived a different, distant life with them. What makes it compulsively readable is not some cheap excuse for a plot but a deep faith in characters. Naipaul said in an interview that any stranger is interesting for the first hour or so. I guess its true because you still haven't spent time enough to identify the usual cliches buried in all of us. And that trick works really well here - we never get bored by anyone coz there's always a nuttier or a weirder in the queue and its all over too soon. One day you stand near a lamppost and make jokes about passing people, and then later, when you are gone, you pals stand around the same post, recounting your legend. Seemingly, these are separate short stories with a vague thread running through them and connecting them all - an observant eye, always recording, always curious. I loved the writing here. It is deceptively simple. There is no effort to make a point nor there is a display anywhere in the prose to draw attention to itself. There are parts which are poignant and parts that are laugh-out-loud funny. The local dialect is a wonder in itself and it blends well with the narrative, becoming an obvious part of it. And the restraint! I am sure that such control cannot come without total confidence in one's writing. To dwell too long over the fact that he was quite young when he wrote it is to invite worthlessness and self-doubt. I think I have read the best book by an Indian writer so far. It was a pleasure to meet these characters. Their lives are not devoid of the shades of grey, they swing between joy and sorrow and I am happy to have read the kind of writing that did justice to them, that didn't impose any fabricated meaning on them, didn't try to trap them in any "ism", didn't try to tell us how to feel about them, but just presented them as they were. How that happens is a lesson in structuring and storytelling.
What do You think about Miguel Street (2002)?
True, Naipaul is a little bit of a jerk, and advocate for the cultural supremacy of the colonial powers, especially in his treatment here of his narrator's childhood in Trinidad as a quaint prologue to his real life in England, but still he renders these characters and anecdotes in such a sensitive and embracing way that he convinces us of his understanding of this place's qualities, if not of its value.Notes:It's telling that Bogart and Hat frame their manhood and even their daily interactions in terms of American movie stars. That khaki uniform of the sanitary inspector becomes emblematic of the strivings for Britishness of these Trinidadian boys. Black Wordsworth teaches the young boy to look at the world like a poet, but as a European Romantic poet, not as a Caribbean poet. The men are measured by how many children they have and how fiercely they beat them. The scandal with Mrs. Hereira is not that she has such a horrible relationship, but that as a white woman she has such a relationship, and her return to the leisure of her easy chair and her uniformed servant in her garden is a triumph that none of the non-white inhabitants could ever hope for. The tinkering man, Bhacku, is fascinated withan American, European invention, the automobile, but he does not master its workings, only meddles unsuccesfully with taking it apart and putting it back together. It's almost as if this has been a prelude to the narrator's "real" life in England, as if Trinidad is just the quaint province of his youth.
—Michael
It's unique--and unique in Naipaul's work, of which I've read a dozen, my favorites including House for Mr Biswas, The Loss of El Dorado, and Among the Believers. Used to teach Miguel street in community college Freshman English--maybe fifteen years, often twice a year. It never got old to me. My "teaching" was largely aloudreading, including my class who were fearful of the accent. Once in awhile a student had been there, would try to recreate some. I find it a comic achievement of the highest order, rather like (and unlike) Faulkner's As I LAy Dying. Man-Man's dog is a wonderful creation, roughly equal to Shakespeare's Crab, the clown's dog in Two Gentlemen of Verona. I wonder if a film of it is even possible, maybe by a Brazilian film-maker? The humor would be tough to represent visually. The brand-new truck "repaired" by the compulsive tinkerer--lovely. The un-named protagonist of Miguel Street wins the scholarship at Oxford. But on the way, he meets and describes a fascinating array of characters, the central one being the ironist and "older brother" type, Hat. There is the teacher of Latin, Titus Hoyt. There is the poet who has written nothing. Ther is the crazed Man-Man who has trained his dog to defecate. And the aforesaid tinkerer-mechanic who destroys new cars and trucks, his chapter titled, "The Mechanical Genius." There is the fireworks afficianado whose obsession blows up his house, in the "Pyrotechnicist," which begins with the central point of the book: "A stranger could drive down Miguel Street and just say 'Slum!' because he could see no more. But we, who lived there, saw our street as a world, where everone was quite different from everybody else." (63, Vintage 1984) I would use the book as the first of five in my course, others including a Shakespeare play, a poetry collection, and a memoir or non-fiction. It really got the class off to a great start. Of course, Naipaul grew into a bit of a zero--dissing women authors, whoring, etc. But if we can forgive politicians, why not geniuses? (less) 0 minutes ago · delete
—Alan
Miguel Street is definitely my favorite book that we have read thus far! I think that what I enjoyed the most about this book is the way that Naipaul weaves the biographies of so many different characters into the fabric that is Miguel Street. Through the individual short stories about the interesting and eclectic characters that make up the community I was able to get a thorough snap shot into Trinidadian culture. Overall, it was the layout of the book that probably kept me reading. I really liked the way in which Naipaul used short stories to illustrate different themes but tied them together by using the same narrator and keeping the locations of the stories centered around Miguel Street. Because the dialogue and narration in each of the short stories was clear and concise it never felt like a task to turn the page. Ultimately, I am left with many impressions of Trinidadian culture, but without a doubt the necessity of male dominance prevails in my mind. Like the other novels we have read it is incredibly important for males to take control in this community and I suppose my real question is what factors motivate this theme in Miguel Street?
—Francesca Wilson
