Pompous Windbags

Just read a review by Paul Theroux of a biography on V. S. Naipaul. The biography, as yet unread by me, is written by Patrick French. The title: The World Is What It Is.

Naipaul, is in this authorized biography, shown to be self-centred, masochistic, vile, womanizing, racist, and I suspect, a self hating man. But then, we should all have known this; at least I did, from an unfinished reading of The Enigma of Arrival (published in 1987). Enigma was, in some ways, a love poem to Naipaul's new found home -- England. Every little nook and cranny of this supposed novel is filled with unending admiration for good England. Admiration which spoke to me of self-loathing by the writer for himself, for his land of birth (Trinidad), his people (Indians) and their Black brethren. Naipaul was a sometime great writer with an awful personality.

In the review, Theroux, an erstwhile great travel writer, basically says, 'I told you so!' And then proceeds to repeat this same phrase over and over again. It makes good copy if you want to sell newspapers. But Theroux had already vilified Naipaul in his memoir, Sir Vidia’s Shadow. In Sir Vidia, Theroux, who had a falling out with his friend and mentor, wrote about how Naipaul was a depressive, a racist, and a snob. This was Theroux's way of getting back at Naipaul for Naipaul's dismissal of their friendship.

As for Theroux, whose Dark Star Safari, a travelogue of his overland journey from Cairo to Cape Town, I recently also left unfinished, proves himself no better than his adversary. I could not stand the fact that for Theroux, everyone he met in his travels fell into one of two camps: You were either a "tourist" and not a "traveller" like Theroux and therefore, beneath him; or you were a "local" trapped in your provincial life and state of mind. Nobody in this book, it seems, knew as much as Mr. Theroux. Gone is the wonderfully prismatic mind which wrote, Riding the Iron Rooster.

Sadly, it has come to this. Two great writers, at least early in their careers, go down slinging mud at each other, calling names, telling tales, raising their middle finger and acting exactly like each other.