The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul

by Patrick French

Book Overview

The first major biography of V.S. Naipaul, the controversial and enigmatic Nobel laureate: a stunning writer whose only stated ambition was greatness, in pursuit of which goal nothing else was sacred.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400044057
• ISBN13: 9781400044054
• Release Date: November 2008
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 554 Pages
• Weight: 2.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.5" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

What a character!

This is an excellent read about a prolific writer. The author's skill at weaving together all the elements of Naipaul's life is impressive, making the bio a pleasure to read. He is successful in giving us a balanced look at Naipaul the man and writer and leaves the reader to make his or her own opinion of Naipaul. The book touches on both the personal and professional life of Naipaul, giving the reader insight into the various people and experiences that influenced his outlook on life and served as material for his writing. My only quibble is that the font size is so small and the author abruptly ends the book with Naipaul's second marriage. It would have been nice to learn more about his behaviour and treatment of his second wife.

A fine and deeply upsetting biography about V.S. Naipaul

Author Patrick French has created a tour de force portrait of a great writer whose worldly success and emotional vulnerabilities eventually combined to push him off the deep end as a human being. I read this book for a chance to revisit the fine work that I remember admiring so much when I started to read Naipaul in college in the late 1970s (at the suggestion of a friend and fellow Duke student from Mexico City). A House for Mr. Biswas, A Bend in the River, The Return of Eva Peron--I still have all the dusty paperbacks, and eagerly pulled them open to compare the text with what was in the biography. It was extremely, even intensely interesting to see French reveal the nuts & bolts of Naipaul's writing techniques and find out how these perfectly crafted works were created. So that's where that line about the Argentinean death squads driving Ford Falcons came from! For that alone, French's book is one of the best portrayals of the writing process I have read. I also remember the tone of pungent cruelty right under the surface of Naipaul's books. I remember tasting the same kind of barbed emotional aggression in Paul Theroux's books and the style went on to become very fashionable at the time. Now I understand how the many "follower" authors mimicked the leader. At the time, in the 1970s, many reviewers and established intellectuals welcomed the abrasiveness as authentic. I did not like the cruelty for it's own sake, and never read Theroux's books for that reason. Nevertheless, Naipaul was irresistible in spite of his meanness--he was just so damn smart you had to find out what he had seen and how he would write about it. Now about Naipaul's honesty--it's a twisted variety. He's honest in everything that is angry, cynical or critical. In our world, that is unfortunately a very long list, and this makes him look "good" as a truth teller. However, he is so profoundly dishonest about those places where goodness is real, that he destroyed his heart and soul in the process of reaching the apogee of his career. The book's title sums it all up--You have to be willing to sacrifice anything and anyone to get ahead in this world--that's the way the world is. That's the way Naipaul is. That's why he is famous. We should all think about that for a minute. As to the gossipy part about the three-way marriage (in truth, something beyond your average adultery, more like polygamy jury-rigged for the monogamous west) French has dared to give dignity to a cuckolded literary wife and to her suffering. These women usually get tossed out with the dishwater by macho literary lions (who glorify the thrill of outside passion) and women critics (who can turn on their own kind and be very contemptuous of sensitive women who cannot protect themselves). Some of these characters appear right in the book making condescending observations about Pat Hale's suffering, or cheering on Naipaul's kinky and self-centered sexual preferences as an "awakening" necessary for his l

Incomparable as a writer, a failure as a human being

While the contradiction between professional success and personal failure is hardly unusual in the world of art and literature, Naipaul's biography provides an extreme example of this incongruity - incomparable gifts as a writer and thinker and abject failure as a human being. As a fellow Caribbean national (though he strenuously rejects the significance of his origins to his work), I have long been fascinated by Naipaul's work and have read all of his books, with the exception of the glacial and impenetrable "Enigma of Arrival" still bookmarked on page 210. He has traveled a long way from the early Mystic Masseur and Miguel Street and his vision and preoccupations have expanded accordingly to encompass observations not only on post-colonial peoples but also on the human condition more broadly speaking. Along the way, he seems to have set scant store by friendship or indeed relationships. This lack of charity towards others he extended even to his longsuffering wife Pat who, when he was still in his early twenties and seeking (unsuccessfully) his way in the world, had saved him from the grim spiral of depression and nervous breakdown. French, who had full access to her diaries and to the author's private papers, provides fascinating insights into Naipaul's personal world, including the context that shaped his many novels and travel writings. Given this unprecedented access, "The World is What It Is" is likely to remain the definitive biography of the 76-year old Naipaul. I vividly remember the author's response a few years ago to the noted broadcast journalist Charlie Rose. When asked in a television interview if with the advancing years he had intimations of his own mortality, he replied that for him death would be a release. A visibly startled Charlie Rose had asked him to repeat what he had just said. This, despite all the fame and fortune he has earned and all the accolades won, including his knighthood and the Nobel Prize. Could it be that his lasting legacy will be not his superbly crafted novels and penetrating insights but his own life story as a cautionary tale?

A first rate biography

I take several objections to the previous reviwer's criticism: it shows a serious lack of understanding and feeling. Patrick French's biography is essential in understanding Naipaul, the man, behind Naipaul, the writer, who is so famously divisive and often caricatured. Unlike Paul Theroux's "Sir Vidia's Shadow" which is a bit fictionalized and sometimes factually wrong, French draws extensively on interviews and correspondences to narrate a realistic account of Naipaul's life until the late 1990s (French doesn't chronicle the Nobel Naipaul won in 2001). Naipaul's life is full of violent relationships with people, places, and history. French doesn't let this material degenerate into sensationalism or melodrama. Remarkably, French also doesn't budge in to Naipaul's forceful personality and holds him responsible for his behavior towards several people. It is quite fascinating to read French's account of some event which is at odds with Naipaul's own skewed recollection of the same event. Unlike the other reviewer noted, French does connect the dots between Naipaul's life and work. For ex, Naipaul's affair with Margaret enabled him to write the sex scenes in "A Bend in the River," not to mention the rejuvenating effect it had on Naipaul's life and work. Overall, this book is far from a dissappointment. I enjoyed reading it as much as Naipaul's books. I can think of no better compliment.

"Warts and everything

"I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all: but remark all the roughness, pimples, warts and everything ..." were Oliver Cromwell's instructions to Sir Peter Lely, England's leading portrait painter in the second half of the 17th century. The fact that "The World Is What It Is" by Patrick French is the authorized biography of V.S.Naipaul, that Sir Vidia himself approved of the book seems to show a Cromwellian trait in Trinidad's most famous son, that he cared not what others thought, that the world should see him as he is. Love him or hate him, like him or loathe him, admire him or detest him, there's no denying that "A House for Mr Biswas", "A Bend in the River" and "Among the Believers" are works of genius. Reading this book one gets the impression that genius lives by its own rules, utterly ruthless, allowing nothing and no one to deter or distract from work in progress, Others have written learnedly and at length about this book in serious magazines and Sunday supplements in Europe and North America; the shocking revelations of the private life of the great writer hit headlines in the tabloids. However, it wasn't the scandalous details that held my interest, it was the skill, the art of the biographer himself. An interesting, intriguing, infuriating book,"The World Is What It Is" gives one an intimate portrait of the rise and rise of V.S. Naipaul, of his utter dedication to his craft of writing - even as one is appalled at his callous treatment of his long-suffering wife, his mistress, his family, his friends. One wonders that he has any friends left at all, until French reminds one that Naipaul can be amusing and charming, when it suits him, that he has remarkable powers of observation, seeing further than most ... and that much is forgiven genius.