Eugene Goodheart
v.
S. NAIPAUL'S MANDARIN SENSIBILITY
What is the appeal of this virtuoso of the negative? Every
scene in VS. Naipaul's work is the occasion for mandarin scorn.
It
doesn't matter whether the scene is the half-developed or "mimic"
societies of the Caribbean or the abysmal material squalor of India
or the cruel places in Africa where revolutions are being made or, for
that matter, the advanced societies of the West. Naipaul encounters
one and all with a cold-eyed contempt. Even a place as innocent and
unsqualid as the ivied Wesleyan University in Connecticut provokes
contempt as the following passage of an interview with him in the
fall, 1981, issue of
Salmagundi
shows .
Robert Boyers:
Somehow it seems strange to meet you here in this
setting, in the sedate environs of a Wesleyan sitting room.
v.s.
Naipaul:
I don't belong here, of course, although everyone
has been very gracious. It's an intolerable place, really. Do
you know that my students can't find a shop that sells the
New 10rk Review of Books?
The college store apparently has
never been asked by a member of the faculty to carry such a
publication. . ..
Boyers:
Still, the experience of teaching bright students must
have its pleasures.
Naipaul:
Are they bright students? I don't know. I think it's bad
to be mixing all the time with inferior minds. It's very, very
damaging to be with the young folk, the unformed mind . I
think it damaging to one.
Boyers:
Where do you look for better minds? Where is your peer
group?
Naipaul:
There are people. And you know, few things excite me
more than meeting a man I admire.
Boyers:
Do you have a literary circle as such?
Naipaul:
No, but most of the people I know tend to be people
who would be interested in my work, and have been for a
long time . They are people whose interest I think is
worthwhile.
Readers may find the utter absence of ingratiation irresistible.
Our social lives are purchased at the cost of repressing the feelings
that Naipaul has the courage to express.
It
is not necessarily that
