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PARTISAN REVIEW
manner of someone's speech, in the tone of someone's voice.
Tendencies, patterns, emerge, but what dominates is the particular
observation. In Karachi, Naipaul visits a Mr. Mirza who "has
been represented to [him
1
as one of the most distinguished men of
Pakistan, one of the country's profoundest minds, and someone who
would tell me all I wanted to know about the Islamization of
institutions." An experienced reader of Naipaul knows what to
expect in the sentences that follow: a quick deflation. The voice of
the man immediately betrays his vacuity.
And there was no exchange of words: a low, even, unceasing
uninterrupted babble poured out of Mr. Mirza. We are living in
a satanic time; people were not interested in the truth;
universities were not interested in the truth. We had a lot of
information now, but too much information was as bad as too
little information . No one could foretell the future; the
"imponderables" were too many; the Tolstoyan view of history
was correct. Was Mr. Mirza the only one interested in truth?
Where was
all
this leading? It was leading back to the satanic
nature of the age, to the need for Islamic belief.
Naipaul notes the response of the young men in his company who
are "dazed with pleasure." The scene continues for another page, in
which all that Naipaul can discover about the law and institutions in
Pakistan is that "they were not divine." Naipaul remarks: "Mr.
Mirza had not thought beyond that point." The precise notations,
the clarity of the scene that Naipaul presents is in ironic contrast to
the vacuous profundities of the man he is describing.
It
is a
characteristic irony in the book. And it is accomplished by Naipaul's
extraordinary attentiveness to what counts in the scene: The mono–
logic babble of the man signals the absence of any real knowl–
edge, any real wisdom. Naipaul is incapable of being "dazed with
pleasure," with being taken in.
Another scene: In Pakistan again, Naipaul meets a young
teacher, who wishes to write a thesis on the political novels of E.M.
Forster, Conrad, Graham Greene.
"Greene?"
"He wrote those three novels about Africa.
Heart of
something. "
Immediately, we know the teacher
IS
disqualified by his abysmal
