EUGENE GOODHEART
253
ary outlook of the Third-World insurgency to see Naipaul as some–
one who has internalized the values of the dominant culture .
But such a view is itself an ideological reduction of the man and
his work. In Naipaul there is none of the insecurity and ingratiation
one finds in people who borrow the manners and attitudes of
another class. His confidence is
absolute~or
as absolute as is
humanly possible . And the confidence shows itself in his writing: not
only in the sureness of diction and tone , but in the comic mastery of
the street dialect of Trinidad . I am referring to early books like
Miguel Street
and
The Suffrage
of
Elvira
in which Naipaul reveals with
great charm the life of his native country. Those books could not
have been written by someone who had made himself over in the
image of a superior culture.
In experiencing Naipaul's manner as a puzzle and trying to
explain it, one is of course resisting the possible view that a man may
be a creature of his temperament rather than his circumstances.
Since temperament cannot be explained , all one can do is describe
it. We are so afflicted by the passion for explanation that we cannot
help feeling dissatisfied by mere description or characterization. My
own view is that temperament is an important part of the
explanation of Naipaul ' s manner and attitude . Another word we use
to describe the particular integrity and power of a person whom we
cannot reduce to explanation is
genius.
But it is also true that
temperament or genius does not exist in a vacuum: it unfolds itself
in the circumstances of the person' s life.
The principal fact or sentiment of Naipaul's life is his sense of
displacement. As a Hindu , he was born in a place where he did not
belong. But it is the particular strength of his temperament that he
did not suffer from the sense of exclusion that might, for instance,
make him resentful. Whatever wounds he may have suffered from
the experience of displacement , exclusion, and poverty must have
healed or been transcended . In
A House for Mr. Biswas,
a novel that
has its source in the life of his father, Naipaul shows an unblinking
and acute awareness ofthe material and spiritual squalor of Trinidad
life. But his imagination remains secure from the infection of
resentment. On the contrary, the experience of displacement simply
confirms the artist ' s view of himself as separate and superior, which
in the social sense is the mandarin sensibility. Naipaul does not want
to join or achieve power within the society from which he is
excluded. Rather he wishes to cultivate the powers that he possesses,
