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It was too painful.
He died again on the first page of his sons 1961 novel,A House for Mr. Biswas.
But there are consolations in this death.
It is, in other words, justice attained.
I count at least two of these books among my favorites.
Call them compromised pleasures.
The writing is always gripping, minutely observed, and told in deceptively simple, propulsive prose.
Pessimism isnt strong enough a word for these books portrayal of the postcolonial situation.
Writing in 2002, Edward Said took this view of Naipauls middle phase:
In the 1960s V.S.
Naipaul began, disquietingly, to systematise the revisionist view of empire.
This contempt for dabbling hippies like John Lennon wasnt incompatible with the high-society connections Naipaul forged among London conservatives.
His report on the 1984 Republican Convention in Dallas is as contemptuous as anything he ever wrote.
As Amit Chaudhuri has argued, writing over the weekend in theGuardian, that book anticipated W.G.
Sebalds hybrid work and theautofiction wave thats followed.
What seemed to be universal about it was the cult of success, especially his own.
If this is meant as a joke, its impossible to laugh.
Moreover, its a coarse betrayal of Naipauls natural comic gifts.
As James Wood put it, without diminished sympathy, the wounded man became the inflicter of wounds.
