WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.840 You know, there's a phrase the Swedish Academy 00:00:01.840 --> 00:00:04.200 used when they handed out the Nobel Prize in 00:00:04.200 --> 00:00:07.620 literature back in 2001. They talked about incorruptible 00:00:07.620 --> 00:00:10.199 scrutiny. It's a powerful phrase. It sounds almost 00:00:10.199 --> 00:00:12.000 heroic, doesn't it? Like a kind of superpower. 00:00:12.320 --> 00:00:14.160 It really does. It sounds like x -ray vision 00:00:14.160 --> 00:00:17.179 for the soul or for society. But today we're 00:00:17.179 --> 00:00:19.820 looking at a man who, well... who arguably turned 00:00:19.820 --> 00:00:22.039 that superpower into a weapon. We're talking 00:00:22.039 --> 00:00:24.640 about Sir V .S. Naipaul. Exactly. And the deeper 00:00:24.640 --> 00:00:26.579 you go into the sources, and we have a lot of 00:00:26.579 --> 00:00:28.579 them, the biographies, the critical essays, his 00:00:28.579 --> 00:00:31.699 own wife's personal diaries, the more you realize 00:00:31.699 --> 00:00:35.420 that this scrutiny, it wasn't just about writing 00:00:35.420 --> 00:00:38.159 beautiful sentences. No, it was about dismantling 00:00:38.159 --> 00:00:40.920 things, dismantling people, places, entire cultures. 00:00:41.140 --> 00:00:44.119 Including his own. And that right there is the 00:00:44.119 --> 00:00:46.020 heart of the tension we're going to explore in 00:00:46.020 --> 00:00:48.439 this deep dive. It's a massive paradox, isn't 00:00:48.439 --> 00:00:51.640 it? A huge one. On one hand, you have this absolute 00:00:51.640 --> 00:00:54.619 titan of English literature. I mean, the accolades 00:00:54.619 --> 00:00:57.500 are staggering. Knighted by the Queen in 1990, 00:00:57.899 --> 00:01:01.560 Booker Prize in 71, the Nobel in 01. A man who 00:01:01.560 --> 00:01:05.640 wrote prose so clean, so precise, it's just intimidating. 00:01:06.159 --> 00:01:08.159 But on the other hand. On the other hand, you 00:01:08.159 --> 00:01:11.400 have a man who is described famously as a witness 00:01:11.400 --> 00:01:14.920 for the Western prosecution, a figure just hammered 00:01:14.920 --> 00:01:17.219 with accusations of racism, misogyny, incredible 00:01:17.219 --> 00:01:19.640 cruelty in his personal life, and what seems 00:01:19.640 --> 00:01:22.819 to be a shocking lack of empathy. And our mission 00:01:22.819 --> 00:01:25.120 today is to try and figure out how those two 00:01:25.120 --> 00:01:27.420 things can possibly coexist in one human being. 00:01:28.010 --> 00:01:30.930 We've got a huge stack of materials here. There's 00:01:30.930 --> 00:01:33.290 Patrick French's authorized biography, The World 00:01:33.290 --> 00:01:36.069 is What It Is, which is just incredibly revealing. 00:01:36.170 --> 00:01:38.109 Almost uncomfortably so. Deeply uncomfortable. 00:01:38.430 --> 00:01:41.390 Then you have the critical takedowns from intellectuals 00:01:41.390 --> 00:01:44.170 like Edward Said and Robert Harris. And, of course, 00:01:44.209 --> 00:01:46.109 the intimate, absolutely heartbreaking diaries 00:01:46.109 --> 00:01:48.269 of his first wife, Patricia Hale. And the books 00:01:48.269 --> 00:01:50.310 themselves were trying to map what Naipaul himself 00:01:50.310 --> 00:01:53.010 called the topography of the void. That's the 00:01:53.010 --> 00:01:55.950 key concept, the void. Naipaul was obsessed with 00:01:55.950 --> 00:01:57.989 societies that he felt had been hollowed out 00:01:57.989 --> 00:02:01.329 by history, by colonialism. But to understand 00:02:01.329 --> 00:02:04.109 why he saw voids where other people saw home, 00:02:04.390 --> 00:02:06.930 you have to understand where he came from. So 00:02:06.930 --> 00:02:08.969 let's start at the very beginning. Let's go to 00:02:08.969 --> 00:02:10.909 that void before he tried to fill it with words. 00:02:11.150 --> 00:02:13.969 We need to go to a small... sugar plantation 00:02:13.969 --> 00:02:18.250 town in Trinidad in the early 1930s. Chaguanas. 00:02:18.330 --> 00:02:21.229 This is where Vidya Harsaraj Prasad Naipaul is 00:02:21.229 --> 00:02:24.900 born, August 17, 1932. And if you look at the 00:02:24.900 --> 00:02:27.479 history of that place at that time, Naipaul is 00:02:27.479 --> 00:02:30.900 part of a very specific and very traumatic slice 00:02:30.900 --> 00:02:33.400 of the British Empire's history. He's a descendant 00:02:33.400 --> 00:02:35.819 of indentured laborers. Yes. Can we just pause 00:02:35.819 --> 00:02:37.639 on that term, indentured laborers? I think a 00:02:37.639 --> 00:02:39.280 lot of people hear that and they either gloss 00:02:39.280 --> 00:02:41.099 over it or they just think immigrant workers. 00:02:41.520 --> 00:02:44.419 But the context is much, much darker and more 00:02:44.419 --> 00:02:47.139 specific to the machinery of empire. So much 00:02:47.139 --> 00:02:49.379 darker. This was the system the British Empire 00:02:49.379 --> 00:02:51.960 pivoted to. after they abolished slavery in the 00:02:51.960 --> 00:02:54.979 1830s. The sugar plantations, especially in the 00:02:54.979 --> 00:02:57.620 Caribbean, they still needed bodies. They needed 00:02:57.620 --> 00:02:59.900 cheap labor to cut the cane, but they couldn't 00:02:59.900 --> 00:03:02.060 legally use slaves anymore. So they looked east. 00:03:02.400 --> 00:03:04.879 They looked to India, specifically to regions 00:03:04.879 --> 00:03:06.780 that were being devastated by things like the 00:03:06.780 --> 00:03:09.740 Great Famine of 1876, and they would sign people 00:03:09.740 --> 00:03:12.319 up for these five -year contracts. It was basically 00:03:12.319 --> 00:03:15.180 a desperate trade. You escape starvation in India 00:03:15.180 --> 00:03:17.580 to do this back -breaking labor halfway across 00:03:17.580 --> 00:03:21.259 the world. That's precisely it. Naipaul's grandfathers, 00:03:21.259 --> 00:03:24.039 from both sides of his family, came over on those 00:03:24.039 --> 00:03:26.740 ships in the 1880s and 90s. So he's born into 00:03:26.740 --> 00:03:29.199 this displaced community. They're culturally 00:03:29.199 --> 00:03:31.939 Indian, specifically Hindu Brahmins, but they're 00:03:31.939 --> 00:03:33.919 geographically stranded in the West Indies. And 00:03:33.919 --> 00:03:35.340 you mentioned they were Brahmins. Now that's 00:03:35.340 --> 00:03:38.240 the high caste, the priestly caste, right? Theoretically, 00:03:38.240 --> 00:03:40.860 yes. In the Hindu caste system, Brahmins are 00:03:40.860 --> 00:03:43.860 the priests, the scholars. They're at the top 00:03:43.860 --> 00:03:46.199 of the spiritual hierarchy. But here's the irony. 00:03:46.560 --> 00:03:48.319 And it's an irony that I think haunted Naipaul 00:03:48.319 --> 00:03:51.280 his entire life. In a muddy plantation town in 00:03:51.280 --> 00:03:54.759 Trinidad, that status means nothing. It's invisible 00:03:54.759 --> 00:03:57.419 to the outside world. To the colonial overseers, 00:03:57.460 --> 00:04:00.310 they're just... Laborers. Exactly. They were 00:04:00.310 --> 00:04:01.810 just another group of workers. They're living 00:04:01.810 --> 00:04:04.169 in what Naipaul later described as a destitute 00:04:04.169 --> 00:04:07.110 society. The sources describe this really vivid 00:04:07.110 --> 00:04:09.729 sensory transition happening during his childhood. 00:04:09.810 --> 00:04:11.909 It feels like you're watching a culture just 00:04:11.909 --> 00:04:15.370 dissolve in real time. The indiness is fading. 00:04:15.629 --> 00:04:19.110 It's the created self emerging from the ruins 00:04:19.110 --> 00:04:21.209 of the old world. You can see it in the physical 00:04:21.209 --> 00:04:23.310 environment. They go from living in traditional 00:04:23.310 --> 00:04:26.990 mud huts with earthen walls to, you know. Timber 00:04:26.990 --> 00:04:29.209 houses on stilts, you see it in the diet. Right. 00:04:29.269 --> 00:04:31.649 They were historically vegetarian Hindus. And 00:04:31.649 --> 00:04:33.829 suddenly they're eating chicken and fish because 00:04:33.829 --> 00:04:35.689 that's what was available and it's what the surrounding 00:04:35.689 --> 00:04:38.769 Creole culture ate. The old rules were breaking 00:04:38.769 --> 00:04:41.810 down. On the clothes, too. That's a huge signal. 00:04:41.990 --> 00:04:44.569 Massive signal. The men start wearing Western 00:04:44.569 --> 00:04:47.170 trousers. The women start wearing heels and belts 00:04:47.170 --> 00:04:49.329 with their saris, which creates this sort of 00:04:49.329 --> 00:04:52.370 hybrid fashion. But the biggest shift, the one 00:04:52.370 --> 00:04:54.930 that really defines Naipaul's entire career. 00:04:55.500 --> 00:04:58.519 is language. Hindi is disappearing. It's evaporating. 00:04:58.560 --> 00:05:01.100 English is taking over completely. And right 00:05:01.100 --> 00:05:04.160 in the middle of this cultural slipstream is 00:05:04.160 --> 00:05:07.939 Naipaul's father, Seepersad Naipaul. He feels 00:05:07.939 --> 00:05:09.879 like the most important character in the first 00:05:09.879 --> 00:05:12.420 act of this story. He's the one who sets the 00:05:12.420 --> 00:05:15.699 whole trajectory. He absolutely is. Seepersad 00:05:15.699 --> 00:05:18.639 is the seed of everything. He was a journalist 00:05:18.639 --> 00:05:21.500 for the Trinidad Guardian. which was a very rare 00:05:21.500 --> 00:05:23.779 achievement for an Indian in that era. But he 00:05:23.779 --> 00:05:26.600 didn't just want to report the news. He revered 00:05:26.600 --> 00:05:29.879 the writing life as this almost holy vocation. 00:05:29.939 --> 00:05:32.620 He worshipped literature. There's a detail in 00:05:32.620 --> 00:05:34.620 the biography I love, but it's also kind of sad. 00:05:34.819 --> 00:05:37.420 It says they lived in an ordered fantasy world. 00:05:37.639 --> 00:05:40.480 It's deeply sad. To survive the reality of this 00:05:40.480 --> 00:05:42.800 plantation town, they built a fortress out of 00:05:42.800 --> 00:05:46.560 books. Seepersad would read to his son. V .S. 00:05:46.620 --> 00:05:49.860 or Vito, as he was called, from Nicholas Nickleby 00:05:49.860 --> 00:05:52.540 and Julius Caesar. They were looking at their 00:05:52.540 --> 00:05:54.819 muddy, tropical world through the lens of high 00:05:54.819 --> 00:05:57.259 European literature. So you have this young boy. 00:05:57.300 --> 00:05:59.399 He's the eldest son. He technically has all these 00:05:59.399 --> 00:06:01.660 traditional Hindu duties. He's supposed to be 00:06:01.660 --> 00:06:03.939 performing the rituals, being the good Brahmin 00:06:03.939 --> 00:06:06.980 boy. But his dad is training him to be a Victorian 00:06:06.980 --> 00:06:09.540 gentleman writer. It's an incredible contradiction. 00:06:09.800 --> 00:06:11.480 It must have created a total split personality. 00:06:12.239 --> 00:06:15.319 Seepersad basically transferred all of his own 00:06:15.319 --> 00:06:18.680 thwarted literary ambition onto his son. He looked 00:06:18.680 --> 00:06:21.139 at Vito and said, you will do what I couldn't. 00:06:21.240 --> 00:06:24.220 He essentially drafted his son into a war for 00:06:24.220 --> 00:06:26.540 literary recognition. And the main weapon in 00:06:26.540 --> 00:06:29.680 that war was education. Yeah. Specifically, a 00:06:29.680 --> 00:06:34.019 school called Queen's Royal College. QRC. And 00:06:34.019 --> 00:06:36.420 it was modeled strictly on a British public school. 00:06:36.519 --> 00:06:38.500 The curriculum was all about... Metropolitan 00:06:38.500 --> 00:06:42.660 values, standard English, Latin, French. It was 00:06:42.660 --> 00:06:44.800 an education designed to make you British, even 00:06:44.800 --> 00:06:47.100 if you were thousands of miles away from Britain. 00:06:47.259 --> 00:06:50.139 And the goal of every bright boy at QRC was singular, 00:06:50.319 --> 00:06:52.819 right? The island scholarship. That was the golden 00:06:52.819 --> 00:06:54.620 ticket. Literally a ticket out. It was the escape 00:06:54.620 --> 00:06:57.459 hatch. Yeah. If you won, the government paid 00:06:57.459 --> 00:06:59.639 for you to study anywhere in the British Commonwealth. 00:06:59.860 --> 00:07:01.879 It was the only way out of the sugar economy. 00:07:02.439 --> 00:07:04.680 And I, Paul, of course, he wins it. And he doesn't 00:07:04.680 --> 00:07:06.920 choose something sensible like medicine or law, 00:07:07.079 --> 00:07:09.019 which you'd think a family trying to lift themselves 00:07:09.019 --> 00:07:12.019 out of poverty would push for. No, he chooses 00:07:12.019 --> 00:07:16.160 Oxford, specifically University College. And 00:07:16.160 --> 00:07:19.139 he's very explicit about why. He wrote later 00:07:19.139 --> 00:07:22.660 that he chose Oxford in order at last to write. 00:07:22.779 --> 00:07:24.740 He wasn't going for a degree. He was going for 00:07:24.740 --> 00:07:26.879 an identity. There's that anecdote from right 00:07:26.879 --> 00:07:29.079 before he leaves in 1950 that I found really. 00:07:29.629 --> 00:07:32.209 It's touching, but it's also kind of terrifying 00:07:32.209 --> 00:07:34.290 in terms of the pressure he was putting on himself. 00:07:34.449 --> 00:07:37.389 The pencil? The copying pencil. It's such a perfect 00:07:37.389 --> 00:07:40.089 writerly detail. Yeah. He goes to a shop in Port 00:07:40.089 --> 00:07:43.269 of Spain and buys a pad of paper and a copying 00:07:43.269 --> 00:07:45.709 pencil. And he notes that he bought them because, 00:07:45.769 --> 00:07:48.670 in his mind, I was traveling to become a writer 00:07:48.670 --> 00:07:51.990 and I had to start. He's 18 years old and he 00:07:51.990 --> 00:07:54.050 believes that buying the stationery makes the 00:07:54.050 --> 00:07:56.949 identity real. He's willing the writer into existence. 00:07:57.230 --> 00:07:58.980 Completely. It's an act of faith. So he gets 00:07:58.980 --> 00:08:00.519 on the boat. He travels across the Atlantic. 00:08:00.579 --> 00:08:02.620 He gets to Oxford, the intellectual center of 00:08:02.620 --> 00:08:04.279 the universe. You think, OK, cue the montage 00:08:04.279 --> 00:08:07.000 of success. He's finally made it. And it was 00:08:07.000 --> 00:08:09.160 the complete opposite. The sources paint a picture 00:08:09.160 --> 00:08:11.639 of just profound disillusionment. It was closer 00:08:11.639 --> 00:08:14.259 to a horror movie for him. Really? A horror movie? 00:08:14.399 --> 00:08:17.899 How so? Well, he lands in 1950. And socially, 00:08:18.100 --> 00:08:21.420 he's a ghost. He is totally isolated. He's poor. 00:08:21.540 --> 00:08:23.639 He's on a scholarship. He doesn't have the right 00:08:23.639 --> 00:08:26.180 clothes or the right accent. He feels like a 00:08:26.180 --> 00:08:28.730 complete stranger in England. But he also knows 00:08:28.730 --> 00:08:30.970 he doesn't fit in back in Trinidad anymore. He's 00:08:30.970 --> 00:08:33.970 in limbo. Exactly. He's caught between two worlds 00:08:33.970 --> 00:08:36.789 and at home in neither. And the writing, the 00:08:36.789 --> 00:08:38.970 whole reason he went there. It was a disaster. 00:08:39.049 --> 00:08:40.929 It just wasn't working. He felt everything he 00:08:40.929 --> 00:08:43.649 wrote was contrived. He couldn't find his voice 00:08:43.649 --> 00:08:45.389 because he was trying to write like a proper 00:08:45.389 --> 00:08:48.169 English gentleman, which he wasn't. And about 00:08:48.169 --> 00:08:51.070 a year in, he just spirals into what he later 00:08:51.070 --> 00:08:54.049 called a mental illness. I read he blew all his 00:08:54.049 --> 00:08:56.830 money on a trip to Spain. That seems impulsive. 00:08:57.129 --> 00:09:00.590 Every last penny. In 1952, it was totally impulsive, 00:09:00.610 --> 00:09:03.269 completely irrational. He called it a nervous 00:09:03.269 --> 00:09:05.929 breakdown. He spent his entire savings just to 00:09:05.929 --> 00:09:08.149 get away from Oxford, to get away from the failure. 00:09:08.269 --> 00:09:10.789 It was basically a cry for help. But in the middle 00:09:10.789 --> 00:09:13.409 of this breakdown, he finds an anchor, Patricia 00:09:13.409 --> 00:09:16.269 Hale. Pat Hale. She was a history student, and 00:09:16.269 --> 00:09:18.570 they met at a college play. And she becomes... 00:09:18.960 --> 00:09:21.139 Well, she becomes everything to him. She's his 00:09:21.139 --> 00:09:23.220 emotional support. She's his career planner. 00:09:23.419 --> 00:09:25.299 She's his first reader, his editor. But it wasn't 00:09:25.299 --> 00:09:27.639 some kind of fairytale romance. Oh, not at all. 00:09:28.279 --> 00:09:30.679 Her family was openly hostile because he was 00:09:30.679 --> 00:09:33.940 Indian. His family was, let's say, unenthusiastic 00:09:33.940 --> 00:09:36.799 because she was white. But she stood by him. 00:09:36.899 --> 00:09:39.320 She was the one who saw the genius when nobody 00:09:39.320 --> 00:09:42.500 else did, when even he didn't. And then, just 00:09:42.500 --> 00:09:45.919 as they're graduating in 1953, the hammer drops. 00:09:46.700 --> 00:09:50.259 His father dies. This is a pivotal trauma. Sieper 00:09:50.259 --> 00:09:53.279 said the man who built that whole fantasy world 00:09:53.279 --> 00:09:55.799 of literature, the man who pushed him to Oxford, 00:09:56.000 --> 00:09:58.399 dies of a heart attack back in Trinidad. And 00:09:58.399 --> 00:10:00.740 V .S. Naipaul, as the eldest son, is religiously 00:10:00.740 --> 00:10:02.779 obligated to light the funeral pyre. But he can't 00:10:02.779 --> 00:10:05.279 go. He can't afford it. Because he's broke. He 00:10:05.279 --> 00:10:07.480 didn't have the boat fare. So he's sitting alone 00:10:07.480 --> 00:10:09.980 in Oxford, imagining his father's cremation, 00:10:09.980 --> 00:10:11.899 while his younger brother Shiva, who was only 00:10:11.899 --> 00:10:13.820 eight years old at the time, has to perform the 00:10:13.820 --> 00:10:16.409 sacred rites. That is just a staggering burden 00:10:16.409 --> 00:10:19.090 of guilt to carry. You're the eldest son, you've 00:10:19.090 --> 00:10:22.289 left the family, and you fail in the final, most 00:10:22.289 --> 00:10:24.830 important duty. Naipaul later wrote that this 00:10:24.830 --> 00:10:28.409 event marked Shiva with a private wound. But 00:10:28.409 --> 00:10:30.250 you have to imagine the wound it left on V .S. 00:10:30.269 --> 00:10:32.620 as well. He had left to become this famous writer 00:10:32.620 --> 00:10:34.940 to make his father proud, and his father died 00:10:34.940 --> 00:10:37.519 before he published a single word. He had nothing 00:10:37.519 --> 00:10:39.659 to show for the sacrifice. And to add insult 00:10:39.659 --> 00:10:42.360 to injury, his academic career falls apart right 00:10:42.360 --> 00:10:45.480 after that. Total collapse. He fails his postgraduate 00:10:45.480 --> 00:10:48.360 degree, the B -Lid. He blamed the professor, 00:10:48.659 --> 00:10:51.440 a man named F .P. Wilson. He even accused him 00:10:51.440 --> 00:10:53.779 of racial prejudice. Yeah. But the result was 00:10:53.779 --> 00:10:56.580 final. His scholarship money was gone. The academic 00:10:56.580 --> 00:10:59.259 door slammed shut. He later said he hated Oxford 00:10:59.259 --> 00:11:01.759 and the solitude it brought. The dream had completely 00:11:01.759 --> 00:11:05.379 soured. So it's 1954. He's stuck in London. He 00:11:05.379 --> 00:11:07.460 has no money, no degrees. His father is dead 00:11:07.460 --> 00:11:09.059 and he hasn't published a book. This is absolute 00:11:09.059 --> 00:11:11.740 rock bottom. It is. But then salvation comes 00:11:11.740 --> 00:11:13.820 from a very unlikely place. It comes from the 00:11:13.820 --> 00:11:17.059 BBC. The Caribbean Voices Program. Exactly. He 00:11:17.059 --> 00:11:19.080 gets a part -time gig with a producer named Henry 00:11:19.080 --> 00:11:22.649 Swansea in late 1954. And this introduces him 00:11:22.649 --> 00:11:24.870 to the freelancer's room in the old Langham Hotel. 00:11:25.190 --> 00:11:27.990 The way the sources describe this room, it sounds 00:11:27.990 --> 00:11:30.669 like the Harlem Renaissance, but for the Caribbean. 00:11:30.710 --> 00:11:33.590 It sounds like this incredible hub. It was literary 00:11:33.590 --> 00:11:36.169 alchemy. You have all these writers, Sam Sullivan, 00:11:36.370 --> 00:11:39.070 George Lamming, just hanging out, smoking, trading 00:11:39.070 --> 00:11:42.190 stories. And for the first time, Naipaul isn't 00:11:42.190 --> 00:11:46.110 the isolated other he was at Oxford. He's among 00:11:46.110 --> 00:11:48.870 his peers. He's hearing the rhythm of Trinidadian 00:11:48.870 --> 00:11:51.370 speech again, the banter, the calypso voice. 00:11:51.610 --> 00:11:53.669 He's reconnecting with the very thing he tried 00:11:53.669 --> 00:11:57.490 so hard to escape. Yes. And that atmosphere is 00:11:57.490 --> 00:11:59.690 what unlocks Miguel Street. Which is the first 00:11:59.690 --> 00:12:01.509 book he actually wrote, right? Even if it wasn't 00:12:01.509 --> 00:12:03.870 the first one published. Correct. He wrote Miguel 00:12:03.870 --> 00:12:06.370 Street in just five weeks. It's a collection 00:12:06.370 --> 00:12:08.750 of linked short stories about a street in Port 00:12:08.750 --> 00:12:11.659 of Spain. It's funny, it's lively, it perfectly 00:12:11.659 --> 00:12:14.480 captures that specific street energy he was reabsorbing 00:12:14.480 --> 00:12:17.100 in the BBC room. But, and this is classic publishing, 00:12:17.259 --> 00:12:19.899 the publisher didn't want it. Not at first. It's 00:12:19.899 --> 00:12:23.139 the eternal struggle. Andre Deutsch, his publisher, 00:12:23.299 --> 00:12:25.840 basically said, this is great kid, but short 00:12:25.840 --> 00:12:29.039 stories don't sell. Go write a novel first. So 00:12:29.039 --> 00:12:31.419 he just churns one out. He writes The Mystic 00:12:31.419 --> 00:12:34.590 Masseur, and he writes it almost cynically. He 00:12:34.590 --> 00:12:36.929 just wanted to get it done to satisfy the publisher. 00:12:37.289 --> 00:12:39.570 He wrote it without much enthusiasm, he said. 00:12:39.710 --> 00:12:42.990 He got 125 pounds for it. But it launched him. 00:12:43.029 --> 00:12:45.669 He got his name in print. Now during this time, 00:12:45.750 --> 00:12:49.090 he finally marries Pat. But they do it in secret. 00:12:49.370 --> 00:12:52.580 They married in 1955. and didn't tell their families 00:12:52.580 --> 00:12:54.679 for a while. It just shows how precarious their 00:12:54.679 --> 00:12:56.940 whole position was. For a long time, Pat was 00:12:56.940 --> 00:12:59.000 the main breadwinner. She was working as a teacher 00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:00.700 to support them while he worked part -time at 00:13:00.700 --> 00:13:03.379 the BBC and tried to get his footing as a writer. 00:13:03.620 --> 00:13:07.379 In 1956, he finally goes back to Trinidad. He 00:13:07.379 --> 00:13:09.000 hasn't been back since he left with that copying 00:13:09.000 --> 00:13:11.220 pencil and all those dreams. He goes back on 00:13:11.220 --> 00:13:14.549 a banana boat, the TSS Covina. And this trip 00:13:14.549 --> 00:13:16.889 is absolutely crucial because it cements his 00:13:16.889 --> 00:13:19.990 role as the outsider. He's not returning as a 00:13:19.990 --> 00:13:21.750 son of the soil. He's returning as a critic, 00:13:21.889 --> 00:13:24.750 an observer. He writes these long letters to 00:13:24.750 --> 00:13:26.690 Pat describing the other passengers on the boat, 00:13:26.750 --> 00:13:29.210 and they are just ruthless. This is where that 00:13:29.210 --> 00:13:31.710 incorruptible scrutiny starts to get really sharp. 00:13:31.809 --> 00:13:34.169 It does. When he lands, he sees a political awakening 00:13:34.169 --> 00:13:37.009 happening. It's 1956. Elections are going on. 00:13:37.070 --> 00:13:39.330 But where other people saw liberation and the 00:13:39.330 --> 00:13:43.080 birth of democracy, Naipaul saw. Tribalism. He 00:13:43.080 --> 00:13:45.159 saw racial lines hardening blacks versus Indian 00:13:45.159 --> 00:13:48.259 Muslims. He realized the fluid, chaotic society 00:13:48.259 --> 00:13:50.779 he remembered was gone, or at least changing 00:13:50.779 --> 00:13:52.720 into something else. But that chaos gave him 00:13:52.720 --> 00:13:54.539 the material for his next book, The Suffrage 00:13:54.539 --> 00:13:57.299 of Elvira. It did. He went campaigning with his 00:13:57.299 --> 00:13:59.259 uncle, saw the assertity and the comedy of the 00:13:59.259 --> 00:14:01.519 whole election process, and turned it into this 00:14:01.519 --> 00:14:05.169 brilliant satire. But all of this, the comedies, 00:14:05.190 --> 00:14:07.169 the early success, it was really just a warm 00:14:07.169 --> 00:14:09.289 -up. He was building the skills he needed to 00:14:09.289 --> 00:14:11.230 tackle the big one, the book that would finally 00:14:11.230 --> 00:14:13.950 fulfill his father's dream. A House for Mr. Biswas. 00:14:14.210 --> 00:14:18.090 The Masterpiece. Published in 1961. Now, for 00:14:18.090 --> 00:14:19.769 any listener who hasn't read it, this is a big 00:14:19.769 --> 00:14:22.210 book. It's dense. It's detailed. But at its core, 00:14:22.330 --> 00:14:26.330 it's a very simple, very personal story. It's 00:14:26.330 --> 00:14:29.470 an act of resurrection. Naipaul spent three years 00:14:29.470 --> 00:14:31.710 writing it in a small house in Streedom Hill 00:14:31.710 --> 00:14:34.409 in London. He later said these were the happiest 00:14:34.409 --> 00:14:37.090 years of his entire life. He took the tragic, 00:14:37.190 --> 00:14:40.669 broken, incomplete life of his father and reimagined 00:14:40.669 --> 00:14:43.399 it into the character of Mohan Biswas. And the 00:14:43.399 --> 00:14:46.220 plot is so simple, really. A man just wants a 00:14:46.220 --> 00:14:48.220 house. But the meaning is absolutely massive. 00:14:48.639 --> 00:14:51.139 Mr. Piswas is born with bad luck, he's physically 00:14:51.139 --> 00:14:53.799 weak, and he gets trapped by his powerful in 00:14:53.799 --> 00:14:56.700 -laws, the Tulsas. They live in this sprawling, 00:14:56.700 --> 00:14:59.340 chaotic, communal house called Hanuman House, 00:14:59.500 --> 00:15:01.240 and they demand conformity. They want to just 00:15:01.240 --> 00:15:03.440 swallow him up into the family, collective. And 00:15:03.440 --> 00:15:05.720 all he wants is a little piece of his own. He 00:15:05.720 --> 00:15:08.100 wants a house. A house is independence. It's 00:15:08.100 --> 00:15:10.220 a claim to his own existence. It's about not 00:15:10.220 --> 00:15:12.539 being a footnote in someone else's story. The 00:15:12.539 --> 00:15:15.000 book just tackles so much. The crushing weight 00:15:15.000 --> 00:15:18.440 of colonial society, dependency, the search for 00:15:18.440 --> 00:15:21.659 autonomy. Patrick French, his biographer, compares 00:15:21.659 --> 00:15:24.519 it to Tolstoy or Dickens in its scope. It creates 00:15:24.519 --> 00:15:27.299 a complete world from scratch. It really does. 00:15:27.500 --> 00:15:30.500 And there's a quote from Naipaul about the writing 00:15:30.500 --> 00:15:31.919 process that I've never been able to forget. 00:15:32.059 --> 00:15:34.840 He said that writing the book destroyed memory. 00:15:35.279 --> 00:15:38.009 What does that even mean? He meant that the fiction 00:15:38.009 --> 00:15:40.230 he created became more real to him than the actual 00:15:40.230 --> 00:15:43.049 events of his childhood. He essentially overwrote 00:15:43.049 --> 00:15:45.450 his own hard drive. The art completely consumed 00:15:45.450 --> 00:15:48.029 the life. He claimed he knew the book by heart 00:15:48.029 --> 00:15:49.509 by the time he finished it. And he dedicated 00:15:49.509 --> 00:15:53.190 it to Pat, eventually. Posthumously. In 2011. 00:15:53.509 --> 00:15:55.970 Which, as we'll see when we get to his personal 00:15:55.970 --> 00:15:58.649 life, is, well, it's a very complicated gesture. 00:15:59.000 --> 00:16:01.480 So Biswas makes him a literary star. He's done 00:16:01.480 --> 00:16:03.440 it. He's only 29 years old, and he's written 00:16:03.440 --> 00:16:05.299 what many consider one of the great novels of 00:16:05.299 --> 00:16:08.799 the 20th century. But then in the 1960s, something 00:16:08.799 --> 00:16:11.820 shifts. He moves away from fiction and into travel 00:16:11.820 --> 00:16:14.799 writing, and the tone changes dramatically. The 00:16:14.799 --> 00:16:17.519 humor starts to curdle into something much, much 00:16:17.519 --> 00:16:19.860 darker. The shift really begins with the Middle 00:16:19.860 --> 00:16:23.190 Passage in 1962. And the irony is that it was 00:16:23.190 --> 00:16:25.389 commissioned by Dr. Eric Williams, who was the 00:16:25.389 --> 00:16:28.610 premier of Trinidad. He wanted a book about the 00:16:28.610 --> 00:16:31.870 Caribbean by its most famous literary son. He 00:16:31.870 --> 00:16:33.570 probably expected a celebration of independence. 00:16:34.049 --> 00:16:36.110 I bet he regretted that commission pretty quickly. 00:16:36.289 --> 00:16:37.990 He got a hand grenade instead of travelogue. 00:16:38.769 --> 00:16:41.330 Naipaul looked at the West Indies, his home, 00:16:41.429 --> 00:16:43.830 and delivered one of the most devastating sentences 00:16:43.830 --> 00:16:47.370 in literary history. He wrote, history is built 00:16:47.370 --> 00:16:49.799 around achievement and creation. And nothing 00:16:49.799 --> 00:16:52.259 was created in the West Indies. Nothing was created. 00:16:52.299 --> 00:16:54.779 That is just brutal. It's a complete negation 00:16:54.779 --> 00:16:57.039 of the people living there. It's an annihilation. 00:16:57.539 --> 00:16:59.919 Naipaul's thesis was that slavery and colonialism 00:16:59.919 --> 00:17:02.639 had engendered such deep self -contempt that 00:17:02.639 --> 00:17:04.839 the people there were incapable of true creation. 00:17:05.359 --> 00:17:08.279 He didn't see nationalism. He saw mimicry. He 00:17:08.279 --> 00:17:10.880 didn't see culture. He saw confusion. He argued 00:17:10.880 --> 00:17:12.660 that without the rigid structure of the empire, 00:17:12.960 --> 00:17:14.960 these societies were just drifting in a void. 00:17:15.319 --> 00:17:17.980 And this idea of mimicry, this becomes a central 00:17:17.980 --> 00:17:19.980 obsession for him for the rest of his career. 00:17:20.160 --> 00:17:23.140 It leads directly to his 1967 novel The Mimic 00:17:23.140 --> 00:17:26.059 Men. Can we just define mimic men for the listener? 00:17:26.220 --> 00:17:28.619 Because it sounds like a sci -fi term, but it's 00:17:28.619 --> 00:17:31.000 really a sociological critique. Think of it this 00:17:31.000 --> 00:17:34.619 way. Naipaul looked at the politicians and the 00:17:34.619 --> 00:17:37.019 new leaders of these recently independent countries. 00:17:37.630 --> 00:17:40.970 in the caribbean in africa in asia and he argued 00:17:40.970 --> 00:17:43.089 that they were just play acting they were mimicking 00:17:43.089 --> 00:17:45.430 the structures of the western powers that used 00:17:45.430 --> 00:17:47.609 to rule them they wore the suits they used the 00:17:47.609 --> 00:17:49.609 parliament buildings but he believed there was 00:17:49.609 --> 00:17:52.890 no substance or real power behind it so the idea 00:17:52.890 --> 00:17:55.730 is that they believe real life real history is 00:17:55.730 --> 00:17:58.150 something that happens in london or paris or 00:17:58.150 --> 00:18:01.069 new york so their own governance is just a kind 00:18:01.069 --> 00:18:03.230 of performance they're hollow men that's the 00:18:03.230 --> 00:18:06.619 idea and what's Remarkable is that Eric Williams, 00:18:06.839 --> 00:18:09.079 the very politician he was essentially critiquing, 00:18:09.079 --> 00:18:12.279 read it and said the term was harsh but true. 00:18:12.460 --> 00:18:15.640 It struck a very deep nerve. It validated a certain 00:18:15.640 --> 00:18:17.740 anxiety that was floating around in the post 00:18:17.740 --> 00:18:20.420 -colonial world. Naipaul then takes this same 00:18:20.420 --> 00:18:23.180 scrutinizing gaze to India, the ancestral homeland. 00:18:23.420 --> 00:18:26.180 You'd expect his book An Area of Darkness from 00:18:26.180 --> 00:18:29.079 1964 to be about finding his roots, a kind of 00:18:29.079 --> 00:18:31.880 heartwarming return. Instead, it was about finding 00:18:31.880 --> 00:18:34.069 his nightmares. He said that when he arrived 00:18:34.069 --> 00:18:37.269 in India, he was overwhelmed by two things. First 00:18:37.269 --> 00:18:40.589 was the anonymity in Trinidad and in England. 00:18:40.630 --> 00:18:43.109 He was special. He was the Indian in the room 00:18:43.109 --> 00:18:46.410 in India. He was just another face in a massive 00:18:46.410 --> 00:18:50.109 crowd. He lost his distinctiveness and he absolutely 00:18:50.109 --> 00:18:52.789 hated it. And the second thing, the physical 00:18:52.789 --> 00:18:55.819 reality of poverty. But it wasn't just the poverty 00:18:55.819 --> 00:18:58.200 itself that horrified him. It was what he saw 00:18:58.200 --> 00:19:00.400 as the Indian reaction to it, what he perceived 00:19:00.400 --> 00:19:03.640 as a kind of resignation. He saw people defecating 00:19:03.640 --> 00:19:06.779 in the open. He saw crumbling ruins. And he felt 00:19:06.779 --> 00:19:09.680 this mix of rage and panic. He couldn't understand 00:19:09.680 --> 00:19:11.740 why people weren't angrier about it. There's 00:19:11.740 --> 00:19:13.839 that story about him visiting his ancestral village 00:19:13.839 --> 00:19:16.799 that is... just it's so bizarre it captures his 00:19:16.799 --> 00:19:19.259 detachment perfectly he finally goes to the village 00:19:19.259 --> 00:19:21.539 where his grandfather came from a relative comes 00:19:21.539 --> 00:19:23.339 up to him and asks him for aid for money because 00:19:23.339 --> 00:19:25.759 they're struggling and nipal doesn't just refuse 00:19:25.759 --> 00:19:28.500 he flees he literally runs away from the village 00:19:29.160 --> 00:19:31.440 He called the experience hysteria. He couldn't 00:19:31.440 --> 00:19:33.819 handle the demand of the place. It's that tension 00:19:33.819 --> 00:19:37.059 again. He wants the idea of India, the fairy 00:19:37.059 --> 00:19:40.160 tale village. But the messy physical reality 00:19:40.160 --> 00:19:42.920 of it just repulses him. It's the topography 00:19:42.920 --> 00:19:45.440 of the void all over again. He goes looking for 00:19:45.440 --> 00:19:47.740 a center, for a history. And in his view, he 00:19:47.740 --> 00:19:50.900 finds only darkness and decay. Yet at the same 00:19:50.900 --> 00:19:52.779 time, he writes about falling in love with the 00:19:52.779 --> 00:19:55.140 landscape. He's constantly torn between this 00:19:55.140 --> 00:19:57.880 profound attraction and this profound repulsion. 00:19:58.319 --> 00:20:00.539 This worldview that the post -colonial world 00:20:00.539 --> 00:20:02.819 is essentially chaotic and hollow, it really 00:20:02.819 --> 00:20:05.500 culminates in his Booker Prize winner in a free 00:20:05.500 --> 00:20:09.079 state from 1971 and later guerrillas in 75. These 00:20:09.079 --> 00:20:11.420 books are where that label, Conrad's Heir, really 00:20:11.420 --> 00:20:13.980 starts to stick. He travels through Africa, Kenya, 00:20:14.079 --> 00:20:17.400 Rwanda, Uganda. He witnesses the chaos of decolonization 00:20:17.400 --> 00:20:21.039 firsthand. He sees coups. He sees violence, displacement. 00:20:21.400 --> 00:20:23.759 And in a free state, he focuses on these young 00:20:23.759 --> 00:20:26.019 white liberals who've come to Africa. And he 00:20:26.019 --> 00:20:29.049 is absolutely merciless with them. Oh, he despises 00:20:29.049 --> 00:20:31.450 them. He portrays them as these rootless, naive 00:20:31.450 --> 00:20:34.009 people who come to Africa to find themselves. 00:20:34.509 --> 00:20:37.130 But they are totally oblivious to the real danger 00:20:37.130 --> 00:20:39.289 and the real politics around them. They have 00:20:39.289 --> 00:20:41.930 no skin in the game. He actually contrasts them 00:20:41.930 --> 00:20:44.269 with the old white colonial settlers. Who are 00:20:44.269 --> 00:20:46.690 often brutal racists. They might be brutal. They 00:20:46.690 --> 00:20:48.910 might be racist. But in Naipaul's view, at least 00:20:48.910 --> 00:20:51.390 they understand the land. They're committed to 00:20:51.390 --> 00:20:55.519 it in a way the liberals aren't. Naipaul had 00:20:55.519 --> 00:20:58.480 zero patience for liberal sentimentality. He 00:20:58.480 --> 00:21:00.700 thought it was actively dangerous. And gorillas, 00:21:00.720 --> 00:21:03.140 what was that based on? That was inspired by 00:21:03.140 --> 00:21:05.839 the Michael X killings in Trinidad. Michael X 00:21:05.839 --> 00:21:08.259 was this sort of charismatic black power leader 00:21:08.259 --> 00:21:11.000 whose commune turned into a bizarre murder cult. 00:21:11.200 --> 00:21:13.400 For Naipaul, it was the ultimate proof of his 00:21:13.400 --> 00:21:16.410 mimic men theory. All this revolutionary rhetoric 00:21:16.410 --> 00:21:19.369 was just masking empty, brutal, pointless violence. 00:21:19.650 --> 00:21:21.630 Joan Didion wrote a famous review of that book 00:21:21.630 --> 00:21:23.890 where she talks about the pink haze of bauxite 00:21:23.890 --> 00:21:26.730 dust. It's such a great observation. She notes 00:21:26.730 --> 00:21:29.509 that in Naipaul's world, the idea never wins. 00:21:29.690 --> 00:21:32.630 The physical fact, the dust, the heat, the humidity, 00:21:32.809 --> 00:21:36.329 the rotting vegetation always dominates and suffocates 00:21:36.329 --> 00:21:39.549 the idea. The world is what it is. Which brings 00:21:39.549 --> 00:21:41.769 us to the most uncomfortable part of this deep 00:21:41.769 --> 00:21:44.470 dive. Section seven of our outline is titled 00:21:44.470 --> 00:21:47.309 The World Is What It Is. That's the title of 00:21:47.309 --> 00:21:49.750 his authorized biography. And we have to turn 00:21:49.750 --> 00:21:52.549 that scrutiny on to Naipaul himself. We do, because 00:21:52.549 --> 00:21:54.730 you cannot understand the work, especially the 00:21:54.730 --> 00:21:57.329 later work, without understanding the man's behavior. 00:21:57.609 --> 00:21:59.890 And a lot of this new information comes directly 00:21:59.890 --> 00:22:02.309 from Pat Hale's diaries, which were released 00:22:02.309 --> 00:22:04.710 after her death. For decades, Pat was sort of 00:22:04.710 --> 00:22:06.869 the silent saint in the background. She edited 00:22:06.869 --> 00:22:09.210 his work. She managed his life. She soothes his 00:22:09.210 --> 00:22:13.640 ego. How did he treat her? Horribly. The sources 00:22:13.640 --> 00:22:16.740 describe him as ill -humored and infantile. He 00:22:16.740 --> 00:22:19.299 was relentlessly demanding. He would visit prostitutes 00:22:19.299 --> 00:22:20.920 and then come home and tell her about it in detail. 00:22:21.079 --> 00:22:24.079 He complained to her face about his sexual dissatisfaction. 00:22:24.200 --> 00:22:26.180 He essentially treated her more like a staff 00:22:26.180 --> 00:22:28.440 member than a spouse. And then there's Margaret. 00:22:28.660 --> 00:22:31.519 In 1972, he met a woman named Margaret Murray 00:22:31.519 --> 00:22:34.619 Gooding in Argentina. And he began a decades 00:22:34.619 --> 00:22:37.180 -long affair with her. He would leave Pat in 00:22:37.180 --> 00:22:39.279 their cottage in England and go travel the world 00:22:39.279 --> 00:22:41.859 with Margaret. It was very open secret. And this 00:22:41.859 --> 00:22:44.339 wasn't just an affair. It was abusive. It was 00:22:44.339 --> 00:22:47.240 violent. And Naipaul actually admitted this to 00:22:47.240 --> 00:22:49.559 his own biographer, Patrick French. He's on the 00:22:49.559 --> 00:22:51.940 record. He described beating Margaret for two 00:22:51.940 --> 00:22:55.079 days to the point where, in his words, my hand 00:22:55.079 --> 00:22:57.180 was swollen. He admitted that. He put that in 00:22:57.180 --> 00:22:59.559 his authorized biography. He did. He spoke about 00:22:59.559 --> 00:23:02.119 it with this terrifying clinical detachment. 00:23:02.259 --> 00:23:04.859 And Patrick French's assessment is just chilling. 00:23:05.180 --> 00:23:08.140 He noted that for Naipaul, Cruelty was part of 00:23:08.140 --> 00:23:10.440 the attraction. It fed something in him. And 00:23:10.440 --> 00:23:12.759 meanwhile, Pat is at home and eventually she 00:23:12.759 --> 00:23:15.559 gets sick. She's dying of cancer. The timeline 00:23:15.559 --> 00:23:18.160 here. Yeah. Honestly, it's very hard to read. 00:23:18.259 --> 00:23:21.559 She died in February 1996. Within two months 00:23:21.559 --> 00:23:23.779 of her death, Nat Paul ended the affair with 00:23:23.779 --> 00:23:26.039 Margaret. He just dumped her. And he married 00:23:26.039 --> 00:23:28.619 Nadira Alvey. a Pakistani journalist who was 00:23:28.619 --> 00:23:30.680 20 years his junior. Two months. He just swapped 00:23:30.680 --> 00:23:33.500 out the entire support system. It's brutal. And 00:23:33.500 --> 00:23:36.000 it raises the question, was Pat just a resource 00:23:36.000 --> 00:23:38.539 to him? Was she just a tool to get the books 00:23:38.539 --> 00:23:41.220 written? It suggests a man who viewed people, 00:23:41.380 --> 00:23:43.980 even the person closest to him, as utilities. 00:23:44.589 --> 00:23:47.250 It really complicates the legacy. Here you have 00:23:47.250 --> 00:23:50.529 a man who demands that we look at the unvarnished 00:23:50.529 --> 00:23:53.309 truth of societies, but he seems to lack the 00:23:53.309 --> 00:23:56.069 most basic human empathy in his own life. And 00:23:56.069 --> 00:23:58.549 that lack of empathy, that sort of cold analytical 00:23:58.549 --> 00:24:01.109 view, bled directly into his later political 00:24:01.109 --> 00:24:04.289 views, especially his views on Islam. This is 00:24:04.289 --> 00:24:06.730 from his books Beyond Belief and Among the Believers. 00:24:06.890 --> 00:24:09.190 Right. In those books, he argued that Islam was 00:24:09.190 --> 00:24:11.890 a form of Arab imperialism. He believed that 00:24:11.890 --> 00:24:14.470 when a non -Arab country like Pakistan or Indonesia 00:24:14.470 --> 00:24:17.910 or Iran converts to Islam, it is forced to reject 00:24:17.910 --> 00:24:20.609 its own pre -Islamic history and adopt Arab history 00:24:20.609 --> 00:24:23.789 instead. He called it a cultural lobotomy. Which 00:24:23.789 --> 00:24:25.829 naturally critics just tore apart. They pointed 00:24:25.829 --> 00:24:28.049 out it was a massive sweeping generalization. 00:24:28.529 --> 00:24:30.930 Fuad Ajami and others rejected it completely, 00:24:31.250 --> 00:24:33.609 noting the rich diversity of Islamic cultures 00:24:33.609 --> 00:24:35.910 and how they blend with local traditions all 00:24:35.910 --> 00:24:39.380 over the world. But Naipaul wasn't really interested 00:24:39.380 --> 00:24:42.220 in that nuance. He was interested in his overarching 00:24:42.220 --> 00:24:45.819 thesis, colonization destroys identity. Whether 00:24:45.819 --> 00:24:48.980 it's British colonization or what he saw as Arab 00:24:48.980 --> 00:24:51.599 colonization, he saw the same destructive pattern 00:24:51.599 --> 00:24:53.700 everywhere. And yet, despite the accusations 00:24:53.700 --> 00:24:55.900 of racism, despite the revelations about his 00:24:55.900 --> 00:24:59.200 misogyny, despite all the controversy... In 2001, 00:24:59.460 --> 00:25:02.740 he wins the Nobel Prize. He does. And the Nobel 00:25:02.740 --> 00:25:05.359 citation is fascinating. They didn't praise him 00:25:05.359 --> 00:25:07.380 for being a nice guy. They praised him for his 00:25:07.380 --> 00:25:10.019 united perceptive narrative and incorruptible 00:25:10.019 --> 00:25:12.980 scrutiny and for compelling us to see suppressed 00:25:12.980 --> 00:25:15.640 histories. They compared him to a modern philosopher 00:25:15.640 --> 00:25:17.720 in the tradition of Voltaire. But the critics 00:25:17.720 --> 00:25:20.140 didn't let up. Robert Harris called his portrayal 00:25:20.140 --> 00:25:23.259 of Africa racist and repulsive. And Edward Said 00:25:23.259 --> 00:25:25.539 had perhaps the most famous critique of all. 00:25:25.869 --> 00:25:28.230 Sed called him a witness for the Western prosecution. 00:25:28.490 --> 00:25:30.430 What was his argument exactly? Sed's argument 00:25:30.430 --> 00:25:33.549 was that the West loved Naipaul because he validated 00:25:33.549 --> 00:25:36.509 their deepest prejudices. He was a brown man 00:25:36.509 --> 00:25:38.569 from the colonies telling them, yes, you were 00:25:38.569 --> 00:25:40.750 right all along. These third world countries 00:25:40.750 --> 00:25:43.529 are hopeless and chaotic without you. Sed felt 00:25:43.529 --> 00:25:46.069 Naipaul was punching down, using his immense 00:25:46.069 --> 00:25:49.009 talent to confirm colonial mythologies. And what 00:25:49.009 --> 00:25:51.230 was Naipaul's defense against all this? How did 00:25:51.230 --> 00:25:53.900 he see himself? He had a great line for it. He 00:25:53.900 --> 00:25:57.000 said he transforms rage into precision. That's 00:25:57.000 --> 00:25:59.619 a hell of a quote. Rage into precision. It implies 00:25:59.619 --> 00:26:02.160 that the anger isn't just an emotion. It's a 00:26:02.160 --> 00:26:05.440 tool for seeing clearly. He genuinely believed 00:26:05.440 --> 00:26:07.880 he was the only one brave enough or perhaps damaged 00:26:07.880 --> 00:26:10.579 enough to tell the ugly truth that everyone else 00:26:10.579 --> 00:26:13.400 was trying to ignore. So as we wrap this all 00:26:13.400 --> 00:26:16.099 up, how do we synthesize this man? We have the 00:26:16.099 --> 00:26:18.200 boy from the sugar plantation who conquered the 00:26:18.200 --> 00:26:20.839 literary world. We have the so -called truth 00:26:20.839 --> 00:26:22.700 teller who might have just been blinded by his 00:26:22.700 --> 00:26:25.339 own trauma. We have this man who is essentially 00:26:25.339 --> 00:26:27.819 a man without a home. I think Naipaul's legacy 00:26:27.819 --> 00:26:31.619 is one of brutal aliveness. He absolutely refused 00:26:31.619 --> 00:26:34.680 to sentimentalize the world. He refused to pretend 00:26:34.680 --> 00:26:36.859 that the empire didn't leave deep, permanent 00:26:36.859 --> 00:26:39.640 scars. But he also refused to pretend that the 00:26:39.640 --> 00:26:41.460 victims of empire were somehow automatically 00:26:41.460 --> 00:26:44.460 saints. He looked directly into the void and 00:26:44.460 --> 00:26:47.799 he mapped it, inch by painful inch. He forces 00:26:47.799 --> 00:26:50.319 you as a reader to look at the things you'd much 00:26:50.319 --> 00:26:52.640 rather ignore. But here's the final provocative 00:26:52.640 --> 00:26:55.099 thought for you, the listener. Something to chew 00:26:55.099 --> 00:26:58.000 on after this. If we accept that Naipaul spent 00:26:58.000 --> 00:27:01.339 his entire life obsessed with mimic men, these 00:27:01.339 --> 00:27:03.079 people who play act at life because they feel 00:27:03.079 --> 00:27:05.539 they're hollow inside, we have to ask the question. 00:27:06.029 --> 00:27:08.430 Did he ultimately become one himself? What do 00:27:08.430 --> 00:27:11.069 you mean by that? I mean, did his ruthless, single 00:27:11.069 --> 00:27:14.549 -minded pursuit of the idea of truth, that cold 00:27:14.549 --> 00:27:17.210 attachment that calculated cruelty, did it eventually 00:27:17.210 --> 00:27:19.509 turn him into a man who was just mimicking humanity? 00:27:20.190 --> 00:27:22.950 Did the scrutiny eventually corrupt the scrutineer 00:27:22.950 --> 00:27:24.589 to the point where he couldn't actually feel 00:27:24.589 --> 00:27:27.190 for the real physical people closest to him? 00:27:27.289 --> 00:27:29.869 That is the ultimate paradox. The man who saw 00:27:29.869 --> 00:27:32.410 everything, but in the end, maybe felt nothing 00:27:32.410 --> 00:27:35.779 at all. Precisely. And the value of reading Naipaul 00:27:35.779 --> 00:27:38.619 today isn't about agreeing with him. It's about 00:27:38.619 --> 00:27:41.299 engaging with that tension, what Joan Didion 00:27:41.299 --> 00:27:43.740 called the unbearable tension between the idea 00:27:43.740 --> 00:27:46.839 and the physical fact. A complex man, a very 00:27:46.839 --> 00:27:49.099 difficult legacy, and a fascinating deep dive. 00:27:49.259 --> 00:27:50.640 Thank you for listening. We'll see you on the 00:27:50.640 --> 00:27:50.859 next one.