V.S. Naipaul (1932-2018)
His Area of Light He may be old, infirm, but Sir Vidia's still got the gloves on. At the Jaipur jamboree, the crowds "were hanging on to his every word". Seen here with wife Na...
“Once you have expectations, you’ll eventually fail to see what you want to see. I’m just here to observe.” So spake V.S. Naipaul, 82, maintaining that he did not have any...
Nobel laureate V S Naipaul launched the Chinese edition of his celebrated novel A Bend in the River. This is first visit to China where he is attending the Shanghai literary festiv...
Edge writing Would Naipaul have been held too?
The estranged old friends Paul Theroux and V.S. Naipaul came face to face at the Hay festival ,Theroux turned to Ian McEwan, who happened to be with him, and asked what he should ...
Trinidad-born British writer V.S. Naipaul, was named as the winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in literature. The author of more than 20 books has written in both fiction and non-ficti...
Noble Laureate V.S. Naipaul, (centre), along with Booker prizewinner Vikram Seth, (left), and Amitav Ghosh (right), participates at the International Festival of Indian Literature ...
26 FebruaryBJP was still suirming over having to expel DP Yadav shortly after having admitted him to the party with much fanfare. But help was at hand in the form of Sir Vidia who ...
Thursday 14 OctoberSir Vidia released his Magic Seeds in Delhi saying it sums up his literary life "by uniting the different worlds I have lived in. This is likely to be my last bo...
Sir V.S. Naipaul-- Lady Nadira Naipaul Naipaul and Nadira met at a party where she impulsively kissed him on the cheek. He married the twice-divorced Pakistani journo in 199...
"I Have A Cloth Ear" "We thought it was quite original. In the end, though, I'm afraid we just weren't quite enthusiastic enough to be able to offer to take things further." So ...
V.S.Naipaul: At last, the Nobel, for the man who has, for years, been referred to as "the best living writer in English on the planet". This, in a year when Sir Vidia has rarely be...
British playwright and poet Harold Pinter, whose juxtaposition of the brutal and the banal resulted in an adjective that bears his name, has won the 2005 Nobel Prize for literature...
An interview with VS Naipaul led to some discussion on a mailing list I am on, till I realised it was an old--1999--interview with Outlook:
Who'd be your nominees for the three most significant Indians of this century? And why?
The first two are inescapable: Gandhi for awakening a country that had been torpid for centuries, Nehru for being a democrat and a humane man who did not abuse his power. I cannot think of a third figure of this stature and I would like instead in a spirit of mischief to nominate two buffoon figures who might stand as a warning to India of the dangers of mimicry. There is the half-witted Vinoba Bhave, the mimic mahatma. And there is Mr Basu in Calcutta, the mimic Marxist. I suppose when he goes his followers might want to embalm him like Lenin and put him on show in the Maidan.
More here
Writer Dan Baum is twittering the whole story of being hired by the New Yorker, after trying for 17 years, and then being let go. Makes you realise how difficult reading a story backwards can be. But the more interesting bits are in the links to the story ideas that worked and those that didn't.
Someone should have perhaps told him what Vidia Naipaul once told Patrick French: "Don’t let the New Yorker worry you. The New Yorker knows nothing about writing. Nothing. "Writing an article there is like posting a letter in a Venezuelan postbox. Nobody’s going to read it!"
To the Editors:
On Elizabeth Hardwick's advice, "Never ever speak to them dear. They always get it wrong," I did not cooperate with Patrick French's book [The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul]; nor have I read it. There are a number of things wrong in Ian Buruma's review of it [NYR, November 20, 2008].
Gillon Aitken was not dispatched to Buenos Aires checkbook in hand. (I wish he had been.)
There was one pregnancy and one that turned out not to be. I heard nothing about Pat raising the child.
The majority of my letters to Vidia were written because he had a habit of saying "please write me a little letter." If he chose to leave them unopened, that was his business.
Not mentioned in Ian Buruma's review is an error by Patrick French: no one has ever called me Margarita.
Vidia says I didn't mind the abuse. I certainly did mind.
Margaret Murray
Buenos Aires, ArgentinaThis is not all. There are spirited rejoinders from Paul Theroux, Ian Buruma, and Patrick French as well...
