Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful account of the writer's craft, 5 Aug 2001
This is the story of Paul Theroux's thirty-year friendship with his fellow-novelist V. S. Naipaul. Part social history, part biography, part autobiography, it is above all a beautifully written and fascinating study of a writer's craft and life. Both men are prolific and accomplished writers. Naipaul has written novels set in all five continents. His novels include 'Guerrillas', 'In a Free State' and 'A House for Mr Biswas'. He has also written a history of Trinidad, 'The Loss of El Dorado'. Theroux is the author of 'The Mosquito Coast', 'The Great Railway Bazaar' and many other stories, novels and travel books. Both men are remarkably self-contained; both are wandering scholars. Naipaul is famously rude and difficult. As a visiting professor in New York, he refused to give any classes. He once boasted, "I hate all music." He appears to disparage all contemporary novelists, and most past ones: he said that he hated Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and Henry James. (He did at least admit to admiring Thomas Mann's 'Death in Venice' and Rudyard Kipling's 'Plain Tales from the Hills', and he does have a justified contempt for George Orwell.) Theroux writes, "the best writers are the most fanatical." (Perhaps excellence at any work demands a certain fanaticism?) Certainly, Naipaul's uncompromising attention to his craft, his hatred of cant, of poses and affectation, of style, reveal the monomania necessary, but not sufficient, to creativity. The results in his work are uneven, but Theroux believes that Naipaul has produced one undoubted masterpiece, 'A House for Mr Biswas': readers should judge for themselves. Theroux too is obviously not an easy man: his wanderlust, his unpleasant sexual boasting and his tactless responses to Naipaul's second marriage show how difficult he finds it to form relationships. Consequently this rare long friendship must have meant much to both men: it finished only recently, spurring Theroux to write this account. The book ends in a haunting last encounter, full of confusion, pain and rejection.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"I had admired his talent. After a while, I admired nothing else [about him]. Finally, I began to wonder about his talent.", 7 May 2007
What began as a mentoring relationship between established novelist V. S. Naipaul and Paul Theroux, a young writer working on his first novel, went on to endure as a "friendship" for thirty years as both writers traveled the world but remained in touch with each other. They met when Theroux was a young ex-Peace Corp worker teaching in Uganda at the university in Makerere in 1966, and Naipaul, nine years his senior, became "writer-in-residence" there, though Naipaul hated teaching and mocked the writing of his students and the Makerere faculty. He did, however, recognize Theroux's talent, and he did help and encourage him to get his novel published. Theroux, in turn, was an astute reader of Naipaul's work, and both benefited from the relationship, at least at first.
From 1967 - 1977, Theroux published ten successful novels and short story collections, all of which Theroux describes in this book, and all were praised, at least privately, by Naipaul. Somewhat less attention is paid to the almost equal number of works published by Naipaul, some of which Theroux read and helped proofread. A crusty, critical, and often cruel man, full of contradictions, Naipaul was a difficult "friend," and when he decided that he did not like someone, there was no turning back, no forgiveness for human failings. Theroux managed to navigate that minefield of hostility for thirty years.
In fact, shortly before the first of Naipaul's novels was published in the United States, Theroux (in 1972) wrote an introductory biography and critical assessment of Naipaul's work, full of praise for Naipaul, and helped to create an audience for Naipaul's work in the United States. After this somewhat effusive work was published, however, Theroux refused further interviews or commentary about Naipaul, insisting that "I will never [again] write about Naipaul. He is my friend." That declaration is belied by the publication of this book, the last twenty-percent of which is an uninterrupted excoriation of Naipaul and his second wife at the end of the friendship with Theroux. Here Theroux shows that he is at least as unforgiving as Naipaul, with a mean streak of his own.
In time Theroux would become a literary star with over forty novels and books of non-fiction. Naipaul, a painstaking, often philosophical writer who avoids long descriptions and emotionalism in his books, eventually won the Nobel Prize in 2001, and was knighted. Though this book is fascinating for its picture of the mentoring process and of a friendship which managed to survive despite the pettiness and frequent mean-spiritedness of Naipaul, it is also a portrait of Theroux, who chose to put his own payback into print. Mary Whipple
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The end of a beautiful friendship, 26 May 2000
By A Customer
Having read and enjoyed several books by Theroux and Naipaul I looked forward to reading this book. I wasn't disappointed. The book is a compulsively readable account in the characteristically sardonic Theroux voice of his long friendship with Naipaul. I found Naipaul as portrayed in this book a deeply unpleasant character - rascist, snobbish, cruel, mean, full of vanity, excessively fastidious. I doubt if I will be able to read his books in the same light again. Theroux himself doesn't come out of the book too well either and his denunciations of his former friend and some of his work at the end of the book leave a sour taste in the mouth. What does come through however, and leaves me with a grudging admiration is the single-mindedness (selfishness?) with which both Theroux and Naipaul pursued their writing careers. These are men who believe that writing is immensely important and their commitment to their art shines through, even if many of those who came into contact with them suffered as a result.One aspect of the book however, was deeply problematic for me. Theroux describes the book as a memory not a novel and rejoices in being "free of the constraint of alteration and fictionalizing". He says he remembers everything. And indeed the book is full of detailed accounts of incidents and conversations many of which took place over 30 years ago. But how can Theroux have remembered these things, particularly when, as he tells us, he did not keep a diary or journal? And why should we believe him - particularly when important events described in chapter 10 were recently claimed to be quite false in the London Review of Books? So finally, I recommend this book, read it and enjoy it, but take some of it with a pinch of salt.
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