The World is What it is: Biography on V.S.Naipaul launched

‘The World is What it is ‘ a biography on the Nobel Laureate, V.S.Naipaul, written by Patrick French, has been recently launched. It portrays Naipaul in all its complexity but never judges him, says his biographer Patrick French.

The biography leaves us confronting the enormous contradiction: How could a man so gifted also be depraved ? Yet the biography is testimony to the complex narcissist who let it be published uncensored without requesting any changes.

V.S.Naipaul would be faithful to his 1994 speech at Tulsa: “The lives of writers are a legitimate subject of enquiry and the truth should be skimped. It may well be, in fact that a full account of  a writer’s life might in the end be more a work of literature and more illuminating-of a cultural to historical moment-than the writer’s books.”

True to V.S.Naipaul’s speech at Tulsa, ‘The World is What it is’ is a phenomenal biography, which deals with a complex personality’s life with penetrating details and selfless dedication. That’s Patrick French for you. He keeps analysis of any sort minimum, his opinion subtle, because he wanted the book to be completely readable as a story, while sticking to the facts.

Patrick’s introduction to the book sets the tone for the biography when he says ‘Naipaul’s cumulative accomplishment outstripped his contemporaries and altered the way in which writers and readers perceived the world. His achievement was an act of will, in which every situation and relationship would be subordinate to his ambition.

It connects us to the first line of Naipaul’s ‘A Bend in The River’:’The World is What it is,men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.’

As French put it, his biography is different from what Naipaul would write, if he were to write an autobiography of himself. Naipaul himself has written ‘Prologue to an Autobiography’ which is a beautiful piece of writing, but tells very little about him.He is naturally very secretive and not especially introspective and so I find it hard to see him writing an autobiography’

Therefore, French wrote his biography as he saw and has integrated both Naipaul the man and the Naipaul the writer.

So Patrick French’s biography would be an extremely ‘delicious ‘book since people will always choose read anecdotes containing scandal and debauchery. As Paul Theroux writes recently in the Sunday Times:‘Now French’s biography amply demonstrates everything I said and more. It is not a pretty story, It will probably destroy Naipaul’s reputation for ever, this chronicle of his pretensions’

It is amazing to learn that Naipaul has authorized Patrick French to write such a biography on him, even  at the cost of his reputation.