The Anxieties of V.S. Naipaul

I can safely place one more check on the Fields Exam list - Area of Darkness by V.S. Naipaul. Part of a trilogy on India (India: A Wounded Civilization and India: A Million Mutinies Now), this travelogue has rocked more than a few boats. Naipaul is a controversial figure in the literary world as well as the political. He has been described as a "master of English prose," and he has a litany of literary prizes to back up this assertion. Nevertheless, when I began reading this book, I was horrified and appalled by his attitude toward the "East" in general and "India" in particular. Naipaul is originally from Trinidad and descendant from a group of indentured Indians who traveled to Trinidad for work. Area of Darkness is his journey to his family's village - a journey which takes him a year of wandering through the East and through India. Both his purpose in traveling and his apparent disillusionment with what he finds reminds me of Richard Wright's New Reflections which details his "return" to Africa. Both men exhibit a kind of crippling anxiety when faced with their respective "homelands." They characterize the people they encounter, even "respectable" ones, as little more than degraded savages. In Naipaul's account, India is the most degraded place in the world - and this is due to "the psychological" instead of the "political and economic." For someone who is so narrow-minded, however, he is remarkably self-perceptive. He is very aware and lets the reader know when he is being cruel, impatient, fussy, and prejudiced. He even acknowledges his anxiety - something us literary folk usually need to dig out. At the same time, he rigidly sticks with his assumptions about India and Indians - they are withdrawn, they see only myth, they are medieval, they embrace englishness in a disturbing mimic which only perpetuates the falsity of their existence. Everyone is out to cheat him, everyone is out to degrade themselves in front of him.
While it was hard to stomach so many of his generalizations and anxieties, it was interesting for me to read his observations at this point in Indian English literature. Up to this point I have only read some of the idealistic nationalistic novels before and around the time of Independence and the more modern, postcolonial novels of the last thirty years. This one is post-independence, but before much of what we call "postcolonial" literature. As warped as this picture undoubtedly is, it does reveal some of the issues and beliefs at this point in Indian history.
I would not recommend this book unless you are, like me, very interested in contrasting ideas of India. It does however, act as a very intriguing example of travel literature. If you are interested in how people travel, how the absorb, react, and defend themselves against the known/unknown, then this would be an interesting book to add to your arsenal.
I would have posted yesterday, but grading has officially begun. I graded my first batch of "in class writings" about the reading habits of my students. I had a few surprises - that is students who read way more than I expected, but largely the line "I really don't like reading" was the consistent refrain. At the same time, I think my definition of reading (to include magazines, blogs, etc) helped them step outside of traditional ways of thinking about reading. It was interesting to see how little/how much reading they encounter on a daily basis.
Moving on to The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel de Certeau.