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I was disgruntled with this novel, frustrated that Naipaul had not made something of his narrator and his story, that all of it appeared to be no more than maundering. I began to wonder, then, if that hadn't been the point: that just as Singh had failed to find himself in the other, more active events of his life, so he had failed also to distinguish himself as anything other than a literary mimic. More on this later...
This is the story of a man of Indian descent (with Aryan aspirations and remnants of Hindu beliefs) who grew up on the small Caribbean island Isabella (a fictional English protectorate). Ralph Singh informs us at the outset that he is in exile in London, just forty years old and now writing his memoirs. By novel's end, we learn that he's spent nearly 14 months working on these memoirs, which consist of sections that detail, in order, his marriage and financial boom, his upbringing, and his political career and exile.
The memoirist begins his story with a setting and image that foster a particular mood, one which he claims to be indulging in even as he concludes his memoirs. Standing in the attic of the hotel in which he's living in London, Ralph stares out at the city line, a near bombsite, and the falling, swirling snow. In the mix is his landlord's recent death, a proximate christening, and an old unidentified photograph of a blurry woman upon whom he tries to affix a story about being a stranger in a foreign land. The indignity of her anonymity spurs him to consider how he must leave behind a story of value. "[M]y present mood," Singh writes, "leaps the years and all the intervening visits to this city ... leaps all this to link with that first mood which came to me in Mr. Shylock's attic; so that all that came in between seems to have occurred in parenthesis. Which is the reality? The mood, or the action in between, resulting from that mood and leading up to it again?"
What precisely is this mood? How does memoirist Singh make the parenthetical aspects of his life (the marriage, the wealth, the upbringing with its associations of youthful friends and relatives, the political career that was all empty bombast) serve that mood? Of the parenthetical matter, Singh writes at novel's end: "I see all its emotions as, profoundly, fraudulent. So writing, for all its initial distortion, clarifies, and even becomes a process of life."
How does the blurred picture viewed in juxtaposition to the blurred outlines of the rooftops of London signal a mood of displacement? The girl in the picture is in a green setting, with threes and a fence, grass underneath. _She_ would be out of place in London, he thinks, and so is he, though he chooses to reside there while putting his memoirs in shape. What does the future hold? Perhaps writing a long history, but at the moment he ponders this, he is certain that he does not want to enter again into events that might move other people. He has come to see himself and his emotions as false, as belonging to someone who has no investment in his surroundings, whether his place of birth and youth, or in London, where he was educated and from whence he launched himself into business and politics.
There is in this a literary echo of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, another self exile who has run the gauntlet to find that he has been no more than a tool for others. Ellison's battle royal is mimicked (Ralph's cousin Cecil spurs him and another Indian to fight, a bemused Negro watching with Cecil), and Ralph's political career is reminiscent of the fraudulent one that the invisible man experienced. Both Singh and the invisible man are recounting what has transpired. While the invisible man is looking forward to unveiling lies and shedding light before he next acts, Singh seems unable to contemplate how he might be able to act, except as a writer, at a safe remove from life.
For all the clarity and expressiveness of Singh's language in this book, the narrative is shrouded in that quiet, oppressive, blurry mood Singh describes at the outset. The finest details of his marriage and his childhood do not begin to show the whole picture. Nothing coalesces, and this is particularly true when by instinct Singh becomes a successful businessman, where even real details are absent. Similarly, the career in politics is described without reference to politics, just another murky description of his instinctual movements.
What's left? To write and to shed light on the past. If the comparison to Invisible Man is to hold, this novel then is another mimicked gesture, another activity taken up by a man who has no sense of place or self... The irony, of course, is that Naipaul himself found a place for himself, though much of his life was spent in detailing the events and lives of people and lands far removed from his own.
This is the story of a man of Indian descent (with Aryan aspirations and remnants of Hindu beliefs) who grew up on the small Caribbean island Isabella (a fictional English protectorate). Ralph Singh informs us at the outset that he is in exile in London, just forty years old and now writing his memoirs. By novel's end, we learn that he's spent nearly 14 months working on these memoirs, which consist of sections that detail, in order, his marriage and financial boom, his upbringing, and his political career and exile.
The memoirist begins his story with a setting and image that foster a particular mood, one which he claims to be indulging in even as he concludes his memoirs. Standing in the attic of the hotel in which he's living in London, Ralph stares out at the city line, a near bombsite, and the falling, swirling snow. In the mix is his landlord's recent death, a proximate christening, and an old unidentified photograph of a blurry woman upon whom he tries to affix a story about being a stranger in a foreign land. The indignity of her anonymity spurs him to consider how he must leave behind a story of value. "[M]y present mood," Singh writes, "leaps the years and all the intervening visits to this city ... leaps all this to link with that first mood which came to me in Mr. Shylock's attic; so that all that came in between seems to have occurred in parenthesis. Which is the reality? The mood, or the action in between, resulting from that mood and leading up to it again?"
What precisely is this mood? How does memoirist Singh make the parenthetical aspects of his life (the marriage, the wealth, the upbringing with its associations of youthful friends and relatives, the political career that was all empty bombast) serve that mood? Of the parenthetical matter, Singh writes at novel's end: "I see all its emotions as, profoundly, fraudulent. So writing, for all its initial distortion, clarifies, and even becomes a process of life."
How does the blurred picture viewed in juxtaposition to the blurred outlines of the rooftops of London signal a mood of displacement? The girl in the picture is in a green setting, with threes and a fence, grass underneath. _She_ would be out of place in London, he thinks, and so is he, though he chooses to reside there while putting his memoirs in shape. What does the future hold? Perhaps writing a long history, but at the moment he ponders this, he is certain that he does not want to enter again into events that might move other people. He has come to see himself and his emotions as false, as belonging to someone who has no investment in his surroundings, whether his place of birth and youth, or in London, where he was educated and from whence he launched himself into business and politics.
There is in this a literary echo of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, another self exile who has run the gauntlet to find that he has been no more than a tool for others. Ellison's battle royal is mimicked (Ralph's cousin Cecil spurs him and another Indian to fight, a bemused Negro watching with Cecil), and Ralph's political career is reminiscent of the fraudulent one that the invisible man experienced. Both Singh and the invisible man are recounting what has transpired. While the invisible man is looking forward to unveiling lies and shedding light before he next acts, Singh seems unable to contemplate how he might be able to act, except as a writer, at a safe remove from life.
For all the clarity and expressiveness of Singh's language in this book, the narrative is shrouded in that quiet, oppressive, blurry mood Singh describes at the outset. The finest details of his marriage and his childhood do not begin to show the whole picture. Nothing coalesces, and this is particularly true when by instinct Singh becomes a successful businessman, where even real details are absent. Similarly, the career in politics is described without reference to politics, just another murky description of his instinctual movements.
What's left? To write and to shed light on the past. If the comparison to Invisible Man is to hold, this novel then is another mimicked gesture, another activity taken up by a man who has no sense of place or self... The irony, of course, is that Naipaul himself found a place for himself, though much of his life was spent in detailing the events and lives of people and lands far removed from his own.
