enjoyable read ......

La buena literatura hay que envolverla junto a mucha información que respalde al escritor de la obra, luego se abre el regalo y se comparte.

Se necesitan biografías, videos, memorias, diarios, artículos, todo lo que sustente la grandeza de la obra.

Extremely well written. Perceptive. Short sentences. Essays written over a long period of time (between each other). Gives a brief overview of his early life and how he came to be a writer. Contrary to my expectations, he does not seem to have been a bibliophile. Created his own world by writing about the world he came from. His nobel award acceptance speech is the best where he comes out with with his pithy statement : 'I am the sum of my books'. Go for it.

This anthology was assembled shortly after Naipaul won the Nobel Prize. Its repetitiveness suggests that the publishers wanted to get something new -- or "newish"-- out while the award was still fresh. You get many retellings of Naipaul's life story, his determination to become a writer, and his relationship with his father, essays written over the span of several decades. By the time he repeats the same material in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, you may feel that you have attended too many parties where no one dares to tell the literary eminence that we have heard that one before.

But the story is fascinating and the prose impeccable.

Naipaul's prose is uncluttered, direct and evocative; he seldom resorts to wordy descriptions. This quality of his writing makes one roll over with the narrative and clung to the book till the last page. I found no page of this book singing anodyne tunes nor did I find the author leaving us for unnecessary turgid and verbose detours. The only reason I gave it 3 stars instead of deserving 4 is because, for me, repetition or too much repetition feels odd: he talks about the same thing, albeit with different tone and style, in many essays. For example, about his fathers journalistic background and about his certain experiences in Trinidad. These repetitions, given the fact these essays were written at different times, may have been inevitable or even unwittingly allowed to creep into this book, but yet it creates a certain sense of displeasure. For aspiring novelists this book offers significant lessons; especially the latter essay Conrad's Darkness and Mine, which, though picking through Conrad's oeuvre, provides incisive and insightful account of novel writing and tells us what we should not do when we write.

Insightful, occasionally repetitive but well articulated.

Interesting to see him riff over and on how his childhood shaped his career, and interesting to learn about the way Trinidad's population was shaped, but a pretty poor excuse for a book. Maybe it is like Prince and he had some contract he was trying to finish.

I picked up this book with hesitation. A writer writing about himself and his writing? I wasn’t sure. And to make matters worse, I don’t like Naipul’s books. Would it be self-serving or egotistical? Or just plain dull?
It wasn’t.
Naipaul has pulled off something special with this slim volume. Every author going through the writing journey will see the self-doubt that accompanies that fierce drive to write, the wonder of the writing process and the acceptance of the talent and the acknowledgement of the discipline.
I could almost see an ironic smile on this talented author’s face when he acknowledges his failings and criticizes himself. When he admits that perhaps the lower side of the art that is writing has won over the higher literary aspirations. It is rare to find a writer who sees himself so clearly.
But then again Naipul has been awarded a knighthood for services to literature and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001, and perhaps he knows better than anyone what this frustrating and beautiful art is all about.

Oh, a serendipitous pluck from the pile! In his n  Latest ReadingsnClive James remarks "we read Naipaul for his fastidious scorn, not for his large heart" and more specifically talks up this very good (though a bit repetitive) collection of prefaces and essays:

I have taken from my shelves a copy of his Literary Occasions that I bought in New York in 2004, in the days when I could scarcely visit the Strand bookshop without spending a thousand dollars. (By the time the parcels of books reached London I had forgotten what was in them, so the whole deal worked out like Christmas squared.)

One of the occasions is a wonderful essay about Conrad, called 'Conrad's Darkness and Mine.'

Naipaul talks about Conrad's analysis of the colonial experience. In doing so, Naipaul talks about his own colonial experience. And in reading Naipaul on that subject, I am faced with my colonial experience, and brought to realize how complex it has all been, this birth, growth, and breaking up of an empire. And most of it happened so abruptly. After a few hundred years' practice in subjugating Ireland, the British subjugated most of the world in the blinking of an eye. Now there is nothing left except a language, a golden coach, and a few pipers marching and countermarching in the courtyard of Edinburgh castle. Eventually we might even have to say goodbye to Scotland, and there will be nothing of the old imperial world left except ten square yards of sand in Belize. Naipaul at his best, as a writer of factual narrative, gives you the sense that the language itself is the imperial inheritance that matters. Whether I shall read A House for Mr. Biswas again remains to be seen. More than fifty years ago it filled me with admiration, but reminded me too much of the house where I was born.

recommended by Doyald Young