For Thursday: V.S. Naipaul, An Area of Darkness (pp.9-67)

NOTE: V.S. Naipaul won the Noble Prize in Literature in 2001, and is one of the most famous (and to some, most hated) of "postcolonial" writers.  He is originally from Trinidad (in the Caribbean), but comes from an Indian/Hindu background.  As a young man he successfully passed exams to obtain a scholarship to study in Oxford, where he recieved a BA degree (studying under Tolkein, among others!).  He quickly became a famous novelist through his works about Trinidadian society, particularly with his most famous book, A House for Mr. Biswas, a semi-autobiographical novel about his father.  After this he turned to writing about the world at large, exposing the postcolonial world's tendency to cling to tradition and imperialist beliefs.  Naipaul became increasingly interested in non-fiction, focusing on works of travel writing (such as An Area of Darkness) which mix travelogue, history, and fiction into a new and exciting genre.  In the last ten years he has returned to novel writing, reworking many old themes into a shorter, more focused critique of the postcolonial world.  His collected papers and manuscripts are deposited at the University of Tulsa (like Rhys!), and he has visited TU to give talks in the past (where I was lucky enough to attend one).  So he has a bona-fide connection to Oklahoma! 

When reading An Area of Darkness, consider some of the following...

* Does Naipaul seem "Indian"?  How does the narrative betray his own issues of identity?  (think of Kim!)

* How does India remind him of his upbringing in Trinidad?  Consider the following passage: "And in India I was to see that so many of the things which the newer and now perhaps truer side of my nature kicked against—the smugness, as it seemed to be, the imperviousness to criticism, the refusal to see, the double-talk and double-think—had an answer in that side of myself which I had thought buried and which India revived as a faint memory (35-36). 

* How does the opening Prelude allow him to examine issues of caste in modern India? 

* Where does he find vestiges of colonialism in his travels? 

* How does the traveler's perspective allow him to see or experience India from a unique perspective?  Why might this technique be more suitable for a postcolonial writer than, say, simply writing a novel about India? 

* Why is the work called "An Area of Darkness"?  Is the same "darkness" we find in Conrad's Africa?  Consider the following quote, "And it was clear that here, and not in Greece, the East began: in this chaos of uneconomical movement, the self-stimulated din, the sudden feeling of insecurity, the conviction that all men were not brothers and that luggage was in danger" (10).