V. S. Naipaul
V. S. Naipaul
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, TC, is a Trinidadian Nobel Prize-winning British writer known for his comic early novels set in Trinidad and Tobago, his bleaker later novels of the wider world, and his autobiographical chronicles of life and travels. He has published more than 30 books, both of fiction and nonfiction, over some 50 years...
NationalityTrinidadian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth17 August 1932
writing support
Writing has to support itself.
oil clothes america
Ignorant people in preppy clothes are more dangerous to America than oil embargoes.
attitude past
What was past was past. I suppose that was the general attitude.
issues people enemy
Where jargon turns living issues into abstractions, and where jargon ends by competing with jargon, people don't have causes. They only have enemies.
forever culture has-beens
All cultures have been mingled forever.
reading people giving
This is unusual for me. I have given readings and not lectures. I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true.
heart men ideas
Men need history; it helps them to have an idea of who they are. But history, like sanctity, can reside in the heart; it is enough that there is something there.
writing wish would-be
I wish my prose to be transparent—I don't want the reader to stumble over me; I want him to look through what I'm saying to what I'm describing. I don't want him ever to say, Oh, goodness, how nicely written this is. That would be a failure.
deny
You can't deny what you've learned; you can't deny your travels; you can't deny the nature of your life.
way reputation curmudgeon
In a way my reputation has become that of the curmudgeon.
abandoned novel
I've never abandoned the novel.
people speak authority
I don't feel I can speak with authority for many other people.
taken civilization dying
A civilization which has taken over the world cannot be said to be dying.
darkness world kind
The world outside existed in a kind of darkness; and we inquired about nothing.