Patrick french biography naipaul
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Reading Patrick French’s hefty biography of VS Naipaul brought back memories of my once playing Mahjong with incipient conjunctivitis; the game was challenging enough without the tile details going in and out of focus.
French’s writing style in general has little appeal for me – a little dry and academic – and when he presents, as he often does in this tome, a lengthy, name-dropping paragraph, the hotchpotch of third-party comments and attributed quotes undermines clarity. Things become a little blurred – my response was often to skip ahead.
Ploughing through ‘The World Is What It Is’, I was also reminded of a lecturer long ago who recited his words of wisdom to us students while absently leafing through the pages of a newspaper. Like that academic, French is not, for me, a natural at engaging with his audience.
Published in 2008, this authorised biography of the Nobel Prize-winning author covers Naipaul’s life from his birth in1932 to his second marriage in 1996. The author, w
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A lot has been made of how frank this biography is. It’s certainly true that V.S. Naipaul gave his biographer Patrick French access to a huge amount of material, including things that other people would have tried to keep quiet about. For example the racism, the bigotry, the use of prostitutes, the affairs, the betrayals, the occasional violence, the perpetual cruelty. Yes, this is a very frank biography.
But what impressed me most about the book is how French succeeded in making Naipaul into a consistent, understandable character. It doesn’t mean that I like him or approve of the things he did, but it means that I understand how he came to be the way he was. French’s depiction of Naipaul’s life is so complete that I feel as if I know the man now.
Naipaul’s main motivation is established early on in the book. His family life is chaotic, with his whole extended family sharing one large house and constant bickering between the various uncles and aunts.
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Review
praise from the UK: "French's character analysis is not flattering, but it does justice to its subject's complexity....French's book is a magnificent achievement....But the achievement is partly Naipaul's. For he did not have to agree to these conditions, or speak to French so openly. He has chosen to submit himself to the truth-telling and ruthless objectivity that have always characterised his own work."- John Cary, "The Sunday Times" "penetrating, wide-ranging and unflinching biography....The closing pages...are enough to draw tears.""- The Economist" "Patrick French has brought off something very difficult, so difficult indeed that I would have thought it impossible. He has written a biography of a living person that is every bit as honest, perceptive, compelling and plain good as if his subject was dead. It fryst vatten a masterly performance, and if a better biography is published this year, I shall be astonished....It is rare to wish that a biography running to over 500 pages w