Word: naipaul
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...Bend in the River, V.S. Naipaul ∙ Mirabell: Books of Number, James Merrill ∙ Sleepless Nights, Elizabeth Hardwick Sophie's Choice, William Styron Testimony and Demeanor, John Casey ∙ The Living End, Stanley Elkin ∙ Wild Oats, Jacob Epstein...
...Naipaul ∙Mirabell: Books of Number, James Merrill ∙Sleepless Nights, Elizabeth Hardwick Sophie's Choice, William Styron Testimony and Demeanor, John Casey ∙The Living End, Stanley Elkin -Wild Oats, Jacob Epstein NONFICTION: Bay of Pigs, Peter Wyden ∙Billy Graham, Marshall Frady ∙Blood of Spain, Ronald Fraser ∙Confession and Avoidance, Leon Jaworski ∙The Medusa and the Snail, Lewis Thomas ∙The Powers That Be, David Halberstam ∙To Set the Record Straight, John J. Sirica
...Shiva Naipaul is most weak where his brother is strongest--the ability to empathize with all the people he writes about. He does not try to understand why a nouveau riche black Kenyan has two freezers (which she never uses), whisky at every meal, gold-painted nails, and an expropriated mansion too large for her needs. He simply finds her ludicrous and tasteless...
Where V.S. Naipaul is a universalist, drawing parallels among the people he sees, Shiva Naipaul is a defensive separatist. This sense of separation stems in part from the nature of a travelogue, which forces him to keep a distance from his subjects. For hi, sanity only exists in the industrialized West--i.e., England. The nightmare only begins when one boards the flight to Africa...
...Both Naipaul brothers see Africa through Conrad's eyes--as a ruined land where logic is an anomaly and men become corrupted. But for V.S. Naipaul, the entire world is a senseless, despondent morass. For Shiva, civilization and Mistah Kurtz are only dead in Africa...