Word: naipauls
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Joseph Conrad is the only accurate historian Naipaul finds, and his fiction is the subject of the fourth essay, "Conrad's Darkness." He offers Naipaul solidity: well-considered ideas that have been tested, conclusions which Naipaul can trace to their roots. His writing is a welcome change from the rhetorical fantasies of Generals Mobutu of Zaire and Peron of Argentina. "Nothing is rigged in Conrad. He doesn't remake countries. He chose, as we now know, incidents from real life; and he meditated on them...
...Naipaul himself meditates in these essays, providing vivid observations, adept analysis, and a command of detail. He brings us in to the ghost town of Montevideo's stopped clocks and neglected monuments, and he makes us weary of the endless muddy river of Zaire. Details in Naipaul's hands naturally, effortlessly fill out his pictures. He uses them to emphasize the very large difference between what he sees in each country and what he hears from their leaders...
Malik, the power behind the bizarre killings in Trinidad, is Naipaul's symbol for this "deep corruption" of language. "Michael X and the Black Killings in Trinidad" tells the story of an immigrant from Trinidad who discovers Black liberation while living in London and brings a rhetoric of revolution back home. He speaks of revolution without plans or programs, and it wins him power, money and followers. When the money runs out he needs a new way to hold his followers together. The murders of two devotees provide a solution...
Using angry language to recruit support may be dangerous, as Naipaul shows; but there's a greater issue he never addresses. He won't allow the leaders their anti-imperialist rhetoric, but he doesn't offer them any other suggestions about how to bind their countries together. He wants them to write their histories "accurately," and then everything else would fall into place. But is the real Argentina European or South American? How far back in time must countries search for an identity...
...Naipaul offers only one answer: countries must not look back too far and turn precolonial times into "le bon vieux temps de nos ancestres." This is the solution of General Mobutu in Zaire, a senseless one. Mobutu combines tradition and technology in a way that belongs to neither culture: African dances performed in a television studio, African art relegated to a sculpture niche in the wall of Mobutu's residence. Mobutu's "African nihilism" promises the flashy cars and gold wristwatches of Western technology while attacking their source...