Interesting story in the Guardian today with echoes of Christopher Hitchens's famous "women aren't funny piece" for Vanity Fair. VS Naipaul says that women can't write for toffee and no female writer is a match for him. None. Not even Jane Austen.
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The Nobel Prize for literature has for many decades been regarded as something of a joke. Geography, ethnicity and longevity are the prerequisites for obtaining the Nobel these days, not talent. But some people do take it seriously. Before VS Naipaul won the 2001 Nobel he had been a bit of a bore but emboldened by his Swedish coronation Naipaul's arrogance has grown to Chomskian levels. I've read VS Naipaul and he is no genius. He's a middling middle class novelist with a very laboured style, a tin ear for dialogue and a deadening, bland philosophy that he presents as some great truth he has uncovered from his rather limited experience of the world. Naipaul is well known for cutting people who annoy him out of his life (this includes long time friends and family members) and I imagine that nowadays he is surrounded largely by sycophants and yes men. Once a month he probably gets a fawning letter from his publisher. Perhaps this explains his delusion. Naipaul isn't in the same league as Jane Austen or George Eliot or Emily Bronte or even Charlotte Bronte. In a 100 years everyone will still be reading Jane Austen for pleasure while Naipaul will be reduced to a footnote.
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16 comments:
BLAM! You tell it like it is, bitch pudding! Haha! Props.
Oldest masculine trope in the book. Jane isn't here to defend herself, but if she were, I bet she would find excellent use for Naipaul as a character study.
I've read a bit of Naipaul, and no, haven't found his genius yet. He reminds me a bit of John Banville in having a high enough regard for his own writing that no one else really need bother.
There was a piece in the New York Times book review a couple of years ago about the recent biography of him which was odd enough to stand out in my mind. I don't know if it's worth anyone's alloted monthly visits, but here it is. Apparently the theory is that he was hideous to people so that he could empathize all the better with them on the page.
Or something.
You are probably right about Naipaul and I read and respect many women writers but I still think it's true - in life and letters - that men's and women's brains tend to be different, with women generally rather less interested in the abstract side of things.
Kate
Thanks for that, VSN has his head shoved up his own arse.
Seana
I read that review, but not the book. I wouldnt waste all those hours reading about VSN. I think the Banville comment is spot on, both of them will date very quickly.
Mark
It would be tough to prove something like that, there is so much cultural conditioning at an early age.
I certainly have seen (and read) men being just as sentimental as women--it may be just that they don't always recognize their own sentimentality as such.
I was thinking about Austen today, and I would say that her work is much more about human folly of all types than it is about romance. Though romance is, of course, what moves the plot along.
Adrian, many years ago I tried to read Naipul's The Loss of El Dorado and could not get into the book at all.
So we could add Barbara Tuchman and Dame C.V. Wedgwood to the list of female authors who are considerably better than Naipul.
I barely know who he is but he sounds like a smug twot, for sure.
Well said fella.
Seana
Its about the human condition and is so much more psychologically sophisticated than almost all novelists writing today.
Uriah
Well I've read a couple of his novels and a couple of his travel books. The travel books were better. He's a misanthrope and I like that in a travel writer.
Paul
I think thats the least of his problems.
Frankie
Thanks for that.
Good comments about Naipaul's arrogance, and the writing genius of Austen, et al.
I would say that there are great women writers today, not only in history. One comes to mind immediately.
Toni Morris is a great writer, and brilliant. She won the Pulitzer for Beloved, and the Nobel Prize in Literature. Beloved is in one of the top works of fiction which elevated my consciousness. I've never forgotten how profound was that book.
And I don't believe that women are less interested in abstractions; that is a stereotype. I know many who are expert at abstract thinking -- those whom I read about and those I know. (How do people come up with these ideas anyway? Does anyone read the New York Times Science section.)
Also, I refute that men don't write with sentimentality and sensitivity. Many do that.
As an example, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin, a literature professor at the U. of Mississippi, is a mystery, yes. But it's also about the human condition, friendship, racism, alienation. It's beautifully written and emotionally astute.
So, stereotypes are useless and outmoded these days, and were, also outdated a century ago, too.
Correction: I meant to say Toni Morrison when referring to a great contemporary woman writer.
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