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Naipaul: greatness and ungraciousness Posted: Tuesday, December 11, 2001 by Tony Deyal IT WAS always widely believed in Trinidad that at some time in his life, Vidia Naipaul would receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. It was also always widely believed, and not only in Trinidad, that he would never receive a noble prize an award for graciousness, gratitude or the Chaucerian gentilesse. I first met Vidia Naipaul on Miguel Street, Presentation College, San Fernando. I immediately related to Naipaul's characters. Later in life when one of my friends, in the throes of unrequited love and betrayal, climbed a tree and invited us to stone him, my respect for Naipaul as both chronicler and seer grew enormously. I felt that he really knew his people. It is only afterwards that I recognised that while he knew us, we were definitely not his people. It was some time before I read The Suffrage of Elvira. It had fooled me on two counts. Like Dickens little Philip Pirrups' infant tongue which converted his name to Pip, my limited vocabulary converted suffrage to sufferage. Having met at least one neighbour named Eldica, and another lady named Eltie, I assumed Elvira was a woman. I had no great expectations that the book was anything but the travails and triteness of the life of some woman. I stuck to Zane Grey. El Paso came before Elvira. MORE |
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