read Naipaul, he was the greatest English writer of his times. Don't believe in saints and moral figures, that's politics and ideology, not literature. (And the fact that Jack committed suicide in the enigma of arrival had nothing to do with Naipaul's so-called homophobia).
You touch Naipaul and some disturbance follows in the wake. Of course he was everything he was accused of. Condescending, racist, diminishing, elitist. What's new? But his prose was brilliant and his way of seeing things startling, and revealing. You can't take that from him. Tho Walcott's Sadhu of Couva summed up West Indian Indian experience as well as Naipaul's A House For... He seemed to be a tormented writer (which writer is not) searching for an identity, hating himself and his past equally, acerbically...still trying to assume it, celebrate it...
Good documentary about a complicated man. I've read only a couple of his books - Mr. Biswas and a Million Mutinies - and found them both very engaging. He is truly a gifted writer but I can understand why his views are considered problematic.
@@himangshusarma7649 Thank you! Here's the playlist I made of all Naipaul videos I could find on RUclips: ruclips.net/p/PL3ucMGH6Cx3gGzgWeAaGet9uCn-2UDa_c&si=g47hFc0T8SMPWM8Q
The man wrote, true to his own individual perception of things. He never held himself up as the last word on anything. Were it not for the fact that he was a great writer, perhaps his views would not have been available to the world, but he was, and they are. In his books, he was equal in his views on everyone, regardless of ethnicity, and religion. He commented passionately on how these things contributed to the state of life of people. If he thought they affected people this way, or the other, he opined, through his writings, accordingly. Today, decades after their independence from colonial rule, Caribbean countries are still considered to be, "developING", rather than, "developED", and the indicators are there. Consider political corruption, rising crime, and lacking public policies. These are realities in the daily lives of people. I didn't have the pleasure (or displeasure, for that matter) of meeting V.S. Naipaul, but like others who have read his books, I have an overall view on him as a writer, which is that he wrote what he thought about what he saw, and personally experienced. It's like a great artist, painting, sculpting, or making music. He absorbed the things that were his subject matter, and painted pictures with words. His pictures, not anyone else's. Isn't that what we expect our artistic people to do ? Was Naipaul a political scientist ? No. Was he a politician ? No. Was he a priest ? No. Was he some sort of philanthropist ? No. V.S. Naipaul was simply a guy who was a very talented writer, and who was able to express, through his talent, his thoughts on what he saw around him. That's it. Perhaps we ourselves add too much weight to a man simply expressing his views on the world. Was he right ? Maybe. Sometimes. Was he wrong ? Maybe. Sometimes. Nobody's perfect, and I'm sure that Naipaul laid no claims to that.
20:50 The 'thought' that, in some simple way, reflecting the views of the 'establishment' will un-complicatedly get you a Nobel Literature prize or even a Booker prize is not a view that should go unchallenged. If this is how Oxford literature students are expressing themselves, then Lord save us! The quasi racist idea that Naipaul was celebrated because he mirrored and parroted white people's ideas about the Caribbean is a travesty, and one that seems to suggest deep ignorance of the topic at hand. Simply to repeat, as I think the student here does, the current politicised view of literary worth in British Universities is not someone expressing his or her own ideas. How would this student explain the qualities in Naipaul that got him his recognition which are not present in a thousand writers who didn't, but who held and expressed similar views? As for his homophobia etc, instead of merely trawling his works to tut tut and wag your fingers at various infringements of contemporary moral absolutes, how about asking if Naipaul's views on homosexuality, for instance, are substantially different from those of most people of his era and from his background and with his education? Since when is it a writer's responsibility to guard against 'tropes' that may or may not receive some censure in the future? Were his views on Trinidadians of African descent significantly different from those of people in his Asian Trinidadian milieu? Were those views different from the kinds of view held at the time by members of the white middle classes in that part of the world? These are the basic questions to ask for a proper history of Naipaul. Lazy and aggressive anachronisms like so many in this documentary serve no one.
So we should tell POC what they should and shouldn't be offended by? I'm confused by the comments....are all of you denying his attitude towards Caribbean culture and towards women? If not, then what is the objection to shining a light on these issues? I see a lot of knee jerk, reactionary comments here. And "woke" is such a tired term. Anyway, I thought these dissenting writers were articulate in their arguments and were able to make valid points in a calm, collected manner. These writers have as much if not more of a right to voice their opinions on how their country was portrayed when you consider the fact that Naipaul himself left Trinidad as a teenager.
Naipaul was a genius, and as such had very high standards for himself and others. The proper way to "get" him is to know what that standard is, and see why he wrote and said in light of that. In this sense, the arguments against him made in this program miss the point. It's futile to say he had moral and ethical deficiencies therefore his work was "problematic." You need to know what he was trying to accomplish, and respect him for what he has achieved as a writer.
He spoke the truth about Trinidad. I feel the same now. The place is frozen and in flux at the same time. I've never felt like it was my home, and I've been here all my life, save for a week in London... when I felt peace for the first time. I suspect he had borderline personality disorder.
(bp) i was re-reading his excellent "the enigma of arrival" then i found this wonderful documentary. i learned so much more about him through the archival film footage and shahidha's accompanying travelogue. great interviewees, great interviewer: everyone articulately adding to a rounded portrait of a great writer.
Though, I've never read any of V S Naipaul work, i still find him to be, one of the greatest West Indian writers of all time. Is style of writing can be compared to great literary figures such as Proust, Dickens, Fitzgerald etcs. But, Naipaul, the person i can't and wouldn't comment on much. But what i do know, is that no man is moral, no not one, We the people of the 21th century, have away in us that i find very quite repugnant and idolatrous. We seem to have this notion that people of high recognition, whether it be famous journalists, actors, musicians etc etc. That there are this demigod-like figures, that are prone to make no mistake, because there were predestine to be a Exemplar to us all, and maybe, maybe one day, we can be evolved in their image and likeness. This is one of the greatest form of Idolatry in today's society. Which need great purging from our system. As one prophet foretold, that one of the greatest sin of the last days. Men, will make their fellow men gods. ❤❤❤❤❤🎉🎉🎉🇬🇾🇬🇾
@@udayjoshi3508 They can do that by reading his wonderful books! Don't agree that he was the greatest of the last century. In any event, there is a way to be respectful while also confronting Naipaul's flaws and complexities-and this wasn't it. This was a big lecture from a bunch of losers.
What frustrates the authors who are chosen to comment on Naipaul in this video (curiously almost all "people of color") is the unflinching and penetrating insights in much of what he wrote of their "half-made" societies. Naipaul angered people even when he was alive for his brutal honesty. But in the woke era - when narrative is valued more than truth, when people propagandistically obscure the truth in the name of an identity-based power play - his prose is an indispensable antidote, offering an unvarnished and ever perceptive take on peoples and the worlds they inhabit.
What you are saying goes well with what Naipaul once said- "If a writer doesn't generate hostility, he's dead". (By the way, it's the BBC, so the people on this video are bound to be anti-Naipaul.)
It seems your own reality is so firmly shaped by the colonial mindset that it is difficult to see in any other way. “Truth” is only what colonial cultures say it is - “perception” is only available to colonists or those with a colonial viewpoint. “Fully-formed” societies are those ones who enrich themselves by exploiting, pillaging, raping, enslaving, and mass-murdering those they consider lesser than themselves. Naipaul wad a racist who failed to understand basic colonial and historical contexts. He failed to see beyond his own myopic and colonial views to appreciate the vast troves of human cultural diversity and ingenuity. He was a misogynist, a woman abuser, and a complete failure as a human being.
What do you mean by "curiously almost all people of color"? Naipaul was himself a person of color. His novels and non-ficition comment heavily on non-white countries and peoples? What is more normal than having people of color talk about their perception of how Naipaul presented them?
read Naipaul, he was the greatest English writer of his times. Don't believe in saints and moral figures, that's politics and ideology, not literature. (And the fact that Jack committed suicide in the enigma of arrival had nothing to do with Naipaul's so-called homophobia).
Blacks dismissed and despise him because he shined a light on them and their ways.
quite the bigot, girlfriend abuser, no wonder he is a darling of the bjp.
37:00
I am a woman, and I adore him !
You touch Naipaul and some disturbance follows in the wake. Of course he was everything he was accused of. Condescending, racist, diminishing, elitist. What's new? But his prose was brilliant and his way of seeing things startling, and revealing. You can't take that from him. Tho Walcott's Sadhu of Couva summed up West Indian Indian experience as well as Naipaul's A House For... He seemed to be a tormented writer (which writer is not) searching for an identity, hating himself and his past equally, acerbically...still trying to assume it, celebrate it...
Good documentary about a complicated man. I've read only a couple of his books - Mr. Biswas and a Million Mutinies - and found them both very engaging. He is truly a gifted writer but I can understand why his views are considered problematic.
That Iraqi girl is 100% correct... Kudos to her
Thank you so very much.
Thank you so much Uday! You have resorted hope in me. Big hug!
@@himangshusarma7649 Thank you! Here's the playlist I made of all Naipaul videos I could find on RUclips: ruclips.net/p/PL3ucMGH6Cx3gGzgWeAaGet9uCn-2UDa_c&si=g47hFc0T8SMPWM8Q
@@udayjoshi3508: Thank you.
The man wrote, true to his own individual perception of things. He never held himself up as the last word on anything. Were it not for the fact that he was a great writer, perhaps his views would not have been available to the world, but he was, and they are. In his books, he was equal in his views on everyone, regardless of ethnicity, and religion. He commented passionately on how these things contributed to the state of life of people. If he thought they affected people this way, or the other, he opined, through his writings, accordingly. Today, decades after their independence from colonial rule, Caribbean countries are still considered to be, "developING", rather than, "developED", and the indicators are there. Consider political corruption, rising crime, and lacking public policies. These are realities in the daily lives of people. I didn't have the pleasure (or displeasure, for that matter) of meeting V.S. Naipaul, but like others who have read his books, I have an overall view on him as a writer, which is that he wrote what he thought about what he saw, and personally experienced. It's like a great artist, painting, sculpting, or making music. He absorbed the things that were his subject matter, and painted pictures with words. His pictures, not anyone else's. Isn't that what we expect our artistic people to do ? Was Naipaul a political scientist ? No. Was he a politician ? No. Was he a priest ? No. Was he some sort of philanthropist ? No. V.S. Naipaul was simply a guy who was a very talented writer, and who was able to express, through his talent, his thoughts on what he saw around him. That's it. Perhaps we ourselves add too much weight to a man simply expressing his views on the world. Was he right ? Maybe. Sometimes. Was he wrong ? Maybe. Sometimes. Nobody's perfect, and I'm sure that Naipaul laid no claims to that.
20:50 The 'thought' that, in some simple way, reflecting the views of the 'establishment' will un-complicatedly get you a Nobel Literature prize or even a Booker prize is not a view that should go unchallenged. If this is how Oxford literature students are expressing themselves, then Lord save us! The quasi racist idea that Naipaul was celebrated because he mirrored and parroted white people's ideas about the Caribbean is a travesty, and one that seems to suggest deep ignorance of the topic at hand. Simply to repeat, as I think the student here does, the current politicised view of literary worth in British Universities is not someone expressing his or her own ideas. How would this student explain the qualities in Naipaul that got him his recognition which are not present in a thousand writers who didn't, but who held and expressed similar views? As for his homophobia etc, instead of merely trawling his works to tut tut and wag your fingers at various infringements of contemporary moral absolutes, how about asking if Naipaul's views on homosexuality, for instance, are substantially different from those of most people of his era and from his background and with his education? Since when is it a writer's responsibility to guard against 'tropes' that may or may not receive some censure in the future? Were his views on Trinidadians of African descent significantly different from those of people in his Asian Trinidadian milieu? Were those views different from the kinds of view held at the time by members of the white middle classes in that part of the world? These are the basic questions to ask for a proper history of Naipaul. Lazy and aggressive anachronisms like so many in this documentary serve no one.
I REALLY LOVE THE CONCLUSION!
Excellent documentary on a great writer. We may not resonate with some of his views but was on par with writers like Joseph Conrad.
good one ....quite interesting ..
So we should tell POC what they should and shouldn't be offended by? I'm confused by the comments....are all of you denying his attitude towards Caribbean culture and towards women? If not, then what is the objection to shining a light on these issues? I see a lot of knee jerk, reactionary comments here. And "woke" is such a tired term. Anyway, I thought these dissenting writers were articulate in their arguments and were able to make valid points in a calm, collected manner. These writers have as much if not more of a right to voice their opinions on how their country was portrayed when you consider the fact that Naipaul himself left Trinidad as a teenager.
These comments are made by racist White people who would obviously enjoy someone like Naipaul because it absolves them from their guilt.
The very title of this doc lets me know that it's got a shitty agenda from the get go
It's BBC, so it's obvious they hated the man.
Naipaul was a genius, and as such had very high standards for himself and others. The proper way to "get" him is to know what that standard is, and see why he wrote and said in light of that. In this sense, the arguments against him made in this program miss the point. It's futile to say he had moral and ethical deficiencies therefore his work was "problematic." You need to know what he was trying to accomplish, and respect him for what he has achieved as a writer.
Fascists read him that way, indeed. The only problem is that fascistic standard is not a very high standard.
@@shaibaliqbal If you say the Nobel committee is fascistic and has a low standard, then so be it.
Naipaul was a racist but A House for Mr. Biswas is the best Caribbean novel I have ever read.
He spoke the truth about Trinidad. I feel the same now. The place is frozen and in flux at the same time. I've never felt like it was my home, and I've been here all my life, save for a week in London... when I felt peace for the first time. I suspect he had borderline personality disorder.
(bp) i was re-reading his excellent "the enigma of arrival" then i found this wonderful documentary. i learned so much more about him through the archival film footage and shahidha's accompanying travelogue. great interviewees, great interviewer: everyone articulately adding to a rounded portrait of a great writer.
Though, I've never read any of V S Naipaul work, i still find him to be, one of the greatest West Indian writers of all time. Is style of writing can be compared to great literary figures such as Proust, Dickens, Fitzgerald etcs. But, Naipaul, the person i can't and wouldn't comment on much. But what i do know, is that no man is moral, no not one, We the people of the 21th century, have away in us that i find very quite repugnant and idolatrous. We seem to have this notion that people of high recognition, whether it be famous journalists, actors, musicians etc etc. That there are this demigod-like figures, that are prone to make no mistake, because there were predestine to be a Exemplar to us all, and maybe, maybe one day, we can be evolved in their image and likeness. This is one of the greatest form of Idolatry in today's society. Which need great purging from our system. As one prophet foretold, that one of the greatest sin of the last days. Men, will make their fellow men gods. ❤❤❤❤❤🎉🎉🎉🇬🇾🇬🇾
Thanks for the comment. But do read his works. Everything about him, literally everything, is in his works.
What a piece of preachy junk this doc is. Waste of time. If you hate Naipaul so much, please do a doc about someone else for Christ's sake.
Yes, but people need to see how misunderstood the greatest English writer of the last century was.
@@udayjoshi3508 They can do that by reading his wonderful books! Don't agree that he was the greatest of the last century. In any event, there is a way to be respectful while also confronting Naipaul's flaws and complexities-and this wasn't it. This was a big lecture from a bunch of losers.
@@tysond1495 Agree. But you cannot deny that it has to be up there on RUclips and not just on that crap BBC website.
@@tysond1495 VSN always said, "I am the sum of my books".
wow well said
British Jihadi Run D trying hard to demean V.S. Naipaul
an otherwise passable documentary is ruined by the insufferable moralizing reproaches of unknown writers against the protagonist.
spot on
and I am worried that it's seemingly the only the documentary about him on YT
What frustrates the authors who are chosen to comment on Naipaul in this video (curiously almost all "people of color") is the unflinching and penetrating insights in much of what he wrote of their "half-made" societies. Naipaul angered people even when he was alive for his brutal honesty. But in the woke era - when narrative is valued more than truth, when people propagandistically obscure the truth in the name of an identity-based power play - his prose is an indispensable antidote, offering an unvarnished and ever perceptive take on peoples and the worlds they inhabit.
Yes... Chibundu Onuzo wants Naipaul to "decolonize his mind"... what nonsense!
What you are saying goes well with what Naipaul once said- "If a writer doesn't generate hostility, he's dead". (By the way, it's the BBC, so the people on this video are bound to be anti-Naipaul.)
It seems your own reality is so firmly shaped by the colonial mindset that it is difficult to see in any other way. “Truth” is only what colonial cultures say it is - “perception” is only available to colonists or those with a colonial viewpoint. “Fully-formed” societies are those ones who enrich themselves by exploiting, pillaging, raping, enslaving, and mass-murdering those they consider lesser than themselves. Naipaul wad a racist who failed to understand basic colonial and historical contexts. He failed to see beyond his own myopic and colonial views to appreciate the vast troves of human cultural diversity and ingenuity. He was a misogynist, a woman abuser, and a complete failure as a human being.
What do you mean by "curiously almost all people of color"? Naipaul was himself a person of color. His novels and non-ficition comment heavily on non-white countries and peoples? What is more normal than having people of color talk about their perception of how Naipaul presented them?
He is more relevant now more than ever.