18 October 2001, 847 words
Derek Walcott has described VS Naipaul as a "our finest writer of the English sentence". If anyone can tell me exactly what that means, I'd be very grateful.
It can't mean that Naipaul writes perfectly grammatical sentences, or else Undine Giuseppi would have been nominated for a Nobel Prize too. So what is Walcott saying? Is it that Naipaul's sentences express with crystal clarity whatever image or idea he's trying to convey? Is it that his sentences are more packed with meaning than the sentences of lesser writers?
This seems an awful lot to demand of a sentence. Maybe if Walcott had called him "our finest writer of the English paragraph" I would be less puzzled. Not enlightened, eh, but not so puzzled.
You see, I don't even understand what people mean when they call Naipaul "the greatest living writer of English prose". For one thing, that implies that there's a greatest dead writer of English prose: but nobody ever says who he is. And what's a "great writer" anyway? A genius has been defined as a person who has two great ideas, and it seems to me that a fair definition of a great writer is a person who has written two great books. But how do you determine what a great book is?
Salman Rushdie says a literary work should be judged by language, voice, psychological or social insight, imagination or talent. Harold Bloom, author of The Western Canon, says literature should be judged on its aesthetic qualities, which he defines as mastery of figurative language, originality, cognitive power, knowledge, exuberance of diction.
Now Stephen King has a great imagination, creates vivid characters, and is pretty handy with a metaphor. But I've never heard Rushdie, Bloom or any of that crowd praising King for his literary talent. In any case, nearly all their criteria are pretty subjective: judged by these measures, all literary praise might mean is that the critic's prejudices are the same as the author's.
It seems obvious to me that writing - indeed, all art - cannot be judged separate from its audience or audiences. Yet there exists in the critical canon this tacit assumption that some absolute, abstract standard exists by which literary works can be judged. Critics rarely ever say so, but it is implicit in their essays. Those who are honest enough to hint that their criteria has no objective basis still cite their expertise (i.e. wide reading of literature) as sufficient authority to deem what a good book is.
"Literary criticism, as an art, always was and always will be an elitist phenomenon," writes Bloom. "...Pragmatically, aesthetic value can be recognised or experienced, but it cannot be conveyed to those who are incapable of grasping its sensations and perceptions."
Me, I call this the Emperor's Argument: whose new clothes, you will recall, only smart people could see. This claim of exclusive or innate authority is the usual vulgar technique of any elitist group which wants to legitimise and preserve its power; and it is an attitude that has done great harm to literature and writing.
This is especially so in the Caribbean, where both authors and critics have cleaved to elitist - in the worst sense of that term - standards, thus ensuring that the majority of literate West Indians would rightly shun the unreadable and long-winded novels of Wilson Harris and George Lamming, but also lead, wrongly, to their not reading early Naipaul, early Selvon or Michael Anthony, except when made to in school.
As a result, no Caribbean publishing house exists and those foreign firms which have Caribbean imprints, such as Heinemann, now want only books suitable for putting on the CXC syllabus (which, of course, excludes any truly relevant novels).
This bogus elitism is why many literary people hail The Enigma of Arrival as Naipaul's masterpiece, and hardly ever talk about Miguel Street, which, in my view, will almost certainly outlast all of Naipaul's other novels, including A House for Mr. Biswas. Enigma is a turtle-paced, over-detailed book which, because its major themes are writing and the disintegration of tradition, appeals mainly to old people, critics and wanna-be novelists.
Miguel Street, on the other hand, creates and delineates in sparse yet eloquent prose interesting, recognisable characters within a universal world. Even Naipaul himself has a soft spot for the book, remarking in an interview that it "remains rather wise". Of popular fiction, he has said that "there's something there" and, much to my delight, has dismissed James Joyce as unreadable, saying "He is not interested in the world."
In my view, any real theory of literary criticism must be able to encompass both popular and literary fiction. I also think that great writers engage readers through appealing language, penetrating characterisation and hypnotic story-telling; where these elements are difficult or flawed, the book's ideas repay the effort the author demands of the reader. By these criteria, Naipaul hasn't written a truly good novel from Guerrillas onwards. Which is not to say that he doesn't deserve his Nobel: but not because he's a great novelist.
Copyright ©2001Kevin Baldeosingh