I lluminating Areas of Darkness

This carefully researched biography, the result of several years of work by the author of Younghusband and

Tibet, Tibet, traces the formation of Naipaul’s writing career and the evolution of such compelling novels like A House for Mr Biswas and such provocative works like An Area of Darkness and Beyond Belief. French draws on candid conversations with Naipaul that the biographer, declining to play the “house liberal”, weaves into the pages without further comment. But in his introduction, French goes to the heart of Naipaul’s conviction about his literary calling: “It may have begun as a pose, but it was a mask that had eaten into the face.”

French tells the story of the writer’s life — the birth in an impoverished family in Trinidad, a land that he would reject early in his career; the brooding fascination for India in spite of a hatred for its dirt and poverty; and the various travel projects that made him look at the world with his keen, sceptical and too often disdainful eye. We are also treated to some admittedly gossipy but very entertaining background details of Naipaul’s travels around the world, such as Vinod Mehta’s description of the writer’s bewildering sense of entitlement (“It became very difficult for me, because he wanted my car all the time”); Nikhil Lakshman’s anecdote about his tightfistedness (“We went by train, first class… He didn’t pay for the train tickets”) and Nasir Abid’s irritation at his behaviour (“Naipaul could never pronounce my name properly, he cultivated a lot of idiosyncrasies in his mannerisms, in his speech”).

But what is new in French’s biography is the candid account of Naipaul’s deep insecurities and his troubled relationships. The first marriage to Pat whom Naipaul met at Oxford; his affair with Margaret Gooding who remained his mistress for years; and finally his second marriage to Nadira Alvi whom he met during his travels in Pakistan. Pat, an undergraduate from a poor background like him, and on a state scholarship, was perhaps his best critic. Early in their relationship, she wrote to him scolding him for his “silly notions” — “They are shallow, rather conceited and the mental equipment of the young man. But they indicate something which I would very much like you to lay aside for my sake: the belief that the mere fact of having a man is all-sufficient to a woman’s happiness, that the woman should make the man’s life her own without, it seems, a reciprocal action on the man’s side and in short the idea that marriage should entail selfishness on one side and annihilation on the other…” Yet, although Pat was an actor, a member of the Oxford Union Dramatic Society when he met her, Naipaul soon made her give up her stage career — a loss that would remain a lifelong regret. Years later, Naipaul feels terrible about this: “I wish I had encouraged her. Too late, alas… My wretchedness about that now… My great grief.”

The biography ends in 1996, “rather than come too close to the distorting lens of the present”, with Pat dead of breast cancer, Margaret abandoned without explanation, and Nadira married to Naipaul. These are the bare facts, but it is all much more complicated than that — and one of the achievements of this work is that French manages to refrain from making judgements and to remain compassionate even while telling a difficult story. The book ends with an oddly moving account of the couple driving out into the countryside to scatter Pat’s ashes. They almost get lost, and it is raining, the path is slippery. “Around Gloucester the roads had changed, and Vidia could not work out where to go. He wept some more, and thought about returning home, of coming back another day….”

As for the idea behind Naipaul’s permitting such a biography in his lifetime, letting all the warts be seen and documented, perhaps it is an attempt to bring the focus back to the works themselves. Because, as French reminds us of Naipaul’s Nobel lecture of 2001, “All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain.” ©