Riddikulus!

Naipauls remarks are only warming over a decades-old debate,but they deserve to be responded to,simply because these vile stereotypes live on in the literary world,and inform critical reception,course material,anthologies and histories. While these Jane Austen subjects motherhood,marriage,the neighbourhood,and so on are no less important than war and travel and nationhood,we know women writers have taken on both these traditions with aplomb. However,while men who address these intimate themes,from John Updike to Jonathan Franzen,are heralded as makers of mighty works,women get a perfunctory critical pat. The political dimensions of their work are effaced Harriet Beecher Stowe was asked by Lincoln if she was the little woman who wrote the little book that started the great war. Naipaul,with his gift for caricature,has taken that inchoate prejudice and put it out there in the clearest possible words,so people can see it for the laughable lie it is.