The current landscape is not overflowing with (good) observers, not partisan journalists, perhaps that's why when one encounters someone with the intellectual and human acuity of V.S. Naipaul the joy is double. Many reflections can be drawn from the essays of the Hindu Nobel laureate, collected by the Debate imprint in the magnificent volume The Writer and the World. It is a vivid mosaic of very personal pieces in the trajectory of this novelist where the reader can glimpse some of the author's key experiences. A broad and varied sample covering various continents between the late 60s and mid-90s. The great common thread of the book is the Hindu writer's will to observe, think, and write. An effort to understand the world as it is, reflect through writing, and share it with readers.
Naipaul's observations often resonate with a strong echo in the present. The writer's ability to focus his attention on the fundamental, shedding the accessory, makes his writings both agile to read, yet with nothing superfluous, with an underlying current of universal vocation.The centerpiece of the book is when the author delves into his roots and explains the complex and taciturn politics in India in the late 60s. We are shown a democratic, yet unmanageable India, full of unfulfilled promises, eaten away by a chronic victimhood more damaging than the colonial heritage itself. Far from idealized or romantic images, Naipaul shows a country dormant in its own complacency and unable to move forward. A country that is not lived, but suffered. This severe diagnosis can also be seen in his keen analysis of part of post-colonial Africa. The testimony of the political transition in the former Belgian Congo is remarkable. With visible traces of intelligence Lampedusan, Naipaul finely describes the transformation process led by Mobutu, the primitive dictator of the newly created nation of Zaire, one of those many failed and tragic episodes of African Marxism. The text describes how scenarios and words mutate so that social and political dynamics remain exactly the same, or worse. With great intelligence about the nature and shadows of the human condition, the author describes some of the mechanisms of national construction that allow power to be controlled, a process that includes the politicization of language or the domination of education and textbooks, and even the country's own history. Everything has to be controlled and adjusted to the new narrative of power. Mobutu will nationalize the different industries, and impose a regime of terror for outsiders, paternalistic for insiders, which will condemn Zaire to extreme poverty well into the 20th century.
Naipaul's observations resonate in many cases with a strong echo in the present. The writer's ability to focus his attention on the fundamental, shedding the accessory, makes his writings both agile to read, but where nothing is superfluous, with an undercurrent of universal vocation. The author, returning to Mobutu, describes how the African dictator speaks incessantly in the (controlled) Zairean media; his voice is heard through public radio throughout the jungle where people laugh at his jokes and applaud him. Mobutu, Naipaul concludes, has had the lucidity to give the people what they need. In this case, an African King; it doesn't matter if he is a bad king. An African peace; it doesn't matter if it is a tense and sterile peace. This is what a people allergic to responsibility and contrary to creation, who prefer to obey rather than think, ask for.
Another notable essay is the one that addresses Argentine Peronism. In a very raw way, the brilliant novelist strips bare the myths of dictator Juan Perón and his corrosive, insecure, and fanatical young wife, Eva Perón. Both sowed a paralyzing germ for the country whose consequences would reach our times. It is a tremendously tragic story: the story of a country that, having everything going for it, decides to throw everything overboard because of the Cainism and envy of two fanatics and, not content with that, chooses to persist in error. A path to perdition that, paradoxically, will end up putting on a pedestal those responsible for this great political, social, and economic blunder. The adoration of the golden calf taken to paroxysm. The author's keen gaze leads us to the heart of the matter, identifying the nefarious and merciless consequences of inflation, that is, impoverishment for impoverishment's sake. Policies of alleged social spending become a nightmare and debase the morale of the population, increasingly prey to gambling, betting, and any path that is short and easy. Effort, saving, and long-term vision are diluted.
Again the ghosts of Marxism appear, which, as on other occasions, are thick lenses that distort the diagnosis, which becomes even more cunning and complex when the period of dictatorship and police repressions are added to the equation. One absurdity after another, described with great mastery and allowing one to understand the great paradox that one of the richest countries in the world is also the one that has most often requested financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund due to repetitive episodes of debt default. The press, Naipaul points out, unable to understand what is happening, becomes another intricacy that feeds the spiral of ignorance and despair. Many of these indications are illuminating of the current moment.
"He who travels much and reads much; sees much, and knows much", recalls CervantesThe great effectiveness of Naipaul's texts and his great sharpness rests on being a good observer and on understanding the importance of ideas in the course of history. Passions, emotions, and bad ideas are often the great engines that drive human societies towards the precipice. By action or omission, by fear, by incapacity or paralysis, throughout history, nations on all continents have failed and succumbed in great periods of decline. Understanding the origins of these bad crops, where a bad idea is never missing, be it communism, nationalism, fascism, and variants (Naipaul speaks of the dangers of fundamentalism), allows clarifying processes and situations that might otherwise seem incomprehensible. Good ideas, sound ideas, and the existence of solid moral values are the only two great pillars that allow a society to progress in all senses in the long term.
V.S. Naipaul's essays allow us to reflect on the fragility of freedom and progress, and shed light on the mechanisms by which power relations are established. The knowledge the writer shares in these selected pages is not theoretical, but rather the result of a slow crystallization through the observation of the human condition and experience. "He who travels much and reads much; sees much, and knows much," recalls Cervantes. Hence its great value, depth, and also, great solvency. The book also includes multiple touches of the author's great literary intelligence. May the book serve to inspire new and better observers. We need them.