Again, this is from my archives. It was first posted on the BlueEar site, later turned into GlobalEar, as well as on the Namaskar-African forum, some 10 years ago. I then lost track of it but was able to retrieve it with the help of a GlobalEar veteran in 2005. Later this year, I am hoping to review Patrick French`s authorized biography `The World Is What It Is` of Naipaul and so this may serve as a useful reminder of some aspects of his, Naipaul`s life and background
SIR VIDIA`S SHADOW: A Friendship Across Five Continents, BY PAUL THEROUX, Published by Hamish Hamilton, London, 1998
Reviewed by Ramnik Shah
I have to declare an interest: both Theroux and Naipaul are among my most favourite authors. In as much as the book is about one of them by the other I was naturally immediately drawn to it and consumed by an almost voyeuristic delight and curiosity in relation to the whole narrative, a mixture of feelings in fact that we go through when one friend talks about another and everything begins to make sense about their background and relationship and indeed a whole lot of other things concerning their personalities. The terms 'intrigue' and 'disclosure' came into the equation, but to make sense of them one has to read the book.
Theroux was born in the same year that I was; so in terms of age and experience of the world (and our subsequent move to England where my home is not far from where he used to live) there is a certain parallel. More importantly, his writings in TRANSITION (modelled on the British quarterly ENCOUNTER, edited by Stephen Spender and later revealed to be financed by the CIA) the politico-literary journal published from Makerere, the Ugandan university where he was teaching in the mid-1960s, were an early influence on those of us who were part of the UK returned yuppie generation of East African Asians. It was a time of political change and personal awakening; and while engaged in a search for identity and commitment as diasporan Indians we were ensnared by Naipaul's AN AREA OF DARKNESS. So, for us the combination of Naipaul and Theroux as literary heavyweights was loaded even then, with an ever-lasting potential that has endured to this day.
Given the nature of the subject matter and the personalities involved, it was hardly surprising that when SIR VIDIA'S SHADOW first appeared, there was a great deal of media publicity surrounding it; more specifically focusing on some of the sensational 'revelations' concerning Naipaul, e.g. his penchant for prostitutes, the death of his first wife and sudden second marriage, his touchiness on the subject of the Nobel Prize for Literature and, above all, the manner of the final parting of ways of the two friends.
But to start at the beginning, they first met in Uganda, circa 1965, when Naipaul, who was already a literary celebrity in Britain, arrived at Makerere as a visiting professor. Theroux was then a budding writer, dreaming of the big novel and fame, but had published nothing more than a few poems, reviews and articles; none outside Africa. So theirs was a fortuitous and fateful encounter, in an African university campus that Naipaul, immediately after arrival there, had dismissed off as devoid of any cultural values. But in Theroux, Naipaul found a willing disciple, and Theroux an equally eager, if rather patronizing and forceful, leader; their relationship soon took on the quality of a "guru and chela" = master and pupil.
Theroux's account of their first meeting and friendship as it developed rings so true that the reader becomes a participant, an on-the-spot observer, witnessing their many adventures as Theroux escorts Naipaul in and around the city of Kampala. They also take trips together up and down the country and to the dangerous and inhospitable regions transcending Uganda's borders with Congo and Rwanda, and into Kenya where, in particular, Naipaul feels most comfortable at The Kaptagat Arms, an old-style hotel run by a white ex-India military type in the former white highlands town of Eldoret, where indeed he stays for a prolonged period to finish his novel The Mimic Men. The quid pro quo of course was that Theroux benefited from Naipaul's fond and willing patronage; he received guidance on the technique of writing, on the politics of publishing, on life generally, and in return gave his unstinting adulation to his mentor. Even as the African part of their lives was coming to an end, Theroux, then still in his twenties, was conscious of the debt he owed to Vidia. He writes :
"Friendship is plainer but deeper than love. A friend knows your faults and forgives them, but more than that, a friend is a witness. I needed Vidia as a friend, because he saw something in me I did not see. He said I was a writer. He spoke about it with his customary directness. That meant everything to me, because I had no idea what I was going be next."
And he was repeatedly told: "You`re going to be all right, Paul", which of course made sense in their later years.
Vidia then returns to Britain, leaving a disconsolate Theroux in the backwoods of Kampala. Theroux even makes a sneak visit to London during the short Christmas vacation, without telling his colleagues. He is excited by the thrill of the metropolis, the prospect of meeting the capital's literati and the feel of being in the centre of things. He meets Vidia's younger brother Shiva, then a hippy-style student at Oxford, and observes Vidia on his home ground for the first time.
Then Theroux leaves Africa too, to teach in Singapore and to embark on his own proper writing career, with mounting success ("Fong and the Indians", "Waldo", "Girls at Play", "Jungle Lovers" at first, followed by the more successesful "Saint Jack" and "The Mosquito Coast" etc) and eventually to settle in Britain when he was barely thirty, with eight published books to his name. Their friendship, already firmly established, blossomed during Theroux's 15 or so years in England. This was a time when they would both undertake journeys, in their quest for adventure and writing material, to far flung corners of the globe, Naipaul to Iran, India, Argentina, the Caribbean and Africa and Theroux to South America, Asia, Pacific and Europe "across five continents". They would communicate by fax, letters and postcards, meet up from time to time, and pick up threads from where they would have left off, while going through the normal vicissitudes of living and age-ing.
All this is immaculately captured in the book. Describing the effect of the sudden death of Vidia's brother, Shiva, had on him, he says: "He sorrowed quietly; his grieving showed in his writing, in his choice of subject" and then: "It made us firmer friends. Now, after almost twenty years, we depended on one another ... to listen .. be sympathetic ... chastened by Shiva's death ... realized how precious life was".
As between friends who are both masters of the creative process, it is but natural that they should tap into each other's resources, but what went wrong, and when, in their relationship? Not the more superficial irritations such as Naipaul's niggardliness (with Theroux somehow always finding himself having to pick up the tab for their meals) or his idiosyncracies in matters of social etiquette (his insistence on punctuality and other forms of behaviour) or his patent insensitivity towards his own wife Pat (how she would weep silently, in protest or out of helplessness at his emotional extravagance or sexual proclivities). Theroux is as candid about his own failings and foibles as he is about his friend's. Did he resent the subservient role he had always assumed towards the older man, or the knighthood that was conferred on Naipaul who had always been disdainful of such honours "A title is nothing ... I have the idea that they should sell titles at the post office". He acknowledges that he had "always been (Vidia's) squire, "driver, sidekick, spear carrier, flunky, gofer; diligent, tactful, helpful ...?".
Perhaps Naipaul in turn was envious of his success and standing, but did that not have the effect of equalizing their status? Isn't there always an element of jealousy between friends competing in the same market place?
As widely reported in the media with copious extracts from the book when it was published, the crunch came with the sudden and shocking discovery by Theroux that Naipaul was selling certain first editions of his books that Theroux had especially presented to him, Naipaul, with fond inscriptions, through a Massachussetts bookseller. But the denouement had begun a year before, when he first met Naipaul's new wife Nadira at the Hay-on-Wye book festival in western England's picturesque countryside. The two friends were billed to appear on a joint panel, to discuss their works. Among those present was Salman Rushdie. According to Theroux, the event turned into a near disaster because Naipaul treated it more as a platform for him to be interviewed by Theroux rather than the two of them having a public dialogue. He also quotes Rushdie's rather unkind verdict on the meeting. Then came some nasty fax exchanges with Nadira, concerning the obituary that Theroux had written of Naipaul's first wife Pat at his request. We are left in no doubt that Naipaul's second marriage has a lot to do with the final break between the two friends.
So what are we to make of the book? Is it a catalogue of accumulated grievances, an account of how the two became friends and interacted with each other through thick and thin? Yes, and more. In the penultimate chapter, "Exchanges", Theroux sums up his friend discursively, ruminating about his strengths and weaknesses, his writings and his other relationships. "To all relations ... (however) there is always a time to call them off": these ominous words of Naipaul were soon to prove prophetic. In their acrimonious correspondence, Nadira had mentioned a biography of Naipaul. "The subtext of her letter was: Don't write about him. This offended me. I had become a writer to be ... free ... not to take directions ... Until I received Nadira's letter I had not even considered using Vidia as the subject of a book ... (he was my friend ... a book about such ... friendship was ... impossible ... (f)riendship had its rules ... (a)nd there was no model: such a portrait had never been done ... a young Samuel Beckett writing a book about his (friendship with) the older James Joyce(?)" And yet the "subject of proteges and apprenticeship had ... fascinated me since my earliest days with Vidia in Uganda". Theroux is at his best here, in exposing his own doubts and self-contradictions. He does not offer an excuse for what others have termed a betrayal of his friendship and there is undoubtedly a certain amount of personal bitchiness and name-calling; but what impelled him to write the book?
The last and decisive straw clearly was their final and purely coincidental meeting on Gloucester Road in London's South Kensington, when the two came face to face and Naipaul walked away with the immortal words "Take it on the chin and move on", referring to the end of their friendship. And so as he says right at the end: "Before we got to Cromwell Road I had begun this book in my head ... (this) is everything."
Do I think any the less of either of them? Not at all. On the contrary, the book has taught me, or reinforced a view I have always held, that the ultimate appreciation that we can give to a work of literature or art is to judge it on its own merit, divorced from the personality of its creator. Naipaul is not the first, nor the last, of the great writers of all time to have flaws of character or to have led blemished lives. As far as I am concerned, neither is a fallen idol. They both remain my favourite authors. In his "READING AND WRITING: A Personal Account", Naipaul says: "Literature, like all living art, is always on the move." This book extends the boundaries of both. It is as much about Theroux himself as about Naipaul. He needed to exorcise his grievance. Whether Naipaul feels and does the same, life has moved on.
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