I will end as I began, with one of the marvellous little essays of Proust in Against Sainte-Beuve. “The beautiful things we shall write if we have talent,” Proust says, “are inside us, indistinct, like the memory of a melody which delights us though we are unable to recapture its outline. Those who are obsessed by this blurred memory of truths they have never known are the men who are gifted … Talent is like a sort of memory which will enable them finally to bring this indistinct music closer to them, to hear it clearly, to note it down ….”
Talent, Proust says. I would say luck, and much labour.
2001
CREDITS
Some of the essays in this work have been previously published in the following:
“Conrad’s Darkness and Mine”: New York Review of Books (1974)
“East Indian”: The Reporter (7 June 1965), and subsequently in The Overcrowded Barracon (André Deutsch, 1972)
“Foreword to The Adventures of Gurudeva”: The Adventures of Gurudeva (André Deutsch, June 1975)
“Foreword to A House for Mr. Biswas”: A House for Mr. Biswas (Alfred A. Knopf, 1983)
“Indian Autobiographies”: New Statesman (29 January 1965), and subsequently in The Overcrowded Barracon (André Deutsch, 1972)
“Jasmine”: The Times Literary Supplement (4 June 1964), and subsequently in The Overcrowded Barracon (André Deutsch, 1972)
“The Last of the Aryans”: Encounter (January 1966), and subsequently in The Overcrowded Barracon (André Deutsch, 1972)
“Prologue to an Autobiography”: Finding the Center (Alfred A. Knopf, 1984)
“Reading and Writing, a Personal Account”: New York Review of Books (1999)
“Theatrical Natives”: New Statesman (2 December 1966), and subsequently in The Overcrowded Barracon (André Deutsch, 1972)
“Two Worlds (the Nobel Lecture)”: 7 December 2001 (www.nobel.se/literature/laureate/2001/naipaul-lecture-e.html)
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He went to England on a scholarship in 1950. After four years at University College, Oxford, he began to write, and since then has followed no other profession. He has published more than twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including Half a Life, A House for Mr. Biswas, A Bend in the River, and a collection of letters, Between Father and Son. In 2001 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The citation of the Swedish Academy praised his “having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories.”
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, AUGUST 2004
Copyright © 2003 by V. S. Naipaul
Introduction copyright © 2003 by Pankaj Mishra
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Published simultaneously in Canada by Vintage Canada, Toronto, and distributed by Random House of Canada, Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2003.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Owing to limitations of space, credits can be found following the index.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Naipaul, V. S. (Vidiadhar Surajprasad), [date]
Literary occasions : essays / V. S. Naipaul;
introduced and edited by Pankaj Mishra.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Contents: Reading and writing, a personal account—East Indian—Jasmine—Prologue to an autobiography—Foreword to The adventures of Gurudeva—Foreword to A house for Mr. Biswas—Indian autobiographies—The last of the Aryans—Theatrical natives—Conrad’s darkness and mine—Two worlds.
1. Mishra, Pankaj. II. Title.
PR9272.9.N32 L5 2003
809—dc21
2002033998
eISBN: 978-0-307-55746-9
www.vintagebooks.com
v3.0
V. S. Naipaul, Literary Occasions: Essays
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