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Ambivalence As a Metaphor: A Study of V S Naipauls Fiction ( Article )

( by Dr Karanam Rao)

V S Naipaul has carved for himself a peculiar nichewith a vast repertoire of creative output that includes a score of novels and umpteen non-

fictional tomes. He has forged ahead of his contemporaries from the Third World by

trying to implicate the whole cultural history as a point of his fictional explorations whilefocusing his attentive vision on the ambivalence of his double inheritance that allows him

an ironic distance from his perceptive observations and narratology. It is rather hazardous

to attempt to an assessment of a writer who has a prodigious output to his credit, and whohas cornucopias of interests, and shows up a protean variety every time he comes out

with a new book. As a fiction writer, committed to upholding the tradition of his forbears

,and the lacerations of the indentured culture that he has so unwittingly inherited, Naipaulalmost turns into castigating it. And his earlier novels present him as a neophyte using the

fictional art in the service of documenting the West Indian culture with all its miasma ofopenness and perforated cultural values. Naipaul adopts an ironic distance as a fictionalstrategy that allows him to implicate as much as possible- the specificities of his own

culture that offers contrapuntal juxtapositons with the ramifications of the other,

Naipual has to do some balancing act. Starting from the Mystic Masseur , Miguel

street and A House for Mr Biswas, Naipual attempts to examine the particularism ofthe moment and of the specifics of the West Indian culture , with all its ambient traditions

and social values. The first phase is thus marked by the euphoric indulgences and

uncertainties of the artist trying to find his terra firma.In the second phase of his writing, which is more

prolific and prodigious, Naipaul has churned out a series of non-fictional works like

An Area of Darkness ,India: A Wounded Civilization, Among Believers: An IslamicJourney that manifestly bring out the Naipaul who is past his earlier ambivalences and

enigmas of that his exile has imposed upon him. He now becomes reconciled to the post-

colonial facticities and overcomes his carping sense of alienation to achieve a semblance

with the reality. Almost with the fervor of a pitiless raconteur, he exposes the sham andglory of different cultures and religions. The middle passage of his oeuvre thus pillories

all empathy both in India: Several Mutinies and The Middle Passage.

As D J Enright points out, Naipaul loses his cooland even oversteps the boundaries of orderliness and critical decency in arriving at the

strange finalities of judgment. It is perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of his

personality that becomes revealed. The African novels that closely followed them like

IN A Free State and A Bend in the River, Naipaul once again resurfaces with thesame penchant for judgmental cynicism that makes him one of the most controversial

literary figures in the Third world. The Conradian gloom and Lwarentian darkness

enhances his importance but never overshadows his achievement.

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In the last phase of his writing, the novelist has

once again returned to a clear-eyed perception of the human values, and his enigma ofarrival crystallizes not into uneasy accommodation but into an assured commitment that

enforces him into accepting the truth as a verifiable reality. His permanent expatriation

seems to have brought into him a changed perspective that allows him to turn his exileinto an advantage, and fiction into an exploration of the reality .He now lives in England,

the middle ground that becomes both his strength and weakness as a fiction writer. As

the Nobel citation pinpoints his achievement, he is verily a literary navigator parexcellence.

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