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Ways of Looking: The Global Vision of V. S. Naipaul

V.s. Naipaul is a notorious character in Caribbean studies. Despite his stature as one of the most prolific Anglophone Caribbean writers and winner of a Nobel Prize, his attitude towards his place of birth has Jed to a repudiation of Naipaul by many of the region's critics. From his earliest writings, Naipaul has not shied away from expressing his vision of the region's history as "the history of this West Indian futility'' (The Middle Passage 28), where "nothing was created" (29). Critics have responded to these sorts of proclamations by showing the assumptions upon which Naipaul's ideology rests. Derek Walcott blames Naipaul's tunnel vision on his "Victorian spectacles" (quoted in Hassan 189). Selwyn Cudjoe explicitly argues that this European world-view impairs Naipaul's ability to truly see certain realities of the islands: "Naipaul chose to see colonial society from the eyes of the colonizer rather than those of the colonized ... as a consequence, his work ... is of limited value" ( VS. Naipau/: A Materialist Reading 113, 119). In examining these lenses Naipaul employs, this essay will show the new ways of looking the author develops in the latter part of his career that make his work of more than "limited value" for thinking about the Caribbean. Beginning with the publication of Finding the Center and continuing to his recent Magic Seeds, Naipaul has adopted a new way of looking at historical inheritance, a fragmentary and decentered vision Jess certain of its truth-claims. At the same time, in revisiting the subjects of many of his earlier works, he has found that this new lens allows him to see West Indian history as something other than futility. 1 The major work of this latter part of Naipaul's career, A Way in the World, is also a departure for the author, a break in genre and material from anything that he has previously written. A Way in the World exemplifies the new Naipaul, adopting a diasporic view to understand