Ambivalence As A Metaphor

“ Ambivalence As a Metaphor: A Study of V S Naipaul’s Fiction” ( Article ) ( by Dr Karanam Rao)

V S Naipaul has carved for himself a peculiar niche with a vast repertoire of creative output that includes a score of novels and umpteen nonfictional 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 while focusing 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 who has 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, Naipaul almost 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 of openness and perforated cultural values. Naipaul adopts an ironic distance as a fictional strategy 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 of the 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 Islamic Journey” 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 postcolonial 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 and glory 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 cool and 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 the same 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.

2.. 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 of arrival 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 “exile” into 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” par excellence. *****