I expected "A Writer's People: Ways of Looking and Feeling" to be a discussion of how Nobel winner VS Naipaul views the world through the writing lens. This was my fault because instead, this book was simply a collection of reviews and experiences that Naipaul has had in the literary world. There is no central thesis to the book.

Unfortunately, as is the case with Naipaul's other non-fiction, everything is Naipaul-centric. He writes a long synopsis of Flaubert, a meandering biography of Gandhi, and a strange history of Carthage. He is childishly dismissive and snobby when he writes about contemporary authors.

Although I have greatly enjoyed some of Naipaul's fiction - "Miguel Street" and "A House for Mr. Biswas" - I have learned that his nonfiction is sadly condescending. ( )

This is a kind of memoir, a set of five linked essays in which Naipaul reflects on his interactions with some of the main literary threads in his complicated background.

"The worm in the bud" looks at Caribbean writers who played a role in his early awareness of literature: his father, his fellow-Trinidadians Edgar Mittelholzer and Sam Selvon, and Derek Walcott, whose debut collection of poetry was much talked about in Trinidad in 1949, even though Naipaul himself only actually saw it much later. He talks about his admiration for Walcott's verse, but, being who he is, he can't help inserting a snide suggestion that Walcott only found his true voice once he had discovered the insatiable appetite of American universities for unchallenging postcolonial literature...

"An English way of looking" is another essay that mixes praise and blame, talking about his long friendship with Anthony Powell, who acted as a kind of literary godfather to Naipaul, introducing him to editors and getting him jobs. With some embarrassment, Naipaul admits that although he greatly enjoyed Powell's company and appreciated his help, he had always taken his status as "distinguished British writer" on trust, and it wasn't until requests for obituaries started coming in that he had a proper hard look at "Tony's big book" and realised that he found it mediocre, dated and clumsy. That forms a framework for him to launch into a wider discussion of the postwar literary scene in England, with various little barbs aimed at Greene, Waugh, and co.

"Looking and not seeing" and "India again" are about Indian ways of looking at the world, and focus on four sets of memoirs. Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography is clearly a book he's re-read many times, and he is fascinated by Gandhi's character and the way the "Indian" persona he built up for himself brought together all kinds of disparate cultural ideas picked up in England and South Africa; an obscure memoir by an Indian migrant to Surinam, Rahman Khan, who was roughly contemporary with Gandhi, seems to be more an illustration of how Indians can travel the world without ever (mentally) leaving India, whilst the memoirs of Nehru and the anglophile Bengali intellectual Nirad Chaudhuri throw other perspectives on Indian politics and the legacy of imperialism. This is interesting as far as it goes, but Naipaul spoils it rather by using it as a platform to launch a blanket dismissal of post-independence Indian (-diaspora) literature as generic American-writing-school stuff.

In between the two Indian pieces is "Disparate ways", where he uses a critique of Salammbô (compared unfavourably to Chapter II of Madame Bovary) to stake his claim on the French and Latin cultural traditions, contrasting Polybius's cool, professional account of Carthage with Flaubert's artificial and rather operatic approach. Without ever mentioning Edward Said, who must have been in Naipaul's bad books for some reason!

Interesting for what it tells us about Naipaul's background, and fun in the way of things that are shamelessly opinionated but leave the reader with plenty to disagree with. ( )

A writer's people. Ways of looking and feeling is a singularly unfocused and self-indulgent collection of essays. It seems that winning the Nobel Prize for Literature enabled V.S.Naipaul to shed the last shred of modesty and elevate his writing to the level of l'art pour l'art in which only the writer counts, and the reader is reduced to an optional accessory.

It is quite likely that winning the Nobel Prize in some sense devastated Naipaul. Since winning the prize in 2001, he has not produced any major works, with only Magic Seeds appearing in 2004 and this collection of essays A writer's people. Ways of looking and feeling in 2007. fans of Naipaul had to wait till 2010 for his next book, The Masque of Africa.

The essays are very well-written, and, going by their titles could have been very interesting. "Worm in the bud" outlines Naipaul's growth and genesis as a writer, but his self-centredness makes his appear the central axis of the universe. While one might argue that within his world, that is the world of his creation, the author is, in fact, the central creating force, real-life references to his father and contemporaries make this first essay seem overly self-centred.

The second essay, "An English way of looking" consists of an uncalled for cowardly back stabbing beyond the grave of Anthony Powell, whom Naipaul elsewhere called his friend. The author describes how soon after coming to England as a beginning author, he met Anthony Powell, and it is clear that to some extent, this friendship benefitted Mr Naipaul. It is all the more strange that he goes on to describe his disappointment in Powell. Whatever the merits or demerits of Powell's work, Naipaul's condemnation of that work as a pinnacle of mediocrity is futher proof of the bad taste of this essay collection.

Naipaul has written extensively on India, but the third essay, "Looking and not seeing: the Indian way" adds nothing to it. It is a longish, boring essay, mainly on Indian history, which reads like an occasional piece pulled of the shelf to act as a filler, as with the fifth essay "India again: the mahatma and after". It is therefore puzzling why the two essays about India are separated by the essays called "Disparate ways", which mainly deals with the work of Gustave Falubert.

Some of the essays feel as if they have been "prepared" for this collection. this is noticeable by a sudden swing in the focus of the essay, as if a number of introductory paragraphs or pages was added. The result is a sense of disorientation, as the main focus of some of the essays is different from what the first two pages lead in to.

Readable, but unfair. ( )

General consensus is that I should look for the merits of this book beyond the apparent arrogance and malice of the author. But, frankly, even with arrogance and malice put aside - this book is very shallow and it is much less than what it could have been, considering the writer is so learned.

Don't get me wrong, book is very readable, I finished it in a day. But when I picked it, it expected to learn about writing, a writer's influences and so on. The book focuses on how a writer's outlook can be different- however, the way it is done is an irritant to me. Instead of talking about positive influences, laudable influences, Naipaul has instead chosen to pick up few writers, their works and bash them up on their 'ineffectiveness and mediocrity'. Only Walcott and Gandhi seemed to be two people who hadn't earned his complete ire. If Flaubert's 'Madame Bovary' was briefly praised, then he was bashed paragraph after paragraph for 'Salammbô'.

His writing of Derek Walcott, which I thought was much generous, considering Naipaul's malice for Anthony Powell (I couldn't really understand the relevance of that particular criticism) led to famous Walcott-Naipaul feud. Walcott wrote a poem called Mongoose for Naipaul and presented at a litfest: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jun/01/poetry.news

He praised Walcott's first book and writes:

'From this situation he was rescued by the American universities; and his reputation there, paradoxically, then and later, was not that of a man whose talent had been all but strangled by his colonial setting. He became the man who had stayed behind and found beauty in the emptiness from which other writers had fled: a kind of model, in the eyes of people far away.'

Naipaul concentrates on disparate views and then dwells into Indian view of looking and yet not seeing anything. He so generously informs us how Gandhi has no knowledge of world, maps before he left for London. Other than Ramayana told by his maid, he was unaware of history, cultures and scripture and how everything Gandhi was result of events in his life. Wow, man, we needed Sir Vidya to tell us that. He further goes on to foretell how India will never have another since no one will have opportunity to such 'exposures' in London and South Africa. Sheer genius!

Rahman, writer of 'Autobiography of an indentured Indian laborer' and Nirad C Chaudhari were two other authors who were further bashed up for their 'perspectives'. So much for an educative book, you learn, but you learn with lot of malice. And then Sir Vidya succinctly summed up how Indian literature scene was dry and unpromising. :sigh:

Book lacks a detailed eye; it is more written as an argument to a pre-defined conclusion based on personal biases. More than perspectives, book tells more about the writer who is dour, pompous and malicious at times. ( )