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Reading Naipaul

First time for me reading A House for Mr. Biswas and I am completely drawn into the world of the characters in a way that I thought was no longer possible. Maybe age and experience living the realities of life had killed that escape hatch for me that was my sanctuary growing up. Back then I could escape into any world - Premchand, Harold Robins, Tolstoy, Barbara Pym, Leon Uris, Thomas Hardy, Alistair McLean, Norman Mailer,  James Hilton, R.K Narayan or Tagore just to give a sense of the complete randomness there. 

I don't revisit books I have read simply because the volume of what I have not (and want to) is huge and daunting. That perfect escape to another world far removed from mine has grown harder and harder over the years. Reading Naipaul made me feel wonderfully alive again, able to sense and feel atmosphere through words as I once was able to - very effortlessly. It was interesting to read his assessment of his own writing in this essay:

I had no gift. At least, I was aware of none. I had no precocious way with words, no talent for fantasy or storytelling. But I began to build my life around the writing ambition. The gift, I thought, was going to come later, when I grew up. Purely from wishing to be a writer, I thought of myself as a writer. Since the age of sixteen or so I don’t believe a day has passed without my contemplating in some way this fact about myself. There were one or two boys at Queen’s Royal College in Trinidad who wrote better than I. There was at least one boy (he committed suicide shortly after leaving school) who was far better read and had a more elegant mind. The literary superiority of this boy didn’t make me doubt my vocation. I just thought it odd—after all, it was I who was going to be the writer.

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