Literary Occasions: Essays

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Overview

A rich collection of essays on reading, writing, and identity from our finest writer in English, V. S. Naipaul. Literary Occasions charts more than half a century of personal enquiry into the mysteries of written expression, and of fiction in particular.

Literary Occasions brings together some true gems of literary criticism and personal reflection. Reflecting on the full scope of his career, V. S. Naipaul takes us through his beginnings as a writer: his boyhood experiences of reading books and his first efforts at writing them; the early glimmers and evolution of ideas about the proper relations of particular literary forms to particular cultures and identities; and his father’s ...

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More About This Book

Overview

A rich collection of essays on reading, writing, and identity from our finest writer in English, V. S. Naipaul. Literary Occasions charts more than half a century of personal enquiry into the mysteries of written expression, and of fiction in particular.

Literary Occasions brings together some true gems of literary criticism and personal reflection. Reflecting on the full scope of his career, V. S. Naipaul takes us through his beginnings as a writer: his boyhood experiences of reading books and his first efforts at writing them; the early glimmers and evolution of ideas about the proper relations of particular literary forms to particular cultures and identities; and his father’s influence, revealed in an intriguing preface to the only book he ever published.

These moving and thoughtful pieces are accompanied by Naipaul’s profound and severe discussions of other authors, including his signal essay on Conrad, and the classic “Indian Autobiographies.” The collection is completed by “Two Worlds,” the magnificent Nobel Address, in which Naipaul considers the indivisibility of the literary and the personal.

Sustained by extraordinary powers of expression and thought, Literary Occasions is both a subtle recollection of Naipaul’s past, and the only available organized statement of his literary ideas. A valuable companion to last year’s The Writer and the World, this is an essential volume from a man who has devoted his life to the written word.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times
No other living writer is able as brilliantly as V. S. Naipaul both to clarify and to enhance the mystery of writing. And yet Literary Occasions constitutes anything but a fairy tale of success. Rather, it is a complex testament not only to the struggle of one man against great odds to be ''that noble thing,'' but also to the place and purpose of the writer in the world: the ''triumph over darkness.'' — Lynn Freed
More Reviews (1) Fewer Reviews
From The Critics
One imagines many readers are still absorbing The Writer and the World, Naipaul's magisterial collection of deeply opinionated global political reports and cultural meditations that was released last August, covering the last four decades of the Nobel laureate's nonfiction work. The paperback of Writer pubs a month before this book, which collects Naipaul's literary prose, a mixed bag including everything from reminiscences of his laconic childhood approach toward writing to his 1983 foreword to his celebrated 1961 novel, A House for Mr. Biswas. Indeed, the most substantial piece here, "Prologue to an Autobiography," is also 20 years old and also previously published, as are the other 10 entries here. All touch on Naipaul's Trinidadian upbringing and coming-of-age or his adult writing life in one way or another; together, they form a literary autobiography that has its apotheosis in the most recent piece, Naipaul's 2001 Nobel lecture, "Two Worlds," which notes, "When I began I had no idea of the way ahead. I wished only to do a book." He has done many; this book is for readers interested in their sources. (Sept. 7) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780641840937
  • Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
  • Publication date: 6/13/2007
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 202
  • Product dimensions: 5.92 (w) x 9.59 (h) x 0.95 (d)

Meet the Author

V. S. Naipaul
V. S. Naipaul
In awarding V. S. Naipaul the Nobel prize for literature in 2001, the Swedish Academy called him a "literary circumnavigator" and a "modern philosophe." Both tags seem spot-on, given Naipaul's gift for describing -- in both his fictional and nonfictional studies of India, Africa, and beyond -- the humor and pathos of cultural collisions.

Biography

V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He went to England on a scholarship in 1950. After four years at University College, Oxford, he began to write, and since then has followed no other profession. He has published more than twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including Half a Life, A House for Mr. Biswas, A Bend in the River, and a collection of letters, Between Father and Son. In 2001 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Author biography courtesy of Random House, Inc.

    1. Also Known As:
      Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (full name)
    2. Hometown:
      Wiltshire, England
    1. Date of Birth:
      August 17, 1932
    2. Place of Birth:
      Chaguanas, Trinidad
    1. Education:
      Queen's Royal College, Trinidad, 1943-48; B.A., University College, Oxford, 1953

Read an Excerpt

From a master of the English language–winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature–a collection of essays about reading, writing, and identity.
In these eleven pieces–brought together for the first time–Naipaul charts more than half a century of personal inquiry into the mysteries of written expression and of fiction in particular. Here are his boyhood experiences of reading books and his first youthful efforts at writing them; the early glimmers and the evolution of ideas about the proper relation of particular literary forms to particular cultures and identities. Here, too, is Naipaul’s famous comment on his putative literary forebear Conrad, and a less familiar but no less intriguing preface to the only book Naipaul’s father ever published. Finally, in his celebrated Nobel Lecture, “Two Worlds,” Naipaul reflects on the full scope of his career, rounding off the volume as an intellectual autobiography. Sustained by extraordinary powers of expression and thought, Literary Occasions is a stirring contribution to the fading art of the critic, and a revelation as well of a life in letters, in its many exemplary instances.

Author Biography: V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He went to England on a scholarship in 1950. After four years at University College, Oxford, he began to write, and since then has followed no other profession. He has published more than twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including Half a Life, A House for Mr. Biswas, A Bend in the River, and a collection of letters, Between Father and Son. In 2001 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Prologue: Reading and Writing, a Personal Account 3
East Indian 35
Jasmine 45
Prologue to an Autobiography 53
Foreword to The Adventures of Gurudeva 112
Foreword to A House for Mr. Biswas 128
Indian Autobiographies 139
The Last of the Aryans 146
Theatrical Natives 157
Conrad's Darkness and Mine 162
Postscript: Two Worlds (The Nobel Lecture) 181
Index 197
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