Piers Smith on Naipaul

Piers Smith [[email protected]], February 25, 2002

Though bracketing Rushdie's latest ventriloquism with other refusals of typecasting can have the same effect, this time by concealing the degree to which all are subject to a multiplicity of socially and historically irreconciliable pressures. Reductionism indeed. There is a world of difference between worrying about who you are in an immigration shed and how you're referred to at a book launch. Going off at a tangent: This list's fascination with Naipaul and apparent unanimity of rebuke suggests that he, or what he's been typecast as, is the unconscious of postcolonial desire.

Last Modified: 1 March 2002