VS Naipaul’s Glorious Failure

V.S. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival is a novel for all seasons. It’s a book about seeing and the failure to see; about the difference between wanting to be a writer and truly becoming one; about understanding one’s place in the world and also understanding what that means in a world defined by constant change, governed by loss, entropy, and the inexorable wingbeat of time. It anticipates and yet far surpasses the contemporary vogue for so-called “autofiction” — or just writing where the main character is also a writer — in part because it’s a strenuous piece of self-criticism, autofiction as auto-correction. It also happens to be the most compassionate work by a writer not much noted for his compassion. In this last sense, although it’s Naipaul’s masterpiece — original, capacious, equally good at the level of part and whole, both world- and mind-altering — it’s a work that illuminates as much through its limitations as its triumphs.