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Biography

I notice VS Naipaul does not yet have a proper length biography, unlike Edward Said, which is odd considering Naipaul's long literary career. Evidence of liberal bias in Misplaced Pages? I hope not.

Liberal bias? What does "liberal bias" have to do with Naipaul? I'm confused. Guettarda 19:51, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This devotes way too much attention to his politics. He won the Nobel Prize for his artistry as a novelist. This whole entry needs rewriting. --Griot

Yes, I agreed there should be more about the novels, and I don't think the list of fiction is correct as "The Loss of El Dorado" is definitely non-fiction. --Alan 23:01, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps due to the prohibition about speaking against the prophet are there too few entries regarding the esteemed Mr. Naipaul. One billion people acceeding to a prohibition leaves few to make commentary. --

There's a prohibition against speaking ill of V.S. Naipaul, and one billion people "acceed" to it? Who knew? Griot 23:48, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

User:Ethicalone503 was referring to Naipaul's criticisms of Islam. 70.23.177.216 09:13, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I knew that. And I was making fun of using Ethicalone503, who doesn't know what "acceed" means. Griot 19:07, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh. 70.23.177.216 16:37, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Can somebody fix the infobox errors? Randhirreddy 15:07, 21 November 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Randhirreddy (talk • contribs)

Of all the talk pages of all the pages in WP; this one has done the least in terms of contributing to the betterment of the main article. And, I just joined the bandwagon with this comment. ~~Abhishek 21 March 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.215.87.3 (talk) 15:12, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

--Glad to see Said's perspective tempered a bit in the history of this page, especially given his malicious opposition to Naipaul's work.

If there was anything we could do to eradicate Said from this entry completely, that would no doubt be a drastic improvement. Said was an ideologue and distinctly mediocre scholar; the more we can do, collectively, to limit his presence on Misplaced Pages, the better. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Emerson22 (talk • contribs) 06:13, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Me too! And I don't understand this obsessive "catgut" individual, who seems far more invested in asserting the semantic power of "postcolonial theory" than he/she is in the truth. Edward Said WAS a pianist. That's pretty much all we know about him, aside from his vituperative, intellectual fictions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Enigmaofarrival (talk • contribs) 05:56, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly. Edward Said is far more important as a minor classical pianist than anyone could possibly be as a postcolonial theorist. Whatever that is! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kcboat (talk • contribs) 06:06, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I added a POV dispute, because this article is totally biased and unsourced. Please, SOMEONE give it a read-through. It reads like his publisher's PR bio for him. It's full of unsourced statements and emotional terms. Please, please let's begin to clean it up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.132.173.197 (talk) 04:32, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

POV

Does anyone else find the "Personal Life" section to be a tad ridiculous? If it isn't cleaned up, it either needs to be deleted, or this article needs a POV tag, because there is way too much judgement going on there. --Alladiheir (talk) 13:04, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Maybe. But the OBVIOUS Edward Said worship on this page is clearly contradictory to what the great scholar would have wanted. Someone needs to catch up on his or her reading and current trends in the critical status of "postcolonial" theory. Not that it could possibly matter in a bourgeois forum such as Wikifacebook. Or whatever this is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bigsaidlover (talk • contribs) 04:13, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

This article is not about Said, but Naipaul. Please discuss your ideas regarding Said's profession on the respective talk page. Btw, this here is not "Wikifacebook", but the English language Misplaced Pages, where principles like WP:NPOV and WP:SOURCE are to be followed. --Catgut (talk) 18:05, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry--my mistake. It just feels so much like another way to waste intellectual labor on the emphemeral. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bigsaidlover (talk • contribs) 19:50, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Year of Knighthood

The article says that he was knighted in 1990, however the AP source that I found in the NYTimes.com says 30 Dec 1989. Not sure if this is officially in the year of 1990 even though it was two days before. DutchTreat (talk) 22:07, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

It was gazetted in the New Year Honours List of 1990 published on 30 Dec 1989. His knighthood was actually conferred in 1990. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.102.236.63 (talk) 07:19, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Nadira's family

I find mentioning Major General (Retd.) Amir Faisal Alavi rather unnecessary - it would have made sense if this were Nadira's biography. VS Naipaul is most notable for his literary works and personal details are needed only when it enhances the description of Naipaul himself, not of some other persons who happen to be cousins, brother in laws etc. If we were to mention all the relatives, then BLPs would be too cumbersome Zencv 14:12, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

When you mention the family of a Notable person then other notable person related to him are always mentioned in BIOs.

Refer to family section in George S. Patton for an example. "His 7th great-grandfather was Louis Dubois, a French Huguenot immigrant, who with 11 others founded the town of New Paltz, New York. Another of Patton's ancestors was Francis Gregory, a first cousin of George Washington. Gregory married Francis Thornton III, a first cousin twice removed from James Madison and three times removed from Zachary Taylor. ...".

Also Sylvanus Morley's bio which is aa Featured Article mentions "Felix (Sylvanus' maternal grandfather) was an immigrant to the United States from newly independent Belgium, where his father had been a judge in the Belgian Supreme Court."

Mentioning other notable relatives is perfectly fine for a Bio. None of the text about Gen Alavi violates any policies of .

I hope it would be understood that removing the changes was rather quick and without discussion. The information about Nadira Naipaul's relation to the former Chief of Pakistan SSG is relevant. After his death he is being referred to as Naipaul's brother-in-law in the media eg. here. If you are convinced great. I don't want to get into edit war here Zencv please revert your changes to the previous edit. By the way Nadira Naipaul's surname is spelled Alavi not Alvi. Indoresearch (talk) 14:54, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree that in a BLP, other notables who are friends, relatives etc. may be mentioned. But this has to be done with some discretion. Here the problem I find is that there is a profound difference between the notoriety of Naipaul and his brother in law(I hope you would agree with this). Then VS Naipaul may be noted as a relative in Amir Alavi's Bio., but the other way around is confusing, esp. for (most of the) readers who don't know about Amir Alavi. If you had mentioned Naipaul as a relative on Alavi's Bio., this problem wouldn't have existed. I hope I have made it clear, but if you still want to add it, go ahead and I will not object Zencv 16:05, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Visiting professorships

To the IP who wrote in his/her edit summary, "i bet a dime fowler can produce none of these dozens of visiting professorships which fowler claims; s/he just wants what s/he wants and will create any reason to justify her or his claims." Given your reckless gamble, let me offer only one. Naipaul visited Makerere University, in Kampala, Uganda during the year 1966, met Paul Theroux there for the first time, and began a long and tortuous friendship ... Let me also suggest, before you lose more dimes in your piggybank, that writers are usually writers-in-residence at colleges/universities, not visiting professors. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:48, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Education

Could we get some information about his education, instead of all that silly gossip about his marriages to obscure women? 208.87.248.162 (talk) 02:28, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes I will be adding some of that soon. Thanks for posting. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:04, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Rewriting

As many editors have observed above, this article does great disservice to a major writer. It seems to have been hijacked by various editors, each keen to highlight their favorite facet of Naipaul: Indo-Trinidadian, Indian, Pakistani-by-marriage, misogynist, misanthropic, sexually dissolute, sexually repressed, as caricatured by Edward Said, -Derek Walcott, -Salman Rushdie, -the Post-colonialists, -the journalists, and the Naipaul-wannabes. A reader unfamiliar with Naipaul will learn nothing about his life or writing, only the eternal verities pronounced by his enemies and friends. I believe he deserves more that than. I shall be rewriting the page, first rather quickly without citations in the next few minutes, based on what I remember from reading him. I will then add the citations, and reinstate from what I have taken out that which is encyclopedic. Please bear with me. Regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:14, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I have quickly written the first two sections, all from memory. I will come back very soon to correct the mistakes, add the cites, add more sections, ... Please do not make changes or corrections for now. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:04, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

The writing is coming slowly, in part because I have to begin sourcing statements as the article is gathering heft, in part because I have to create or expand other articles which are being Wikilinked in the text, in part because I am rereading all of Naipaul from Mystic Masseur to Magic Seeds, and that is taking time. There is a lot of stuff out there. Naipaul is a man who has written a lot about his background and there is a fair amount of biographical literature on him, including the "authorized biography" by Patrick French. However, very little of the literature is truly scholarly. Naipaul for example, in his investigations into his putative Brahmin past, has looked mostly at his mother's family; the father's past remains murky. In Patrick French's biography, F.P. Wilson, the Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford, who failed Naipaul in the oral exam for the B. Litt degree in February 1954, is described as a retired professor who was known for being "taciturn and socially awkward." Moreover, Naipaul, according to French, said this was "deliberate and a racial thing" on Wilson's part. Wilson's own Misplaced Pages page was the merest of stubs, so I had to rewrite it. In doing so, I discovered, he was very much not-retired and at least according to his ODNB biography (revised 2004), "he was remembered as the most learned Elizabethan scholar of his generation, as well as a master of social graces and a witty conversationalist." Wilson was a popular lecturer at Oxford, had a powerful reading voice. As a hobby he "collected" proverbs, leading to his revised Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs. Given all this, who does one believe: a 21-year-old graduate student who is under a lot of pressure from all sides (family, financial instability, no job prospects), who has half-heartedly enrolled in the B.Litt course, but who has exceptional and precocious literary talent or the leading Elizabethan scholar of his generation with many literary "hobbies" and wide experience of lecturing in Britain and the US. It is possible of course that Wilson was a racist, but it is equally possible that Wilson decided that Naipaul was not prepared and not invested enough in that area of research. Or the truth is somewhere in between. I can't put that in the article, but this shows the problems that arise in writing a Misplaced Pages biography, if one wants to do it with any rigor. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:13, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your efforts to clean and rewrite the page; really would appreciate seeing some movement here though. The bio doesn't yet go past the 60s. 68.82.181.158 (talk) 04:41, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Having just come across this article, I'm sorry to say I think your changes, well-meant though they undoubtedly were, have been in some ways for the worse. Comparing the version of this article before you began editing it with the current version, I'm actually inclined to prefer the original. Both are pretty flawed, but in trying to correct the flaws of the earlier version, I think you've gone too far in the opposite direction.

The earlier version of the article lacked information about Naipaul's life, and was somewhat negative. But the current version is inadequate, as it consists only of a biography that cuts out in the 1950s. It has much about Naipaul's life, but little about his literary career, and virtually nothing about his reception and significance as an author. I appreciate you wanted to expand on the limited biographical information in the earlier version of the article, but removing almost all its content was a mistake.

The current version of the article is also over-decorated with unnecessary pictures, lacks sufficient inline references, and is written in a more journalistic than encyclopaedic style. This is inevitable when one person takes it on themselves to write a whole article - you're never going to get it all right. I recommend reading the Manual of Style, or looking at Featured Articles for examples, for help in these respects.

I don't just want to blindly revert, but the current version of the article is not adequate. I hope you'll read this and take it on board, and take steps to improve it. I don't mean to undermine the work you've done on the article (which is appreciated), but to highlight how it's currently lacking or out of step with Misplaced Pages guidelines. Thanks for reading. Robofish (talk) 01:05, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

As my user page indicates, I've had a family emergency and have been off Misplaced Pages. There's nothing that you've stated above that I don't already know. I wrote the first draft from memory with the intention of later correcting it and supplying the in-line citations. So, please bear with me, I'll fix it, but don't be patronizing by insinuating the possibility of blind revert. I've forgotten more Naipaul than you are every likely to read. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:28, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually, why don't you guys post some more untutored ruminations on Wiki MOS, Naipaul, the art of biography, FAC, etc. It will get me angry enough that I'll make the time to start rewriting the article. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:42, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry if my comment above made you angry. I didn't mean to, I was just trying to help; but I didn't know about your family emergency. That's an entirely good reason for spending time off Misplaced Pages - and in any case, we can't demand a certain level of commitment from anybody. As the saying goes, there is no deadline. Feel free to take as much time off as you need, and I look forward to seeing future versions of the article as you continue to work on it. Robofish (talk) 17:43, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

I've just added the {{Under construction}} template to indicate to other readers that this article (more than most) is currently a work-in-progress, and should not be judged as though a finished article. Robofish (talk) 17:49, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

I am very concerned by the dominance of one highly biased user over this article. Naipaul has been criticized extensively as racist and sexist, and user Fowler&Fowler is using his evident expertise on Naipaul to monopolize his biography, hostilely reacting to criticism and creating an overelaborate and fawning Naipaul biography that excludes many of the important controversies about this writer. The authorship of this article urgently needs diversifying, and control wrested back from its single uncooperative author. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.132.173.25 (talk) 05:49, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Restoring old material about his life post 1958 to this article

As of today (Feb 19, 2014), this article days Naipaul to the year 1958. There is no mention of his work from 1958 to the present. There is a photo of a book matches from a match company he used to work for! What happened here? This is a disaster. I am restoring portions of this article that were excised when somebody decided to take it over and make it their hobbyhorse. Chisme (talk) 21:49, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

If you were paying any attention, you'd realize that he didn't actually work for that match company. Pictures give a feeling for the time of writing. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:03, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

I was paying attention. If you took the time to notice that this is an encyclopedia, you would see that cluttering it with pictures of matchbooks is a distraction. This article desperately needs to focus on its subject, not on his youth in Trinidad or secondhand Indian heritage. I am a big fan of his work, have read all he's written, as well as French's biography and Thoreau's memoir. A stranger coming to this article would think Naipaul is a provincial Indian regional writer from the Caribbean. You carved up this article and turned it into nonsense. You should no fix it. I took a stab at fixing it, removing what is extraneous and making it read like a modern essay, not a 19th Century Horatio Alger story. I hope you will respect my edits or at least understand that phrases like "by dint of good fortune" have no place in modern writing.

BTW, are you a native English speaker? Your writing is quite stilted and awkward. Chisme (talk) 18:11, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm afraid this is not the Simple Misplaced Pages or for that matter the Junior High School Misplaced Pages, nor is it ungrammatical ("it is near to Venezuela" (instead of "nearest") "who immigrated to Trinidad from Indian fifty years before his birth" (simple past instead of past perfect), "Naipaul attended high school in Queen's Royal College in Port of Spain" (wrong preposition) in the article or "you should no fix it" (above)) There is no WP:MOS mandate or directive that the writing be restricted to simple sentences. As for "dint of good fortune," it is used all the time in modern writing. Finally, as for English, perhaps you should also go edit both the English Grammar and History of English grammars pages, both of which I have majorly edited. I am reverting all your poor edits. The article has barely reached 1958, when Naipaul was a young immigrant to England, barely yet a British writer. I say above on this page that I've had family emergencies since October, that is why I had to stop editing this page (my user:Fowler&fowler user page proclaims this as well). I've been editing WP for for eight and have several featured articles and featured-class-articles to my credit. You, on the other hand, have 832 edits, and for all your interest in Naipaul, made your first edit on the page (since you arrived on Misplaced Pages three years ago) yesterday. The article was in much worse shape earlier. I am reverting all your poor edits. Let me finish the article, then you can come complain. Please read the discussion above before you make any further ill-considered edits. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:28, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

I can see that you and I aren't going to get along, but suffice it to say, I am not the only one who objects to your turning this article into some kind Indian schoolboy hagiography project. See the comments by User 130.132.173.25 and Robofish above. I don't care which Misplaced Pages articles you've polluted, English Grammar or History of English grammars, the following risible Dickensian intonations don't qualify as modern English:

"By dint of effort and the good fortune of receiving some education"

"In the new world memory of their genealogy...."

"chicken and fish had become honorary vegetables at the family's dining table...."

"The sari, the draped female garment of timeless India" (and I thought it was a big robe!)

"Arriving at Oxford for the Michaelmas term" (Michaelmas!)

"Hale and Naipaul soon became intimate."

And is it really necessary to say what food he carried when he left Trinidad ("He however carried with him a baked whole chicken and roti bread made by his mother.")

Your claims to having contributed more to the article than others, and your request that I and all other Misplaced Pages readers wait for your family problems to end so you can finish this article, lead me to conclude that you think you own this article. This is against community rules. See Misplaced Pages:Ownership of articles ("All Misplaced Pages content is edited collaboratively. No one, no matter how skilled, or of how high standing in the community, has the right to act as though he or she is the owner of a particular article"). I've attempted to show you the light. I think I'm going to have to take this to the admins. Chisme (talk) 01:28, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

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