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5.0étoiles sur 5
Shiva Naipaul's Legacy, Janv. 26 2000
While Shiva Naipaul's fiction is powerful - I am thinking principally of his first work Fireflies - one can not deny that his legacy lies in the realm of non-fiction. He was, after all, a highly regarded travel writer.I would contend that Shiva Naipaul was much more than a very good travel writer. While Journey to Nowhere uses settings, scenery and environment well to disturb the complacent Westerner, who has not had to witness the breakdown of the social order as the Guianese have, it also triumphs in simply telling a good story, something Shiva's older brother has a hard time doing in his Among the Believers. Nowadays, the amount of fiction published is shrinking, while non-fiction is flourishing. This emphasis on non-fiction, fueled by a desire to cater to specific segments of society in order to increase profitability, has resulted in the production of some of the most boring books anyone will ever see. Proof of this is Edmund Morris' Dutch: non-fiction is so boring one has to make up characters to liven it up. Whatever happened to all the wonderful stories that life presents to us everyday? Is life so totally devoid of anything interesting that we must turn to our imaginations? Shiva Naipaul's Journey to Nowhere stands far above the mediocre titles in non-fiction today, simply because Naipaul tells a good, albeit complex story. Naipaul traces the breakdown of the social order in Guiana to attitudes characteristic of the American Left. Eerie parallels can be found between Guianese strongman Forbes Burnham, Jim Jones, Huey Newton, and even - gasp - R. Buckminister Fuller. Nationalistic ideals people like Burnham, Jones, and Newton foster go hand in hand with leftist nonsense that R. Buckminister Fuller fostered. The dots are difficult to connect, but Shiva Naipaul connected them in this masterpiece which is certainly worth reading.
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