Republicans in Dallas: The Writer and the World by V.S. Naipaul

October 12, 2006

Why didn't I discover V.S. Naipaul earlier? Well, I did read House for Mr. Biswas a few years back.. which I enjoyed.. but I was dissuaded from continuing because of something about Naipaul's reputation. I had a classmate in my Arabic program who casually referred to Naipaul as a racist.. and although I have never been an admirer of Edward Said, I did know that Naipaul came in for his ire. So Naipaul just did not move into that "must read" category (where he now is for me).

Not the least among the essays collected in the book The Writer and the World is a curious bit of reportage entitled "The Air-Conditioned Bubble: The Republicans in Dallas." It is an essay from the Republican convention of 1984.. in which Ronald Reagan gains his party's nomination to run once again for president. The essay manages to demonstrate that Naipaul's critical dissection of popular fantasies does not end when he leaves third-world countries.. but continues, sharp as ever, even in the midst of the great quadrennial gathering of American conservatives.

The humor of Naipaul's observations sometimes take a little time to get.. I was struck by the cleverness of his metaphors:

The occasion, with its magnification of man, had a feel of religion. Not religion as contemplation or a private experience of divinity; but religion as the essence of a culture, the binding, brotherhood-transcending material need. That, rather than political debate, was what people had come to Dallas for. The scale and the mood, and the surreal setting, made me think of a Muslim missionary gathering I had seen five years before in a vast canopied settlement of bamboo and cotton in the Pakistan Punjab. [447]

It comes and goes.. but there it is: the Republicans in Dallas remind him of Pakistani Muslims at a missionary gathering. One can only imagine the horror that the Baptist preacher Dr. W.A. Criswell, who gave the benediction one night at the convention, would feel over the comparison.. not to mention all the other self-important members of the party.

Reading about this convention a little over twenty years later, one can see that the Republican party has not really changed all that much. The general lionization of Ronald Reagan makes it easy to forget that American conservatism has not become a symbolic husk, but was empty already in the 80s. This belies the chorus of conservatives now wailing about the betrayal of true conservatism by those who occupy the White House. One would have to go a lot further back to find the source of such a betrayal.

Naipaul's reportage thrives on spotting fantasies.. and there was no lack of them at the Republican convention:

The fundamentalism that the Republicans had embraced went beyond religion. It simplified the world in general; it rolled together many different kinds of anxieties—schools, drugs, race, buggery, Russia, to give just a few; and it offered the simplest, the vaguest solution: Americanism, the assertion of the American self. [441]

How deadly this "ism" could be is visible now.. for anyone who cares to see. The hard-shell of American identity covers the eyeballs of a nation.. making it hard for us to see our situation in the world: a nation that is hardly humble, that according to its own strategic position-papers is looking to create a unipolar world, and has the nerve to ask the people of Iraq to say "thank-you." Even those in opposition have to couch their criticisms in an optimistic cloak, allowing assertions of national greatness to stand.

Since this essay is set into a large collection of essays, the reader is reminded that self-deception is the general state of human cultures. It is surely more difficult to respond truthfully to the world than to buy into fantasy constructions. But whereas I can read about the leaders and lies of far flung sites (Maritius, say) and be amused, it is harder to be amused by those nearer to home. After describing a gala fundraiser set on a Texas ranch, attended by the very wealthy of the Republican party, Naipaul describes the benedictor:

The benediction was spoken by Jerry Falwell, the fundamentalist Baptist preacher, the religious star of the right, who was to speak the benediction next day at the convention itself... He addressed God directly: "This evening is dedicated to Thee." Texan whoops followed the "amens." [454]

What I admire about Naipaul is the way you can't ever imagine people shouting out whoops after his observations. He is too committed to contemplating his world, and contemplation does not mesh with whoops. I can imagine people shouting whoops at Edward Said.. in fact, I have witnessed that.. when he spoke to us at the American University in Cairo. Not Texan whoops.. but partisan whoops, nevertheless.. Reality will be found elsewhere.. away from all such forms of group fantasy.