V.S. Naipaul on Writing Schools

May 21, 2008

I have begun V.S. Naipaul's new A Writer's People. It is a genre that I particularly enjoy: the biographia literaria. The point is not to give an autobiographical narrative, but rather to discuss a life in letters and the springs of the imagination. So far the most curious move on the part of Naipaul is in his disowning any notion of the "republic of letters." Yes, it is a book that recounts his reading, but only to swear off the actual influence of this reading! The idea of a self-made writing persona is fundamental to Naipaul's understanding of himself.. and this is evident everywhere in this new book.

One place where I cheer him on is his attack on writing schools in America. Just after his contention that all writing is a product of "a specific historic and cultural vision" he veers to the topic of writing schools:

But the self-serving "writing schools" of the United States and England think otherwise. They decree that a certain artificial way of writing narrative prose (which is a general way now and in twenty of thirty years will almost certainly appear old-fashioned) is the correct way. [41]

The connection of ideas here would seem to be that writing schools perpetuate the notion that a writer can gain a style that is not an organic outgrowth of a particular niche in this world. A writer who attends such a school is presumably trying to pick up a style that is transferable and common. If this were possible there really would be a "republic of letters".. but for Naipaul we are all on our own.

He goes on to mockingly describe the style he imagines is to be found in a writing school ("You begin... with language of simplicity (like Hemingway), enough to draw attention to your style"). On he goes but at the end of this paragraph we get to something more substantive:

Chinese and Indian and African experience sifted down into this writing- school mill comes out looking and feeling American and modern. These writing-school writers are all given the same modern personality, and that is part of their triumph. [42]

That is a striking point. The notion that there is a common modern style for prose has the inevitable result of taking the experience of outsiders and shrinking it to fit a pre-fabricated box. The style with which a writer develops his or her ideas is directly related to the experiences themselves.. and if the writing is pre-fab, the experience will come across that way also.

The alternative is to just write and slowly discover the style appropriate to one's experiences. This is exactly the path that Naipaul is working to outline in his new book.. and who would want to claim that he has not succeeded in conveying something original and actual about the corner of the world from which he came?