v. S. Naipaul's Poetics of Reality"The Killings in Trinidad" and GuerrillasMa,ta Grazla Lolla

V. S. Naipaul's account of the 1972 Trinidad killings and his novel Guerrillas(1975) provide a significant example of the relationship between fiction and non­fiction I, The long essay and the novel were wri([(~n one after the other, if notsimultaneously. In the early 1970s around stories recognizably alike '. On re-editingthe essay in 1980 Naipaul explicitly related fiction and non-fiction and suggested ahierarchical interpretation of their relationshIp: his journalism "bridged a creativegap" bllt led finally to those novels - alluding to Guenlllas and A Bend in tbeRiver - which otherwise would not have uoffered" themselves to him 3, An initialinterpretation of such a relationship would then be novelcentric: assuming that"The IGllings in Trinidad" was in some way preparatory to Guerrillas, a comparisonbetween the two enables us [0 understand better Naipaul's poetics and how heworks as a oovelist. But it is clear tI,at the essay has not been merely ancillary tothe novel and that in the light of Naipaul's later literary production, and the subse­quent revision of his text a reading of the relationship of Action/non-fiction ex­clusively In terms of preparatory phase-main achievement would only be limiting.

The essay, to begin with, exists in two different editions, one published beforeand one after the novel, which prevents us from considering it as, strictly spe-dking,preparatory. "The IGllings in Trinidad" was published for the first time in two partsin the London Sunday 71mes Magazine in 1974 but was revised and expanded forthe volume edition of 1980 and given ti,e new title of "Michael X and the BlackPower Killings in Trinidad". Both articles delve into the case of Michael X - aliasMichael de Freitas and Abdul Malik - and the two murders with which he was in­volved in 1972. Nevertheless they are not the same article. The changes due to thenew editorial form - such as the abolition of photographs and subtitles and thedivision in four parts according to the content, instead of the arbitrary serializationin two instalments - together with many additions and the long final "Postscript"make the new edition a completely different artifact. Besides, it Is endowed withnew connotations. Edited by Nalpaul himself it Is more authoritative and, combjn~ing old and new parts, it has acquired an ironical overtone, which is peculiar to italone. [n fact, although by the 1980s Naipaul knew a great deal more about lheMichael X case, he did not rewrite the whole article, nor did he explain by degreesthe obscure elements, but inst~ld hybridized the original by emphasizing somepoints and enriching It with mOl'e extended quotations. In other words, he wiLhelduntil the end almost all the information gathered in the meantime so as to renderthe "Postscript" a completely alternative narration to lhe rest of the article. Only inthe "PoslScript" are the unclear facts explained and the perpetrators, reasons and

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dynamic of the murders revealed. The reader too knows more and is th~refore like­ly to approach the essay in a diffcrent way, certainly more as an authonal work byNaipaul and prompted by Guerrillas than as a reportage on the killings in Trinidad.Being "Michael X and the Black Power Killings In Trinidad' different from "TheKillings in Trinidad' and published after Guerrillas we cannot exclude that thenovel may, in its turn, have led to the essay. . .

It is not possible to state to what extent the pubhcatlon of Guen'illas deter­mined the choice to republish and partially rewrite the es;say, althou!Jh eyeo a su­perficial reading of the "Postscript" supports the hypotheSIs of a poSSIble mfh,eoceof the novel on the article 4, What is certain, however, is that [heir relatIonship canno longer be read as necessarily unilateral.

The volume edition of his 1970s and then 1980s non-fiction has also renderedmore difficult adherence to a hierarchical, novei-<:entric perspective. From the1980s onwards, In faet, Naipau] has shown an iocre~sing i~terest in forms other thenovel and, by the 1980s, an interest m such non-fiction wflllogS for th~Jf own sake.When, in 1983, Naipaul edited Finding the Centre, again a volume edlllon of~yspreviously published 10 magazines, he seemedto have ,?O doubt~ about d,e Iit.eraryvalue of his non-fiction. His aim there, he said, was narrative, and even If thereader "will... see how the material could have served fiction or politi",,1 journalismOr a travelogue... the material here serves itself alone's. The same, even if un"ck­nowledged by Nalp,,~I, applies also to the volume edition of "The Killings inTrinidad", which may m turn be read for itself "od, to some extent, as narrative..

And yet, in writing "The Killings in Trinidad" Naipaul's intcntion was certarnlynot merely narrative. The essay is in fact so multifaceted d,.t It is almost impossibleto arrive at a satisfactory definition of its nature and meaning.

In that it focuses on marginal characters and events """cted in a place whichis, in Naipaul's definition, nothing more than a dOl on the map, "1be Killings inTrinidad" is in itself a political gesture: Nalpaul is self-avowedly creatmg an alterna­tive 10 traditional journalism by denying the assumption, as he said, that "if you[are] unimportant all that had happened to you could be ignor~d" 6. Moreover, indealing with the case of a racial leader who was transformcd mto a murderer bymyths and ideologies, polllical and moral judgement are foregrounded.

The essay, despite the title, deals only cursorily with tI,e killings which oc­curred In Trinidad in 1972 and is largely concerned with the personal hIStory ofMichael X, a mulatto from Trinidad fashioned Into a succesful Black Power leaderin dIe London context of the 1960s, "made" and "undone" in England. In 1971,having had problems with the law, he was in fact forced 10 return to Trinidad,where he "flourished" for one year. He set up an agricultural commune witl, thehelp of Haldm jamal - an American Blak Power hustler - and his English girlAnn Gale Benson. At the beginning of 1972, in less than two months, Michael X,now Abdul Malik, commlned two murders, those of Gale Ilenson and joseph Sker­nu, a co·worker in the commune. Soon apprehended, he was not sentenced andconvicted until two years later, in 1975, but the complete tntth about the two mur­ders was known only In 1979, when Stanley Abbou. the last slllvivlng accomplice,was sentenced and put to death.

Narrative for narrative's sake is not what strikes one initially in Naipaul's ac­count of the Trinidad killings and the Michael X story. A personal obsession, aslrong political opinion and a parenetical Inclination are Instead recognizable atfirst sight. From the very beginning Naipaul takes sides, stating clearly and WIth asense of urgency his attitude, Malik and his retinue, black and white, are childishcon-men, trapped into performing a Black Power program which, in the end, willturn out to be nothing more than jargon, words, fiction. Malik was made by words,

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and the reason for his final failure was his belief in the possibility that words couldbecome real. But before stating his diagnosis plainly - "London words, Londonabstractions... words, and more words" he will say on p. 28 - he tries to convey itwith other indirect means '. Thus, in order to underline the discrepancy betweenthe signifier and the signified, the key-words of Mallk's jargon are ostentatiouslymarked by inverted commas. Muhammed Akbar is the 'muslim" name of SteveYeates - one of Mallk's accomplices and co-workers - who, in the "commune",the 'org'dnlzation', performed the role of "Supreme Q!ptain of the Fruit of Isl~m, aswell as Lieutenant Colonel (and perhaps the only member) of MaJik's Black LIbera­tion Army" (p. 11). This stereoryped and grand definition, which does not need In­verted commas since its absurcllty is self-eVident, is repeated four [Imes (pp. 11, 15,70 90) with oniy slight variations •. Mallk, in his turn, is said to have done "agncul­tu;'" and to have been Black Power "leader", underground black "poet", black"writ~r' a black Muslim refugee from "Babylon", in revolt against "the in­dustrialised complex' (pp. 11-12). The use of the inverted commas is obtrusive -:- itis even reinforced in the 1980 edition - and allows the reader to recognize Jfn­

mediately Nalpaul's distance from the subject. LikeWise, ridicule precedes critici~m

in the portrayal of the realationship between the three main characters, Hakunjamal, Gale Benson and Malik. By interweaving neutral Information and personalcomments, in a way that closely resembles lhe theatrical aside, Naipaul creates acomic situation:

Jamal was an American Black Power man. A few momhs befoTe, when he was being takenaround London by Gale Benson, he had descri~d hi~self to the Gu.ardtan as -en:ucial­ingly handsome, tantaliZingly brown, fiercely artIculate. Tha' was ~JS style. Pro~ Tnnldadhe wrote to a white associate in the United States: -Money Is a whlte people thing - thelhing mey protect. The heaviest thing they have t~ cany-. And Jam.al was anxiolls tolighten the load. He was full of schemes for black uplift that needed white money;... (p. 13)lemphasls minel.

The effect is still further reinforced in the follOWing lines by the clash betweensubject and register:

He wns in some ways like Mnltk. But Mallk did black agriculture and black communes, andJama} did black school and black publishing; and the two men did not clash. (Ibidem) 9.

The simmetry witl, which the two leaders' activities corresponds conveys theidea of a childish and simpleminded attilude towards ideas and projects whichwere instead sustained with apparenc seriousness. Again, what impresses is the in-sistence with which Naipaul renders ridiculous Malik and his aSS?Ciates. .

Naipaul's attitude is clear from the first paragraph. 11,e article opens With theforcgrounding of a corner file, whim suggests a premeditated murder,

A corner file is a three-sided File triangular in sealon, and ills llSed in Trinidad for sharpen­ing cutlasses. On December 31st. 1971, In the counlry town of Arima, some elghleen milesfrom Port of Spain, Steve Ycatcs bought such a me, six. j~ches 10l1;g. Ye-.ttes, a t~lrty.three­ye~lr-old Negro, ex-RAF, was the bodygullrd and comp:1Il10n of Mlchael de PrellaS - alsoknown as Mlchael X and Mlchael Abdul Malik. 111e file, bought from Cooblal's Hardware.cost a Trinidad dollar, 20p. (p. 11).

But to the exhaustive description of an intersubjective fact - the purchase ofa particular object in a definite place and time - Naipaul illUf';ediately counter­poses words, marked with inverted commas in order to emphaSIze thelt status asmere words:

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If, was charged to the account of "Mc Abdhul Mallic, Arima", and Yeates signed the chargebill UMuhammed Akb3r~. This was Yeates's "Muslim" nam~. In [he Malik setup in Arima _the "commu~e"l the "organization" - Yeates was the Sllpreme Captain of the Fruit of Islamas well as LIeutenant Colonel (and perhaps the only member) of Mallk's Black Ube ' 'Army,Obtdem) lO"on

In a few phrases Naipaul hints at a murder, the time and place it occurred itsperpetrators, and even the ultimate reasons for the killings, The rest of the arti~ledrc~lar iO !ts structure and repet~tious to the Iiml£s of obsessiveness, revolves andelUCIdates, mcessantly the same Ideas, There is no development, no change, butonly a,plhng up of proofs,ln order to enSure tlle reader's unequivoall aSsent, Hisprose 15. ~t times ,trUly paSSIonate, almost harangue-Hke, as in the conclusion of the1973 edition, wh,ch closely resembles a peroration,

Some words from t~e Conrnd story ca." serve as her IDemon's] cpilaph; and as a commenton all those who helped to make Mahk. and on those who continue to simplify the worldand reduce other men - not only the Negro - to a CDUse the people wbo substln tafDetrlne/or kno~/edgeand ~'rl't~aJlon/or cancen1, the revolU[i~naries UJbo visit the celltl~e.~o ~~ollltlon with, relum ~lIr rickets, the hippies, tbe pt..'Ople who wish themselves onSOCIeties mo~c fragile th~n their own, all tbose people who in the end do no mOre [ba.ncelebmte their own secunty (p. 71).(emphasis mine]

Nalpaul makes use of the tmclitional rhetoric - the quest for the Iitel1l1Yprecedent, pal"dll~hsm, anaphold, vat'laUo, dramatic pa\lSeS - in order to kindlethe reader's emotions.

, Th; obsessio,:,al naNre of the alticle, however, is not wholly explained byN"pauls need to lOteract withsociety, He himself acknowledged that one reasonfor.'1S eXIStence was the "creative sap" he experienced from 1970 to 1973, In thispenod, NOlpaul had to face, the painful situation of being a novelist without being~ble to pr,?duce ~ovels, havlOg somehow to explain his roie in society, In "The KIII­Jn~s In Tnnldad ~s well as In the other pieces written in these yeors thereforeNalpaul presents h,ms~lf not only as a political journalist but aiso In his 'capaCity a~master of wor?s and literary CritiC, The entire alticle is more in the form of a com­menta,ry or aSide to the reader than an atHhurial formulation of the my in whicheve~ts rea~ly occurred - at leasl in the firSt edition, Naipalll emphasizes that he isdeal109 With t~xts - spelling mistakes and deleted word are always pointed outand block alp,tals are,used for slogans on the walls and newspaper titles; when it's imposs'bi~ to deal dlfecrl~ with ~vents, texts provide the only access to them, Forth,IS reaso~, ~ns[ead ?f supenmposlOg an a posteriorI. order on the events connectedyvlth the k.i1llngs, Nalpalll offers, at least in the first instance, the chronology accord­mg to wh,cll facts ,have reached the press, Thus, tl,e acciden~.1 drowning of SteveYeates, the mysterious fire at Malik's house and Ihe deaths of ]oseph Skerrlll.andGale B~nsoI~ appear,ln reverse order, But texts are not only an inevitably bleachedand mlsieadmg verSion of facts; if perceptively read, they may yield informalionv.:h,ch goe~ beyon? the s~lrface meaning of words. It is worth noting lhat, accOl'.d,~g to Nalpaul, thiS apphes to all texts, Mallk's letters, novels, interviews, as wellas Ile,ms.1O (he local newspapers. In tile same way d1at he can detect homicidal ten­den~les 10 Malik ?y scmlinizing the novel he was writing and discover Ma1ik~s trueself m an unpublished letter to his mother, an article about Steve Yeates' drowningbetrays that something is being conceaied because of the way it was "presented"(p, 16),

"The Killings in Trinid"d" may therefore be read as a piece of Iitera,y criticismIn the broadest sense, But "The Killings in Trinidad" is also narrative, with much

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more in common with the novel than with traditional journalism, Naipaul does notsee the eventS connected with the Trinidad killings as hlstodcally circumscribedfacts, news striking for its exceptional nature and Virtually unrepeatable. He sees,rather, a symbolic story which, like a novel, is still meanIngful even in a differentspatio-temporal context Had it not been so, Trinidad news from 1972 would havebeen almost nonsensiall not only in New York in 1980, but also in 1974, when thearticle was first published in the London magazine, Naipaul acknowledges that heis merely recounting an old story, that of the "false redeemer" and the "congruentcorruptions of colonlzer and colonized", not at all "killing" news (p, 73), Again, asIn a novel, what matterS is not the fabula - which may be confined to a few words- but the interweaving of motives, the literary texture the story is given. Naipaullegitimates a reading of reality as narrative, since he assumes - and demonstrdtes- that fiction and reality share the same formal structure, characters and realpeople, plots and incidents from real life are difficult to distinguish from oneanother, In the concluding sections of the 1973 edition, for instance, Naipaul writes,

Mallk, jamal, Skcrrin, S(eve Yeares, Sranley Abbotl, Benson: they seem purely COntem­porary,

but instead of concluding the sentence Witl1 other historical examples, he adds,

but they played out an old tragedy. If the tr'<1gedy of Joe Skerritt and Steve Ycates and Slan·ley Abbou is contained in O'Neill's 1920 drama of the false redeemer, the tmgedy of GaleBenson 15 contained in an African story of 1897 by Conr..ld, which curiously complementsiL. (p, 73),

The isomorphism between fiction and reality allows him to switch unnoticed fromone re the other in the same sentence,

In his account, reality has proved to be even more amazing than fiction, Inorder to render Its make-believe qualities, Nafpalll mote than once makes use oft.he features of the novel. His favourite model is the thriller, which he more or lessconsciously parodies, especially in the first parts of the essay, The narrato~s pointof view is tl13t of an investigator, gathering clues from mysterious and inexplialblefacts and formulating hypotheses, The initial description of a corner file and tlle iin­gering on the whereabouts of its purchase not only function as a menacing thriller­like foregrouoding; a careful reading of the passage shows that Naipaul is present­ing evidence, a bill, playing in this way the part of an investigator following a trailand acquainting tl,e reader by degrees, Likewise, the 1980 expanded account of thediscovery of Skerritt's corpse employs the same thriller narrative techniques:

The grAve was estimated to be seven to ten days old, and the body in blue jeans lInd agreen jersey found In a sprAwling position at the bottom was horribly decomposed, its sexnot Immediately app"rent ro the policemnn or the professional g~ve-dlggers who had beencalled in, the Fdce distOlted and half melted away around bare teeth, one of which wascapped in gold. The blue Jeans were lowered· while! tmderpa'JIs. Not a woman. A man,Negro or Negroid, five feet nine inches tall 10, whose head had been almost severed fromhis body Cp, 18),

Like a novel, the essay elicits from the reader an emotional and imaginativeresponse; but it shares also, unexpectedly, the same indeterminacy of meaning, Al­though throughout the article Naipaul seems to be consistently condemnatOry inhis attitude towards Malik and his retinue, the conclusion of the 1973 edition isopen-ended and confUSing, At the end, in fact, witl1 no clear connection with what

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precedes, Nalpaul Inserts "some lines by Lamartine", tl1lnslated, "typed out allBelgravia paper and rhotocoPied" by Gale Benson's father and sent to her In "oneof the last letters [she received" (pp. 74-75). The poem and the act of quoting it areopen to different interpretations: the allusion to whiteness and purity ("Your lifealso only pure white pages behold") may be read as a sentimental version of GaleBenson, who) in Naipaul's eyes, was anything but pure, and the emphasis onBelgravia as evidence of the "ultimate security" on which Benson could count; orNalpaul may have been struck by her father's presentiment of her imminent death("On rhe page where one loves, one would wish to linger, I Yet the page where onedies, hides beneath the finger", p. 75); or it may be seen as another of the fictions ofwhich Gale Benson was victim. The irortic reading would cerrainly be more consis­tent wirh what precedes it, but It Is not possible to exclude that Naipaul was sincere­ly caught and moved by this discovery, or intended that his readers should be.

"The Killings in Trirtidad" is the meeting point of these various and conflictingimpulses. Different exigencies call for different codes: the languages of novel andpoetry, forensic ol1ltion, liternry criticism and political journalism are alternatelyemployed in a narrntive which, although defmed as an "expository piece, crisp andmaller of fact" ", defies any genre definition.

In that il is one among the possible litel1lry formalizatlons of a portion ofreality, for which facts are no less a loose starting point than they are for the novel,"The Killings in Trinidad" has a life of its own and is nOI hiel1lrchically inferior tothe novel. Yet il happens to be related to a novel and the analysis of that relation­ship is most useful in understanding Nalpaul's poetics and his changing attitudestowards the novel.

With time, as stated, the position of essay and novel has changed into a sym­biotic relationship. Neverhdess, it cannot be denied thal at some stage and in someway rhe essay has been prepal1ltory to the novel, if Naipaul is la be given credil forsaying that "out o[lthosel journeys and Writings, novels did in the end come toIhim/"I11,e emphasis is mine] ". The similarities in pial, chal1lcrers and setllng arestriking: once novel and essay are reduced to an abstract fabula they are almost un­distinguishable. Two murders OCCur on a Caribbean island - specifically a youngEnglish woman, again a publisher, and a young negro are killed; ·the figure respon­sible is again a half-negto leader, become or, made famous in England, who, onceforced to go back to his Island of origin, assumes musllm pseudonyms and sets upan ngrkultural commune,

The list of similarities would be almost endless bUI also misleading, unless wemake clear that fragments, and nellher the essay nor reality as a whole has beentransposed. In facI, although Naipaul owes his fortune in the United States to amisunderstanding of his intention, Guerrillas wat not Intended to be a political orhistorical novel ". For example in the novel Ihe killing of the young ex-member ofthe commune, Stephen, who, like Joseph Skerritt had become an unbeliever, oc­curs before the murder of the white woman, at Stephen's house, not at Ihe com­mune; the event Is public and is the occasion for a riot; Jimmy is a hakway, aChinese black, not a mulauo and Roche is white and from South Africa, not anAmerican black. II is not possible to find a single example which is a completelyfairhful transposition of a real chal1laer or event loro the novel. But as far as frag­ments are concerned, rhe slmilarilles are marked, allhough sometimes out of con­text, and point dearly to a relationship between the two lexts. The Slephen-Skerrittcase is a minor, but for this purpose enlightening, example: both are members ofthe commune who, for unspecified reasons. do not believe in the -cause" anylonger, both disappear suddenly (Naipaul hints at their being held hostages) andtheir disappearance is accounted for In each case with a similar expression:

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Jinuny's answer to Roche, "I suppose he's run out on us" H, echoes Malik's reportat the trial that "joe Skerrill had only disappeared" (p. 27). In addition, Roehe's visitto Stephen's mother includes most of the details Naipaul recorded in rhe essay afterIhe visit he himself paid to Joseph Skerrin's mother. In "The Killings in Trinidad" hewrote:

Joe Skerriu was not important, and he is remembered, <IS a person, only in his mother'shouse in Belmont. A large Unfl"'dmed portrait Is pinned la the wall of the small living room.1bere are framed photographs of his more successful brother, Anthany (In sea scoutun[form), who is in Canada, and of his Sister, who was many years a nurse in England; ...The house Is shabby; ... [Mrs Skerrittllooks after her mother, who is senile and shrunken,skin and bones, Wilh thin grey hair tied up light and Sitting on the skull like a coarseknotted handkerchief (p. 72).

fn Guemllas too the visitor's attention is anraaed by some framedphotogl1lphs of the woman's children (p. 107); one "a success" (p. 108) is portrayedin the novel in academic gown instead of sea scout uniform, and is said [0 be livingin England. lbere Is no mention of the other children, but the reference la an oldwoman is maintained, her mother in the essay, "senile and shrunken·; a neighbour,"smaller than Mrs Stephens, willh slacker fiesh" and "squashed face" in the novel (p.107). Stephens is, in effect, Skerritr& counterpart, but more often fragments are dis­placed and used in different contexts. For instance, many of jamal's attrlbules, aswell as dIose of other members of rhe commune, are "condensed" in jimmy. Rocheis physically and psychologically Ihe oppOSite ofJamal: he is white and uuerly non­charismatic. He is described as a "small man In his mid-forties, sad-faced, withsunken cheeks, deep lines running from his nose to the corners of his mouth" (p.49), while jamal saw himself as "excruciallngIy handsome, tantalizingly brown,fiercely articulate" (p. 13), and was described by a journalist as "a handsome man, abrigand with a gold ring in his ear... tall and spare" (p. 40). Jamal's self-satisfactionand the consequent relation with the white English woman are attributed to jimmy.Ukewise, jimmy's machismo is emphaSised by reference to a past of sexualviolence (p. 28), which was instead a chal1lcterlstic more of olller members of thecommune than of Mallk.

Frdgments, not whole units, are moved from one map (Q the other. The num­ber of similarities in plot and characterization. however, should nO[ obscure the factthat there are also as many differences, Moreover, as far as narFdtive strategies areconcerned, essay and novel could not have been more distinct. Instead of a mix­nlre of conflicting tones and codes and a mosaic of quotations, dIe adoption of thecode In the novel is consistent throughout; there are no misleading and comradic­[Dry time sequences: events are placed in a unique, linear, climactic sequence, withno temporal oscillations and only brief excursions into the paSI; both time andspace arc conceived as natural instead of social entities: there are no dates orkllometric distances; days simply paSS, places have no names (lI,ey are referred toas "the city" Or "the capital") but possess connotations: they are dry, smoky, un­pleasant. In opposilion to the essay, the novel displays a marked lendency towardsconcentration and generalization at the same time: Guerrillas is set in approximale­Iy one week of a non-specified season and year, in a small unnamed island, and al­most nothing is perceived as happening until the final rape and murder ofJane, anaction eliciting from the reader emotions akin to the Aristotelian eleas (pity) andpbobos (fear). By changing the names of the places and the people involved andavoiding reference to a precise time and place - even if all these details might beeasily ascerrained - Naipaul has created a general pal1ldigm eventually unrelated[0 historical episodes 15. The time boundaries chosen, more than anything else, are

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evidence of a deep divergence between essay and novel: whUe "The Killings inTrinidad" dealt almost exclusively with the events following the two killings, Guer­rillas focuses on lhe few days immediately before the killings, a phase whJch wasalmost unknown when Naipaul started the novel, since the trial for Gale Benson'smurder had nOl yet taken place.

It is clear that however preparatory to the novel the essay may have beeo, ad­herence to the previous literary map and to history is not the only recognizabletrend in the novel. Naipaul is also patently trying to grant autonomy to the newnarrative. Hence his intervention is not confined to a reordering of the pieces ofreality intO a new configuration - which was the principle according to which theessay was writtcn -; Naipaul has changed the scale of the map, and in so doing,has created a possible world, alternative to and incommensurable with the realone. Human beings are in facL portrayed as thinking, gesturing and inteiclcting Inthe restricted world of everyday life, a realm out of ti,e reach of any journalisticreconstruction.

Naipaul has stepped out of hiStory and into fiction, reshaping events andcharacters according to his vision and sensibility. Creating a new world in a verbaluniverse means first of all changing names and, further, contriving and using themin opposition to the laws governing the acrual use of language. Denomination is afunction of the message. Like time and place, names are deprived of their socialdimension. Whereas lane's surname is never mentioned, even if her passpon is ex­amined (wice, Roche is almost without a Christian name. He is Roche for the nar­rator, as Mr Biswas was Biswas since his birth, and he is Roche for lane most of thetime, a hint at ti,e absence of intimacy between the two. He is ca~ed by nameduring a radio imelV'iew, but only as a part of a strategyl to create an unpression Inthe listener. Meredith, the interviewer, says: "Let's keep it like a conversation.... I'llcall you Peter and you'll call me Meredith" (p. 201). [n effectjane is not a Christianname nor Roche a surname; in that they are symbols rich in connotations andlitemry allusions, they are, above all, vehicles of Naipaul's vision. Jane, come to theisland out of boredom more than political faith, recalls, as Bruce King has pointedout. another Iitemry Jane In search of excitement in the Tropics 16, and in that she L~

anything but unexperienced. "jane" Is an ironical allusion to jane Eyre who, asJohn Thieme has put it, "looks forward to an extended life beyond the narrow coo­fines of her sheltered existence as a girl and a young woman" ", Peter Roche,despite the redundant reference to stoniness implicit in his namel an "odd butsolid' man in jane's eyes (p. 53), is port...yed in all his frailry (he sees himself.using an interesting mineral metaphor, as having built his life "on sand"), (p. 102).lhe characters themselves reshape reality by changing names. jimmy always caUsRoche "massa·, emphasiZing the power relations, which, in the end, govern the In­tercourse between blacks and whites - Jimmy considers, in fact, ti,e finn whichemploys Roche as "great slave traders in the old days" who "now pretend thatblack is beautiful" (p. 42). Likewise in Jhnmy's novel. Clarissa is the name chosenfor Jane, a reference to hcr role as sexual victim. 11,e names of places as well arecarefully contrived: the white people with power live on the "Ridge". a hill whichdominates the island like a medieval castle and jimmy has named his communeThrushcross Grange. after WUlbering Heigbts, suggesting, as Thieme has pointedout, Jimmy's identification with Heathcliff, and also his desperate attempt atfashioning his life according to literary myths 18.

The adoption of symbolical names instead of initials or random appellations isa signal that the characters are meant to be fictional, not real people camounaged,and [0 be vehicles of Naipaul's vision, elicited, not constrained by reality.

The analysis of reality, which is creative in itself. a loconstruction in analysis,",

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has become the sine qua non of th~ novel. but once grounded in reality. the narra­tion has started ~new, m patent anlllhesls to the essay. Vet a relationship exists. andwhether Or not It shOUld. be Jnterprete~as the mere outcome of a creative gaP. ithas ~ndenlably ushered 10 a new poetics. explicitly formulated in "Conrad's Dark­~ess 19. 10 th!S essay. a~, the mOre ~Ievant in that it was published just betweenThe KilllOgs m TnOldsd and Guem/la.s, Naipaul complained of the surrendering

on the part of the novelist of hIS mterpretative function:

And so the world we inhabit, which is always newl goes by unexamined, made ordinary byme camera, unmedlta.[~d ani and there is no one to awaken the sense of true wonder. ThatIs perhaps :l fair defimtlon of the noveHs['s purpose, in alJ ages 20.

The world we. i~hablt a':ld its interpretation, in other words. are posited at thecentre of the novelist 5 attentlon: the novelist does not need to create his materialssince the world, an unpolished novel itself, easily yields them. At the same time it i~clear th:t "",:onde!' is not inherent in the materials themselves - they may also ap­pear as ordlOary - but is expenenced by the novelist as seer. Hence the novelistis both a better man - more perceptive or mare naive - and a beuer anisan?Ipable of communicating his sense of wonder to other human beings. Naipaul ha~ID this way establtshed the prelllises for a poetiCS of reality which has comeparadoxically to coincide with Romantic poetics of the self. While he recognized inr;;uerri/lasand A Bend In tbe Rtverthe poetical potenUallties of the extemal world,In his latest novel-auroblog...phy, The Enigma ofArrival, ti,e inner life is chosen asthe locus of the novel. and yet ti,e formal principles at work are tile same. selectionand my-ention, r~duced to its original meaning of invcnire, nnd Ollt

linstead of

fabu!atlon or fictIon, have been firmly cstablished as the new principles of hispoetics.

Marla Grazla Lollaa post-graduate student al Cambridge Universlfy,Is currently Invesl/galingllenaissunce IItera/ure

49

NOTES

I -TIle Killings in Trinidad-; Part Onc, Sunday 7Jmes Magaz#l~ MlIY 12, 1974, pp. 16-35; PlUtTwo. May 19, 1974, pp. 24·41; published as -Mtchael X and lhe Black Pow.er Killings In Trinidad'" in77), Return ofJ::lJ(l Plron\ New York, Knopf, 1980.

'1 Nalp:aul evidently began work on Guerrillas in SqltcmberI972, before starting ....-he KillingsIn Trinidad", See Md Gu.uow, ·Writer without Roots", New Yo'# 7Tmes- Magazine, December 26, 1970,6.p.22.

, Scc Tbe Return ofEM Prtron, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1983, p. 5.4 Wheress the first edition, despite it W3$ entitled "The Killings In Trinldad-, dealt almost ex·

c!l,I$ively whh the Michael X story, che ·Postscript- instead fOCUSC5 just on the two killings and 8lvesprominence to Olher ctutacters beside Mkhael X. 11l.e change in the subject is due to the Cta th."u the"Postseript" was written after that the trials for bcxh the murders had [aken place. The ex(X!Sl(ory tech­nique lIS weU, however, has undc:rgo~ a radical change~ the ch:l()(iC and fragmentary accountpropo~d In "11le KlJlings In Trinidad- Ls replaced by a chronologically ordered exposition of theevents conneaed with lhe [Wo murders, whIle scenes and dialogues have taken lhe place of the cita­tions from Ietk:rs, anid~ ;.md books, which constituted the lxx1y of the first edition.

, Finding the Centre, Harmondsworth, PenSuin, 1985 (London, Andrt: Deutsch, 1984) p. 12.6 Ronald Bryden, -'I1le Novelisr V. S. Naipaul Talks aboullHs Work to Ronald Bryden-, tbc Lis­

tener, March 22, 1973, p. 368.7 Iteferences arc fronl the volume edition of the article in tbe Relurn qf Eua Peron, Har­

mornJswonh, Penguin, 1983, pp. 11-92. Differences from the first edition will be polmed oul.S tn the nest edition -Muhammed Akbar" was In ltalla and the expression -the 'commune', Ihe

'organization"', did not. appear., On p. 61, again Nalpaul writes "Jamal's black schools and black pubUshlng merged with

~bllk'5 black agriculture Into a stupendous black cause-.10 The part In iwia were nOlln the first edition.11 Vidor J. RamrnJ, -V. S. Naipaul: The Irmevancc of Nationoalism-, world Llt,rature \Vrltretl 111

EngUsb, 23. 1984. p. 193.11 Tb. Retu". ofEoo I'troll, p. 5.U As Elalne campbdl has said eA Refinement of Rage: V. S. Naipaul's A Bend In tlM

R{lJtr~ World WeraJurc Writ/en In Eng/Isb, 18, 1979, p. 395), -accepting the novel on loo apparent alevel, the Amerbn reader discovered In Guerrillas 3. denunciation of guerrilla Mlrfare, particularlyguerriUa ::aaivity In the C.1ribl~11n·,

1<4 Guen'iJlas, HarmondsWOf'th, Penguin, 1984 (London, And~ DeulSCh, 1975), p, 27. Subse­quent references are 10 the Penguin edition and are Included In the text.

•, The novells set juS[ In 1972, as it can be easily Inferred fromJane'$ birthdate and age while(he Island share" charaetetlstlcs both ofTrlnlched andJ::llualca.

16 According to Bruce King (7be New St18/(sh LlIsmtur6. Cui/urn' Nationalism tn a OU.1ngfng\'Vorld, London, Macmillan, 1980, p. 222), -the name is ironic and reflects the Tarzan-Jane moviereJat10fuhip - a dldll: oflhe 1960s for white women who sought exd[cment from black men".

17 'Iba \Veb of7mdltloll, A2rhus, Han.osib and Dangaroo, 1987, p. 174.18 IbIdem, p. In.19 I\'elll York RelJlew of Books, October 17, 1974, pp. 16-21, reprinted in The Retum of HlXf

Poron, pp. 199·218.10 The Rertlrn oflilxl fVrrJn, p. 218.

50