Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: A Collection of the Worst Things V.S. Naipaul Has Ever Said

http://www.thelocal.se/blogs/corneliushamelberg/2012/10/01/re-a-collection-of-the-worst-things-v-s-naipaul-has-ever-said/

On 30 Sep, 19:45, kenneth harrow <har...@msu.edu> wrote:
> this is precisely the problem with naipaul, and we can't dismiss it. he
> believes that Western Civilization represents the only ultimate
> civilization for mankind. he reproaches it for its past hypocrisies, as
> in colonialism, not so as to query its underlying, fundamental superior
> basis, but so as to correct it for its errors. he does not wish to
> recognize other cultures as having achieved anything comparable.
>
> really, if it is acheve's project in Things Fall Apart, or Naipaul's in
> Bend in the River, or any of his other works, to which would you subscribe?
> reprhased: naipaul has not accepted the decolonization of the mind, he
> refuses it because he still subscribes to the colonial ideal of the
> superiority of western civilization.
> he needs to read damas or cesaire to get it right, but he won't accept
> anything black unless it has turned traitor to its people and culture,
> as he has done.
> ken
>
> On 9/30/12 12:02 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:
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> > Taking in the import and intention of the headline that I thought that
> > I read A Collection of the Worst Things V.S. Naipaul Has Ever Said
> > about Africa , I thought, (a) that  an Iran-style literary fatwa was
> > imminent - could soon be passed on Naipaul a prize for his head,
> > wanted dead or alive for defamation of Africa  (b)  surely, Oga Ikhide
> > could not be so cruel? But then it turns out that apart from Naipaul's
> > prophecy that Africa has no future , this is a weak compilation  of
> > the worst things said by that Naipaul, false prophet of  what Gandhi
> > said could be a good idea , Western Civilisation, the superior
> > civilisation that he carries with him in his head and in the polluted
> > environment in which he breathes and  (if he only he were a Brahmin)
> > the very British milk which he drinks.
>
> >http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&sugexp=les%3B&gs_nf=1&cp=27&gs_id=7&xh...
>
> > Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad
>
> >http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&sugexp=les%3B&gs_nf=1&cp=4&gs_id=47&xh...
>
> > More Naipaul quotes...
>
> >http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=v.s.+naipaul+quotes&o...
>
> > Illusions of grandeur is not his only fault. I remember reading an
> > interview with him in one of Great Britain's morning papers  somewhere
> > in the mid eighties, in which he said that Oxford was a third class
> > regional university. Check it out. I have hopes for him. The august &
> > sagacious Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad will hopefully soon be promoted to
> > Lordship and not only of the former British Empire - a fitting social
> > identity that he has probably aspired to since humble birth, for only
> > from that uncertain height, can he look down on others with such
> > disdain like an overqualified Idi Amin figure, Naipaul, the man that
> > turd worlders love to hate is always true to form not that he can
> > even spare the great country of his ancestors, Mother India which then
> > to him was as the title of his report  on his state visit to
> > motherland  proclaimed her An area of Darkness -  a part of the
> > turd world .
>
> > He has missed all that jazz, the great African music. If he did not
> > disdain Americans and what he sees as cowboy culture perhaps because
> > in the United States of America  the cow is not as holy as in India,
> > I'm sure that he too would like Mwalimu Bangura's Mitt Romney
> > installed in the White House, at least to make it pure white (Dick
> > Gregory jokes that if elected president he would paint it black)
>
> > Sir Vidia has his fans and is much loved and appreciated for who and
> > what he is in many quarters ; in 2001, I got a copy his Half a
> > Life  ironically for my birthday ,from his literary agent over here .
> > She ( Swedish) of course , likes him for his literary merit after
> > all The Observer advertises him as The  greatest living writer of
> > English prose  - and surely, this is enough to land him a permanent
> > seat in the House of Lords so that that prose can speak...
>
> > My perception of  the cringing Oyibo-complex Naipaul  type started
> > long ago. In secondary school
> > the Prince of Wales school opened by the then Prince of Wales when
> > he visited Sierra Leone in 1925,  the chemistry teacher Dr. Hannanan ,
> > an Indian from Trinidad & Tobago popped into our literary and debating
> > society session on Friday afternoon and most unfortunately for him,
> > no respect for the hand that was feeding him, happened to make some
> > derogatory V. S: Naipual type remarks about the country in my
> > presence. I still can't understand how I could have been feeling so
> > incensed -  perhaps because  the Sierra Leone independence dream was
> > still fresh and independence itself a recent event but I reported
> > this guy ---- not to the principal - ( he was not that powerful) and
> > to my surprise Chemistry master simply disappeared  about a week
> > later. Never saw him again don't know if he was fired, deported or he
> > himself decided to leave without any broken bones.
>
> > I would just like to explain his statement about Islam, that, It has
> > had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have
> > to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it,
> > you have to say my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn t
> > matter .
>
> > Islamists refer to the pre-Islamic  history of the converted people
> > as  Jahiliyya, darkness and ignorance.
>
> >http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&sa=X&ei=V2toUJHLDorP4QSnv4GQBg&ved=0CB...
>
> > I wonder what Professor Moses Ebe Ochonu  has to say about this.
>
> > On Sep 30, 4:04 pm, Ikhide <xoki...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> Naipaul s reaction to Nigeria s Wole Soyinka winning the Nobel in 1986 (according to Paul Theroux):   Has he written anything? Then adding that the Nobel Committee was, as usual, pissing on literature from a great height.
>
> >> Of Trinidad: unimportant, uncreative, cynical, a dot on the map.
>
> >> Of Islam: It has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn t matter .
>
> >> As he explained to Paul Theroux: The melancholy thing about the world is that it is full of stupid people; and the world is run for the benefit of the stupid and common.
>
> >> At the opening of Cheltenham literature festival in 2001: The trouble with people like me writing about societies where there is no intellectual life is that if you write about it, people are angry If they read the book, which in most cases they don t, they want approval. Now India has improved, the books have been accepted Forty years ago in India people were living in ritual. This is one of the things I have helped India with.
>
> >> Naipaul s response to the question What is the future in Africa? : Africa has no future.
>
> >> Read A Collection of the Worst Things V.S. Naipaul Has Ever Said here...
>
> >> - Ikhide
>
> >> Stalk my blog atwww.xokigbo.com
> >> Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide
> >> Join me on Facebook:www.facebook.com/ikhide
>
> --
> kenneth w. harrow
> distinguished professor of english
> michigan state university
> department of english
> 619 red cedar road
> room C-614 wells hall
> east lansing, mi 48824
> ph. 517 803 8839
> har...@msu.edu

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