2. Naipaul had a educational trajectory similar to Lamming, Brathwaite, CLR James, and other prominent Afro-Trinidadian writers because he won a scholarship to a prominent school (Queen’s Royal College – one of the two best schools in Trinidad – the same school Ganesh attends in Mystic Masseur and that CLR James attended) – and then won one of Island scholarships for University study in the UK
Like Lamming and Selvon, he emigrated to London in @1950 and like Lamming he did so with a government scholarship to University (Naipaul went to Oxford).
Like Lamming he wrote for and was much aided by the BBC program Caribbean Voices for which he wrote and worked as an editor. It was a radio program that really helped to establish the legitimacy of anglophone Caribbean writing in England and the Caribbean by giving large audience and money pretty much for the first time to Caribbean writers. Caribbean Voices is an example of an institution that bridged the pre- and post-1950 generation of writers. We’ve noted that there is a big divide between the two generations evidenced by the fact that Lamming doesn’t see himself and his generation of having any predecessors. Una Marson a Jamaican writer who began to publish in the 1920s, conceived of the program and helped to develop it. By the time that Naipaul worked for it, Henry Swanzy ran Caribbean Voices.
3. How important is his position as an Indo-Trinidadian? Does it, to any extent, account for his vision of Trinidad in his fiction and in particular for what is perceived as a particularly critical representation of the Caribbean?
Many scholars see Naipaul has writing from a critically different position than Lamming and other Afro-Trinidadian writers because he was part of the Indo-Trinidadian community and therefore not part of the community which was prominent in establishing the nationalist government under Eric Williams’ PNM.Critics, such a Bruce King, attribute Naipaul’s divergent political vision in large part to his experience and position as an Indo Trinidadian – separate from the black nationalism that emerged in Trinidad and Africa where Indians formed important minorities. From as early as 1968, Naipaul famously claimed not to be a West Indian but a British Writer (Edmondson; Guyana Graphic ). King describes his politics as “He objects that describing him as a West Indian writer is patronizing and limiting. A severe critic of India and the short comings of the newly independent nations, he is also a nationalist who feels humiliated byt he weakness and exploitation of the colonized; he blames European imperialism for the problems it left its former colonies, while praising it for bringing peace and modern thought into areas of the world that remained medieval and debilitated by continual local wars. There is a moral honesty in his work, a refusal to sentimentalize England or the former colonies” (2).
* Naipaul was one of the first Caribbean writers to live from
his writing nearly his entire life
Idea that he decided to become a writer at the age of 14 or something
like that in a place in which there was no local publishing industry. His
father was probably the first Indo Trinidadian fiction writer – and he
was also a journalist. He gave his son an important model for writing
– V.S. was greatly inspired by his father, wrote to him extensively about
writing; even took some of his father’s material – and used his father’s
life as one of the main bases for his 1961 novel A House for Mr. Biswas
which is an extremely important novel in Caribbean and postcolonial literary
history – based largely on his father’s life (3). His brother Shiva
was also an important writer and nephew Neil Bissoondath is an established
writer as well.
Naipaul refers to his father’s influence in his Nobel Prize speech.
In A Way in the World, Naipaul describes his wonder when he first saw the
printing press at the Trinidad Guardian. His father is his guide
when they first move to Port of Spain and one Sunday he shows his son the
newpaper where he works: “My father worked for The Guardian. It was
more the important and more modern paper. From the pavement youcould see
the new machines, the big rollers, the big unwinding ribbons of newsprint,
and you could get the warm smell of amchines and paper and printing ink.
So, almost as soon as I had come to the city, this new excitement, of paer
and ink and urgent printing, was given to me” (excerpted in The New York
Review of Books 12 May 1994:48)
(Travel)Apparently to make enough money when royalties from his
novels were insufficient, Naipaul began to travel to parts of the newly
independent world – africa, India, pakistan, and write travel narratives.
These became increasingly important to him – and resulted in a mixing of
genres (3).The Enignma of Arrival and In a Free State, for example, combine
“autobiography, travel writing, analysis and fiction” (3).
King, Bruce Alvin. V.S. Naipaul. New York : St. Martin's Press, 1993.
This part of our discussion centered around the fact that many
people in the class felt that Naipaul represented women in a very negative
fashion. He depicted the physical abuse of women as a normal part
of society. He depicted women as completely bound up in their husband’s
lives and yet these couples had no “love” for each other in terms you recognized.
We discussed this from four perspectives:
(1) From our perspective (as above)
(2) From the perspective of other literary representations of
Indian marriage. Sarah suggested that at least one other novel she
has read depicted Indian marriages in similar terms.
(3) From the perspective of Naipaul’s technique of representing
colonial Trinidad in the rest of the novel. Throughout the novel,
the narrator’s tone is difficult to read. He repeatedly makes us
laugh or be amused by showing the shortcomings or inappropriate elements
of Trinidad society. People value books for their appearance and size rather
than their content, for instance. Trinidadians always seem to get
things wrong. If we place Naipaul’s description of marriage in this
light, Naipaul’s description of marriage appears to satire of the family
in colonial Trinidad. Consider the fact that both Leela and Ganesh are
relatively pleased when Ganesh beats Leela because this means that their
marriage is complete and they are finally adults. The beating only
stops when it becomes apparent that Leela is infertile. Then, Ganesh loses
interest in his wife. He stops beating her. She gains power
in the relationship; he consults her about everything. Finally they
grow to love each other but would never admit it. When juxtaposed
the satire of these statements becomes more apparent – Naipaul is showing
that Hindu marriage in colonial Trinidad is so confused and wrong that
it inverts most people’s expectations about modern marriage. Beating
is part of a happy marriage. The beating only stops when the husband
ceases to be interested in his wife. We expect the opposite - that
beating is a sign of a bad marriage and that a husband might start not
stop beating his wife when he lost in her. Similarly, we expect the
couple to grow apart after they lose interest in each other – but they
grow closer. What can we conclude from this? We can conclude
at least that Naipaul sees marriage as one part of Trinidad’s failure as
a society. To come to this conclusion we used our own vision of marriage
(#1) and Naipaul’s satiric strategy in the rest of the novel.
4) the marriage is an allegory for the colonial relationship between
Trinidad and England. Leela is Trinidad and Ganesh is England.
2. The Book
Naipaul spends a great deal of time illustrating how Trinidadians view books in this novel. We must also consider that this is a book – a book written by a Trinidadian and about a Trinidadian. If we turn to the beginning of the book we notice that the narrator seems to admire Ganesh; he calls him a hero of the people and asserts that he is known all over the Southern Caribbean. We might note the odd disjunction between the narrator’s version of things and the version presented in the excerpts from Ganesh’s suppressed autobiography. The narrator tells us that Ganesh met Mr. Stewart twice. Ganesh writes that Mr. Stewart was an English Lord who advised over many years. The narrator indicates that Ganesh made no move to marry Leela until Ramlogan listed all his property to lure Ganesh into the match and Ramlogan himself proposed to Ganesh. In the excerpt that the narrator includes, Ganesh writes that from the first moment he walked into Ramlogan’s shop, the marriage seemed pre-ordained. There is an odd disjunction throughout the book between the narrator’s apparent reverence for Ganesh, expressed in statements like, “later he was to be famous and honoured through the South Caribbean” and the “facts” of Ganesh’s life he tells us – about Ganesh’s role as an obeah for instance, the shortness and incomplete nature of his relationship with Mr. Steward. How does the narrator know all of this information? Is he making it up? He uses Ganesh’s autobiography but the autobiography tells it appears a very different story from the one the narrator tells. Could the narrator be the “boy” who helps Ganesh’s campaign and then receives money to study. He both criticized and revered Ganesh. He took the newspaper seriously but arranged for the book to have a crazy typesetting. Is this book – a Trinidadian book – then like the Trinidadian books that the narrator describes in the novel – oddly flawed? If the boy is the writer, does the novel contain both the boy’s realistic and critical insight and his foibles, perhaps his oddly elevated vision of Ganesh?
Yet The Mystic Masseur is a novel, not a poor imitation of a novel.
It is a British and West Indian novel, containing techniques of the English
novel, like irony and satire, and of Caribbean culture like carnival, playing
mas, and creolization. In class, I mentioned that invented names and taking
on personae is a characteristic of other Caribbean writers, especially
Naipaul’s father, Seepersad Naipaul in The Adventures of Gurudeva and other
Stories, Sam Selvon and his series of books centered on West Indians in
London, including Lonely Londoners and Moses Ascending.
3. Is Ganesh a mimic man or a self-fashioned man? Does Naipaul
present Trinidad as capable of only a poor imitation of England and India?
(based on the question for Wednesday 10/22/03)
I suggest that the novel represents colonial Trinidad as capable only of poor imitations of European, Asian, and African culture – and at the same time, the novel represents Indo-Trinidadians as capable of a self-invention; reveals the debilitating effects of colonialism; and illustrates that Indo-Trinidadians are not isolated as Naipaul asserts in his Nobel Prize speech but in fact are part of a complex process of cultural interaction, a cultural interaction that produces subversive cultural practices like carnival
In the Castle of My Skin tells a story of G. coming of age and in so doing,
tells a history of Barbados from the riots of 1937 and the emergent middle
class nationalism that coincided with them to the second world war. The
Mystic Masseur tells a story of Trinidad in the years leading up to self-government,
beginning in the 1930s with Ganesh’s youth and progressing to the first
elections with universal suffrage in 1946 in which Ganesh wins a seat in
the legislative council. His political actions, scholar Bruce King,
notes are a composite of political actions of politicians of that period
– Albert Gomes, A.A. Cipriani, Uriah Butler, and Naipaul’s uncles Rudranath
and Simbhoonath Capildeo. Albert Gomes protested in the legislative
council by walking out or lying down and needing to be carried out. A.A.
Cipriani lost his position as leader of the “people” by siding with employers
and the government in strikes. One of Naipauls’ uncles became the leader
of the Indian-dominated party in the 1950s – a bit like Ganesh becoming
the head of the Hindu Association and a politician. Other scholars, particularly
Selwyn Cudjoe, as Anala told us on Wednesday, see the novel as telling
a parallel story – that of Indo-Trinidadians of Indo-Trinidadians moving
into modernity and becoming a national presence in a modern Trinidad.
The Mystic Masseur, however, is widely seen as satirizing Ganesh and Trinidadian
society by revealing the large gaps between modern and English realities
and conceptions and their manifestations or adaptations in Trinidad. We
discussed the large gap between an English conception of books and Ganesh’s.
English culture sees the importance of books as their content or “information”
whereas Ganesh, Leela, and most other characters in the novel see the import
of books as residing in their form – their size, number, paper, smell,
and typeface. Like the pupils in the school in which Ganesh briefly
teaches, they have learned the “form” but not the information of
books. Another scholar, Fawzia Mustafa, notes that if we keep
in mind the English colonial rhetoric that colonies could attain political
independence or self-government only when they attained “adulthood” or
maturity as political citizens before being granted independence, then
Naipaul seems intentionally to depict Trinidad as having reached only adolescence
(48). As politicians Ganesh and his followers often act petulantly.
“The adolescence and willful petulance that characterize the events and
behavior within the story,” Mustafa writes, “are the ills held up for ridicule
and correcting. Consequently, the implication of the novel’s judgement
is that the island was not ye ready for such ‘responsibility,’ and that
the ‘irresponsibility’ of granting such privilege too soon is also complicit
in general failure”(48). These readings suggest that one could make a strong
case that Naipaul illustrates Ganesh as limited to being a poor imitation
of Indian and English leaders, a kind of mimic man, limited in his achievements
by his inability to become anything genuine. He is a poor student,
a failed masseur, and then almost by accident becomes a “mystic masseur”–
a bizarre and perverse combination of pundit, salesman, psychologist and
obeah-man (Obeah is an Afro-Caribbean religion associated usually represented
in negative terms as using spirits and ritual to bring evil upon others
or to prevent people from bringing evil to one. It was illegal in
the British Caribbean during colonialism and associated in the law with
fraud). His reputation as mystic masseur – or con man – elevates
him to the stature of politician of the people. He attains his greatest
status as a politician and finally arrives in England by abandoning the
people and becoming a mouthpiece for the colonial government and capitalists
– this coincides with his abandonment of his name and the visible signs
of being a Hindu. At almost every turn, Ganesh’s “progress” results
from coincidence, outside help, fraud, and poor imitation of other people’s
ideas. In sum, Naipaul employs Ganesh to illustrate the inability
of Trinidadians to be independent, to form a functional and productive
government or culture. Because Naipaul mocks Ganesh’s adaptation
of English books, American advertising, Hindu religion, and afro-Trinidadian
folk religion, one could argue that Naipaul is illustrating that Trinidadian
society’s inability to be “adult” or “genuine” is caused by the fact that
they can only imitate the different national cultures which have contributed
to Trinidad’s population and culture.
On Monday I was suggesting an alternative reading. In reading the
material elements of books as the most significant element of books, Ganesh
and Leela are accurately reading the function of books in colonial Trinidadian
society. In colonial Trinidad, a person’s status, his wealth and
occupation were often defined by the amount of education he had.
This translated into a fairly direct correlation between how much wealth
and respect a person had and how much booklearning they had. Books
thus correlated with material possessions. The importance of books
was their ability to bring wealth and status. It is not a far jump
from this to the vision that books – the form or physical book – were a
symbol of wealth and status. This correlation becomes yet stronger
when we remember that colonial education emphasized memorization and discipline
and excluded most historical and cultural information that would enable
students to understand their history or current social position.
In seeing the physicality of books as their most important element, Ganesh
and Leela thus accurately read the society in which they lived. They
demonstrate their intelligence in reading rather than their ignorance of
the “real” importance or purpose of books. As a result of reading
the importance of book so accurately, Ganesh and Leela are rewarded with
enormous economic and social upward mobility. Mustafa makes a similar point
in relation to Ganesh’s success as a mystic masseur – and as a son-in-law.
Ganesh craftily reads the limits of acceptable behavior in the marriage
ceremony and wins. Ramlogan has convinced Ganesh to marry his daughter
by advertizing all of his wealth and then once Ganesh agrees, Ramlogan
puts pressure on Ganesh not to take the goods Ramlogan has just offered
or advertized on the grounds that it would be more modern to refuse them.
Ganesh appreciates the financial elements of this apparently religious
and traditional arrangement and figures out how to get the most he can.
Similarly, we made fun of Ganesh’s great appreciation of advertising pamphlets
and his investment in psychology books, books that teach one how “to get
on.” Yet, it is by reading these books and effectively applying their
teachings that Ganesh succeeds in acquiring the best business in spiritual
healing in the colony. This requires excellent skills in reading
the books but also in reading his clients as we see in the case of the
young black boy who is persecuted by a black cloud. Unlike many other
spiritual healers, Ganesh is effective. The boy is actually cured. In the
last paragraph, I suggested that Naipaul’s particular depiction of Ganesh’s
rise to power was a criticism of him as a “mimic man” – as someone who
was limited by his inability to understand the models he used and by an
incapacity to be mature and to govern. I am now suggesting nearly
the opposite. Ganesh demonstrates his intelligence by realistically
assessing the significance of education and using it to become incredibly
successful. I have, however, already suggested that many see his
success as a failure – all that Ganesh can become is a successful conman
and a sell-out politician – this is the limits of Trinidadians.
Let me suggest yet another possibility. Naipaul’s novel
performs two opposing criticisms and visions of Trinidad. On the
one hand, he illustrates that colonialism and the lack of authentic local
culture (real Hinduism, for instance) has reduced Trinidadians to ridiculous
imitations of English and other cultures. At the same I am suggesting
that the novel employs Ganesh to criticize the colonial system. Ganesh’s
“misreading” of books after all reveals the oppression of colonial education
and its long-lasting implications.
I want to offer yet another possibility: Ganesh is a model of the Caribbean
culture and Trinidadian culture particularly. His acts of self-fashioning
model the process of creolization in Trinidad and the novel The Mystic
Masseur itself embodies central characteristics of Trinidadian national
literature. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech and elsewhere, Naipaul
asserts that as an Indo-Trinidadian and especially as the member of prominent
Brahmin family, he grew up isolated from other Trinidadians – from Afro-Trinidadians,
muslims, and others. On the one hand, Ganesh is an example
of a person who lives almost exclusively in an Indo-Trinidadian community
and is comfortable only there. On the other hand Ganesh achieves
success by breaking through this isolation: by effectively interacting
with Afro-Trinidadians – and US advertising. His success with the
black boy under the cloud and “the nigger gram” bring him success. In fact,
Ganesh’s persona as a mystic masseur is itself a creole concept: it contains
elements of the Hindu pundit, Afro-Caribbean Obeah man, American advertizing
and psychology, and the status associated with his British education and
British books. We have discussed the term creole or creolization
extensively, but Ganesh seems to be a creole figure. He brings together
different cultures to create something new. He brings together Hinduism,
US advertizing, and Obeah to make a new kind of Obeah that is more effective
than previous Obeah. (This doesn’t seem like the vase made of fragments
that Walcott describes in his Nobel prize speech, however.) The novel
thus illustrates creolization and that Indo-Trinidadians are part of creolization.
He also demonstrates another element of creole culture: “playing mas’”
[playing a masquerade]. In discussing Voyage in the Dark we
discussed the significance of carnival as a festival celebrated in almost
every Caribbean country. We also discussed some ways in which carnival
and playing a masquerade is symbolic of Caribbean culture. The Caribbean
is comprised of people and cultures that have come from elsewhere – Africa,
Asia, and Europe. No one and no culture is genuine or original because
everything has been imported from somewhere else and the culture that has
been created is produced out the adaptation of these “original” cultures
and their interaction with one another. In playing mas at carnival,
putting on a character and performing another identity, one is imitating
or mimicking an identity. Caribbean identities might be seen as performances
or imitations of identities from these “original” societies in Africa,
Europe, and Asia. Yet, as Rhys suggests in the “original” ending
of Voyage in the Dark, carnival and playing mas was an act often of resistance
against the white elite and colonialism. Acting like the master was
a way of ridiculing the master and revealing his weakness and ugliness
– and perhaps also his limitations. The masks the women wear in the Carnival
Anna watches have masks made of wire as if they are imprisoned, which is
very much how Anna feels white womanhood is – a type of trap or prison.
I bring all this up to suggest that there may be a tension in
The Mystic Masseur. Naipaul illustrates colonial Trinidad as capable
only of absurd imitations of English and Indian models. Ganesh is a popular
spiritual leader and politician but in comparison to Gandhi, he looks laughable
and pathetic. His fascination with the physical elements of books
is a sign of his failure to understand the importance of the content of
books. Yet, as I mentioned we might also see strength and creole characteristics
in Ganesh, elements that Naipaul denies. He says that Trinidad is
limited to imitation and Indo-Trinidadians are isolated from the rest of
society. Yet Ganesh invents himself and rises to power by pragmatically
and ingeniously reading the people and texts in his life. He brings
together African, Asian, and European traditions. He plays mas – acting
the part of the Hindu on purpose to impress his clients when he is a mystic
masseur. Like Caribbean societies he does not invent his new personae
from scratch – as Caribbean cultures took African, Asian, and European
cultures and brought them together to create societies and culture.
Ganesh takes other people’s ideas – that he should be interested in books
and writing come from Ramlogan and Mr. Stewart, that he might write things
down in notebooks comes from Beharry, probably each of the additions and
changes is inspired by another person or by a book. Yet like the Caribbean
which is unique in its ability to create culture from various sources –
Ganesh is unique and uniquely powerful in creating a new man – a mystic
masseur and a national politician – from things and ideas that belonged
to other people. My conclusion is that the novel presents Ganesh
and colonial Trinidad in such a way that there is room for both readings
– that Trinidad is limited to imitation and that Trinidad is capable of
cross cultural creation and self-invention. The most difficult element
of the novel perhaps is evaluating it in this context. Ganesh may
be a poor imitation. The narrator may have a distorted view of his “hero.”
But Naipaul’s novel is a Trinidadian production as much or more so than
Ganesh. A book that brings together English, Indian, African, and
American culture to produce a new novel, one I think that clearly demonstrates
that however much Naipaul sees Trinidad has limited to imitation; his own
“imitations” or appropriations of the novel are the real thing. (repeated
from above.) The Mystic Masseur is a novel, not a poor imitation of a novel.
It is a British and West Indian novel, containing techniques of the English
novel, like irony and satire, and of Caribbean culture like carnival, playing
mas, and creolization. In class, I mentioned that invented names and taking
on personae is a characteristic of other Caribbean writers, especially
Naipaul’s father, Seepersad Naipaul in The Adventures of Gurudeva and other
Stories, Sam Selvon and his series of books centered on West Indians in
London, including Lonely Londoners and Moses Ascending.
Sources:
King, Bruce. V.S. Naipaul. New York : St. Martin's Press, 1993.
Mustafa, Fawzia. V.S. Naipaul. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1995.