62. Father, Dear Father

In a letter, V.S. Naipaul’s father writes to him, urging him not to give in to his depression and encouraging him to be genuine in his writing. 

“What do you think literature boils down to?” he asks, “To writing from the belly rather than from the cheek. Most people write from the cheek. If the semi-illiterate criminal wrote a long letter, usually to his sweetheart, it would be what most letters of such people usually are.

 If the criminal wrote this letter just before his execution, it would be literature; it would be poetry.”

This I quote from ‘Between Father and Son, V.S. Naipaul family letters’ edited by Gillon Aitken. This is a volume of letters between V.S. Naipaul, then a college student on scholarship at Oxford, and his family back home in Trinidad. 

The book contains well-written, thought-provoking personal letters. But thinking man’s ideas are never personal. He always thinks big, even in unfavorable situations, and still maintains a balance between truth and reality.

So, at last, the father decides to support his son after graduation from Oxford. ‘I want you to have that chance which I have never had,’ he writes, ‘somebody to support me and mine while I write. Two or three years of this should be enough. If by then you have not arrived, then it will be time enough for you to see about getting a job.’

And we all know V.S. Naipaul arrived with ‘A Room for Mr. Bishwas.’