Was Naipaul's prose actually any good?

The Nobel Prize Committee selected this piece of Naipaul's prose to exhibit on their web-site. Is it any good?

To see the possibility, the certainty, of ruin, even at the moment of creation: it was my temperament.

In Sanskrit, there is a term for this sort of boon, or curse, of visualisation- chakshushi vidya- which Krishna accepts but Arjuna refuses, at least as a matter of volition *. This is connected, in the Chandogya Upanishad with the notion of that Black Sun which shines upon the back, the inevitable end, of all things.

Did Vidia (as he was called) believe that he had this chakshushi vidya?

If so, this sentence is an example of good prose. It is restrained. It is modest. It achieves its effects, it generates truth value, by means of allusion- dhvani- a mode of suggestion almost sublime in its self-restraint.

Those nerves had been given me as a child in Trinidad partly by our family circumstances: the half-ruined or broken-down houses we lived in, our many moves, our general uncertainty.

So something was given to him and, because of his temperament, he was certain it would do him no good. He was himself part of his family circumstances, an unsafe vessel- for as such are termed unfilial or sterile sons in the Hindu Religion- whose oblations to the ancestors would falter and cease halfway across the ocean of samsara- rendering them hungry ghosts. A poignant plaint from a childless man- and all the better for being so understated.

Possibly, too, this mode of feeling went deeper, and was an ancestral inheritance,

But, if it was a possibility, then it was also a certainty because ruin remains ruin; the fruit is the same, no matter what the seed.

something that came with the history that had made me: not only India, with its ideas of a world outside men’s control,

Oh dear. India has no 'ideas of a world outside men's control'. Everything is determined solely by karma- one's own actions- there is no predestination, not even any Grace save such as arises by pre-established harmony operating independently of the individual's own soteriological liberation.

Suddenly we see Naipaul isn't a good prose writer. He is too ignorant. There was no allusion to chakshushi vidya, or the ocean of samsara. The guy was just talking in a self important manner and preening himself on a cultural heritage he had long ago forfeited.

but also the colonial plantations or estates of Trinidad, to which my impoverished Indian ancestors had been transported in the last century – estates of which this Wiltshire estate, where I now lived, had been the apotheosis.

If Naipaul is wrong about India, it's no biggie, he wasn't Indian- but how could he get England and Trinidad so wrong? West Indian plantations bore no resemblance to Wiltshire estates- like Vathek's author's Fonthill, which was funded by Jamaican sugar and African slaves . Their landlords had been absentees even in the second half of the eighteenth century. It wasn't till the cocoa boom of the 1880's that nouveau riche 'creole coloureds' built themselves fancy Estate Houses.  Naipaul conjures up a vision of the antebellum South, but he knows full well that the plantations his ancestors came to were commercial concerns having more in common with Indigo factories in Champaran than the gracious life of the Southern aristocrat.

This is bad prose. Why? It is lazy. It is deceitful. It is facile. Naipaul writes in this manner merely to melodramatise himself.

     Fifty years ago there would have been no room for me on the estate; even now my presence was a little unlikely.

Right! Coz Stephen Tennant, in the Thirties, would not have put up Mohini Chatterjee or some other such Chatterbox in princely style coz of....urm...Jim Crow? Southern trees bearing strange fruit?

Naipaul seems to be suggesting that, even under Thatcher, brown people, who'd been to Oxford, were hunted down by the Ku Klux Klan outside the Home Counties.

But more than accident had brought me here.

Stephen Tennant thought the Mystic Masseur's author might be a Firbankian Mr. Yajnyavalkya who always finished off 'wid a most charming sensation'.

There was no accident here. The thing was a priceless joke and only Naipaul couldn't see it- or chose not to.

Or rather, in the series of accidents that had brought me to the manor cottage, with a view of the restored church, there was a clear historical line.

Either there were accidents or there was a clear historical line- i.e. a causal chain existed. This is bad prose because it is careless and stupid.

The migration, within the British Empire, from India to Trinidad had given me the English language as my own, and a particular kind of education.

Which however was shared by a million others. There is no historical line here. Only accidents which Naipaul's ego inflates.

This had partly seeded my wish to be a writer in a particular mode, and had committed me to the literary career I had been following in England for twenty years.

Which, however, you already knew would be ruinous because you are such a special boy with such a special temperament.

     The history I carried with me, together with the self-awareness that had come with my education and ambition, had sent me into the world with a sense of glory dead; and in England had given me the rawest stranger’s nerves.

Naipaul has just shown he didn't carry any history within himself- not that of India or Trinidad or England. All he has in his head are stupid cliches.

What is this sense of 'glory dead'? The belief that Stephen Tennant wouldn't have afforded hospitality to a Chatterjee or Aubrey Menon fifty years previously? That he'd have called out the militia to hunt down and kill any blackamoor foolhardy enough to trespass on his Estate? Would that have been 'glory'? Did Naipaul truly mourn for it now it was dead and gone?

How could a man who had already resided in England for more than twenty years have 'the rawest stranger's nerves'? Is it because he had noticed nothing about the country or was it because he held absurd beliefs of its traditions and its past? But we would not term such a man a 'stranger'. Rather we would say he was estranged from his own wits. Either that, or he was just a self-important tosser.

Now ironically – or aptly – living in the grounds of this shrunken estate, going out for my walks, those nerves were soothed, and in the wild garden and orchard beside the water meadows I found a physical beauty perfectly suited to my temperament and answering, besides, every good idea I could have had, as a child in Trinidad, of the physical aspect of England.

Soooo sweet! Baba got his chocolate box England. See, I told you, if you just swot hard enough you too can become a pompous tosser.

     The estate had been enormous, I was told.

Because, this Oxford graduate was so stupid he couldn't just order a book about the estate from the London Library before motoring up. No, he has to be told- that too in the manner that you would speak to a child or an imbecile- about how big the place once was- so big, Baba, it was stretching far far beyond even what you can see.

It had been created in part by the wealth of empire.

But did they explain what 'empire' meant?

But then bit by bit it had been alienated. The family in its many branches flourished in other places. Here in the valley there now lived only my landlord, elderly, a bachelor, with people to look after him. Certain physical disabilities had now been added to the malaise which had befallen him years before, a malaise of which I had no precise knowledge,

Coz Naipaul didn't know about Stephen Tennant- the model for some of Waugh's most outre characters!

but interpreted as something like accidia, the monk’s torpor or disease of the Middle Ages

Hilarious! Stephen Tennant, a too pious monk, succumbing to spiritual aridity and a dark night of the soul by reason of his too frequent prayerful vigils and penitential scourgings!

– which was how his great security, his excessive worldly blessings, had taken him. The accidia had turned him into a recluse, accessible only to his intimate friends. So that on the manor itself, as on my walks on the down, I had a kind of solitude.

This is quite jaunty. Max Beerbohm himself might have written this. Then Naipaul spoils the joke.

     I felt a great sympathy for my landlord. I felt I could understand his malaise; I saw it as the other side of my own.

This is brutal. But, wait, let's not be hasty. Surely a man in his fifties, however caddish, however vulgar, speaking of a man thirty years older and in poor health, would pause, grow abashed, and draw back the knife?

I did not think of my landlord as a failure. Words like failure and success didn’t apply. Only a grand man or a man with a grand idea of his human worth could ignore the high money value of his estate and be content to live in its semi-ruin. My meditations in the manor were not of imperial decline. Rather, I wondered at the historical chain that had brought us together – he in his house, I in his cottage, the wild garden his taste (as I was told) and also mine.

So there you have it. Tennant's tenant, his bit of lascar rough trade, did for him in the end. A feat worthy of Boysie Singh.

Note 1-
Thanks to a Gandharva's gift of chaksushi vidya, Arjuna possesses the boon that whatever he wishes to see will be shown to him in the manner he would choose. However, he never formally accepted the gift, nor ever consciously relied upon it. However, the Gandharva did not take the gift back either. Thus the boon exists as svatva property of an asvamika (lit. without a lord) kind. When Arjuna develops 'vishada', his mind becomes deranged and his volition is weakened. He is not in possession of himself- i.e. he is asvamika. Thus the Gandharva's boon which continued to exist as asvamika svatva (unvested property) now vests in him by reason of this 'vishada'. It therefore follows that his vision of the devastation caused by the War is alethic. If it wasn't, Krishna could persuade him to fight by pointing out the extreme improbability of the Pandavas prevailing over the Kauravas- two of whose leading warriors could only die by their own wish.

Interestingly, the Gandharva's boon gave Arjuna, while in the grip of vishada and thus not the master of himself, a vision which, despite all appearances to the contrary, is precisely the one he would have, with hindsight, chosen for himself because, in a non deterministic manner, it enables him to gain the beatific vision which however he wished to experience as a pure gift of the Lord.

Notice, if Arjuna wishes to have a dispassionate view of how all things are connected, he can gain this thanks to his supernatural boon. However, in that case, he would know that Karna is his true eldest brother, in which case there would be no occasion for War. However, Karna does not want this outcome and since Arjuna is an obedient younger brother and wishes to remain so, his boon excludes his envisioning this truth.

Normally, when a supernatural boon is given to a hero or a ascetic, there is a karmic price to be paid because of some subsequent act of hubris or hamartia. Even Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, in Tolkein's masterpiece, feel the urge to put on the Ring of Power. However, in the Mahabharata, Arjuna feels no similar temptation to accept or use the Gandharva's gift. This did not mean it disappeared. Rather it remained asvamika svatva- a property not conveyanced for karmic purposes- till Arjuna himself became asvamika and, purely by Grace, gained the beatific vision of his true Swami- Lord Krishna, which, indeed, is the salutary goal of svadharma because all egotistic karma, all will-to-power, is burnt up.

Thus, the story of the Gita begins with 'Vishada Yoga'- the Yoga of mental illness, in which Arjuna sees a horrific vision of the outcome of the battle. This causes him to lose heart. Lord Krishna counsels him till Arjuna recognises that his friend is in reality the one true and eternal Lord. Arjuna then asks Lord Krishna to disclose his cosmic form.
Chapter 11, Verse 1
Arjuna said-' I have heard Your instruction on confidential spiritual matters which You have so kindly delivered unto me, and my illusion is now dispelled.
'O lotus-eyed one, I have heard from You in detail about the appearance and disappearance of every living entity, as realized through Your inexhaustible glories.
'O greatest of all personalities, O supreme form, though I see here before me Your actual position, I yet wish to see how You have entered into this cosmic manifestation. I want to see that form of Yours.
'If You think that I am able to behold Your cosmic form, O my Lord, O master of all mystic power, then kindly show me that universal self.

The Lord does fulfil his devotees request- clearly Arjuna's boon means he can physically witness the cosmic vision without suffering any ill effect.
The Blessed Lord said: 'My dear Arjuna, O son of Prtha, behold now My opulences, hundreds of thousands of varied divine forms, multicolored like the sea.O best of the Bharatas, see here the different manifestations of Adityas, Rudras, and all the demigods. Behold the many things which no one has ever seen or heard before.Whatever you wish to see can be seen all at once in this body. This universal form can show you all that you now desire, as well as whatever you may desire in the future. Everything is here completely.'
Then the Lord realises that Arjuna isn't seeing anything at all because, in accordance with the Gandharva's boon, he can only see what he wishes to see. As a true Bhakti Yogi, Arjuna seeks the vision of Yogishvaram- the God of Yoga- only if it purely the Lord's gift and not the result of any sort of merit or endowment natural or acquired.
Thus Lord Krishna says-'But you cannot see Me with your present eyes. Therefore I give to you divine eyes by which you can behold My mystic opulence. (yogam aishvaram) '

The outcome of this theophany was that Arjuna accepted his part in the Divine plan without knowing that it involved his own slaying of his true eldest brother. The actual content of that vision did not give him any knowledge he didn't already have. It merely confirmed that Krishna had offered a coherent and alethic argument such that Arjuna's doubts were removed and he decided to fight.

I think it is worthwhile to reiterate the importance of the Gandharva's boon from the Game Theoretic point of view. Thanks to the 'asvamika svatva' nature of the Gandharva's boon, Arjuna's preferences constrain his information set in two different ways. Firstly (I believe) he can't see that Karna is his eldest brother because Karna doesn't want him to know this and he himself wishes to obey his eldest brother (even if it is Karna).
Secondly, he does not want a theophany he is otherwise physically fitted to receive- like the Sage Utanka who gains this vision without Krishna having to give him 'divine eyes' because he already possesses sufficient 'ascetic merit' or supernatural power- because, as a pure Theist, he only wants it as a pure, unqualified, act of Grace on the part of the Lord.

Clearly Arjuna's information set depends on his preferences- not as they actually exist- but from the perspective of backward induction. In other words, with hindsight, these are the preferences he'd have wanted to constrain his information set.

Suppose this were not the case. Suppose the Hindus believed Arjuna had no special supernatural gift which could operate when his volition was weakened by 'vishada'. In that case, the Gita only provides evidence that no argument based on Spiritual Science or Revelation can overcome indecision. Only Theophany- i.e. something miraculous- can counter the 'Agrippa's trilemma' Pyrhho learned in Punjab. If Hindus held this view, why would they consider the Gita an orthodox text?

I believe, in accordance with the terms of the Gandharva's boon, Arjuna, if he chose, could 'see' every single episode of the Gita even if it did not actually come to pass. He could gain the vision of Krishna's theophany ('vishvarupa') by his wish alone. However, since he is a sincere devotee of the Lord, his wish is that Krishna should only reveal himself by his own uncoerced or otherwise solicited wish & volition. This type of impredicativity requires increased indeterminacy in its I-Thou dialogic. It is also a feature of highly wrought romantic poetry of a baroque or 'riti' type. The intensely passionate devotional love poetry which is feature of Vaishnavite Bhakti Religion owes its sublimity to a self-abnegation in Love which never ceases to act in accordance with the wishes of the occluded Deity. Since this is also a feature of the higher, self sacrificing, types of Love which enrich our personal lives and our most significant nurturing relationships, the message of the Gita is, in fact, univocal. It does not matter if we are seeking to do the best thing for a child or a parent or a friend without imposing upon them in any way, or if we are seeking to serve the Lord of Creation for no higher reward than that of performing that service in a selfless manner.

The dramatic tension in the Gita arises from the cognitive dissonance we experience when seeking to picture Krishna as impassable or dispassionate in himself and thus unswayed by the desire to satisfy even his most beloved devotee's desire. Yet, when we act out of self-less love to another, some similar impassability or dispassion is required of us. Thus a mother may have to send her child away from herself to save its life and, afterwards, may have to dissimulate her true feelings for the child, appearing to perform some other sort of duty, in order to continue to protect it.
Vide http://socioproctology.blogspot.com/2017/03/zero-knowledge-proofs-and-gitas.html