The calamity occurred four months later. The book, in which I had placed so much faith, the book which had exhausted me so much, could not please the publisher who had commissioned it. We had misunderstood one another. And I had misunderstood his interest in me. He had approached me as a serious writer, but he had wanted only a book for tourists, something much simpler than the book I had written, something at once more romantic and less romantic; at once more human and less human. So I found myself up in the air. And I had to return to England. That journey back--from the island and continent I had gone to see with my new vision, the corner of the new world I had just written about...that journey back to England so mocked and parodied the journey of 19 years before, the journey of the young man, the boy almost, who had journeyed to England to be a writer, in a country where the calling had some meaning, that I couldnt but be aware of all the cruel ironies. It was out of this grief, too deep for tears or rage--grief that began partly to be expressed in the dream of the exploding head--that I began to write my African story, which had come to me as a wisp of an idea in Africa three or four years before. V.S. Naipaul
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 04:58:43 +0000
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