Half a Life

Half a Life
V.S. Naipaul

A couple of years ago, I read a rich and provoking memoir by Paul Theroux about his relationship with V.S. Naipaul. Until that point I had heard of neither of them; since then I have wanted to read their works. So, even though Half a Life cost three Euro, I bought it. It also won a Nobel prize, which also helped justify the cost.

It's hard to say precisely what this book is about. Will has a lot of angst about Purpose and Race and Ethnicity and his place in the world, but he never really resolves any of them. Born of a mixed-caste marriage in provincial India, he dabbles in converting to Canadian missionary whiteness, moving in Notting Hill bohemian society, hobnobbing with those in vanity publishing, and living with half-Portuguese half-African ruling colonials in Africa. None of them fit him, though he adapts to each for a time.

Driving his ethnic angst is a cloudy sense of purpose. He gets out of India, writes a book, almost completes a degree, and still has no direction. Not all who wander are lost, says Tolkein, but many are. Will marries, slides into his role as the man of the manor in Africa, but is not content. Nothing drives him, and he drives nothing. Each time he realizes he is unhappy driftwood, he moves on to a different mix of folks, waiting for them to validate him and teach him to paddle. Ultimately, none do.

He tries exploring sexuality as a means to fulfillment, beginning with whores and his friends' girls, and moving on to marriage and then falling back to whores before finishing in adultery. But sex gives unsatisfactory, temporary answers, and he dismisses it eventually.

Along the way, we are treated to Naipaul's terse, telling descriptions of persons, events, neighborhoods, and classes. The subtle brilliance of the work is in the way he uses words. Whatever one thinks of the themes, Naipaul is a master of his craft.

An almost raw look at race, identity, and globalization, Half a Life carefully reveals the emptiness of a purposeless life. Unfortunately, it ends as hopeless as Ecclesiastes: vanity, vanity, all is vanity...