A couple of weeks ago, I laid out some of V.S. Naipaul’s best quotes—of which there are many.
But many of us might know Naipaul from the long list of ridiculous, controversial things he’s said over the years. Seriously, some of this will make you do a double take.
Yep, V.S. Naipaul actually said this:
On E.M. Forster:
“Forster of course has his own purposes in India. He is a homosexual and he has his time in India… He just knew the court and a few middle-class Indians and a few garden boys whom he wished to seduce.”
On Jane Austen and female writers in general:
“[I] couldn’t possibly share her sentimental ambitions, her sentimental sense of the world.” Then: “I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me.” Why does he feel that way? Because of a woman’s “sentimentality, the narrow view of the world… And inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too.”
On Uganda:
“Africans need to be kicked, that’s the only thing they understand.”
On the reading public in Trinidad (his home country):
“I can’t see a Monkey — you can use a capital M, that’s an affectionate word for the generality — reading my work… These people live purely physical lives, which I find contemptible… It makes them only interesting to chaps in universities who want to do compassionate studies about brutes.”
On everyone but himself:
“The melancholy thing about the world is that it is full of stupid people; and the world is run for the benefit of the stupid and common.”
You can read a few more over at Flavor Wire.
This Naipaul guy…wow. Racist, sexist, elitist…you name it, and he’s probably said it.
Just a reminder that you can be an amazing writer and still be a colossal jerk.