Between Father and Son by V.S. Naipaul

Author:V.S. Naipaul [Naipaul, V.S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307424976
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

University College, Oxford

February 19, 1952

Dear Everybody,

It is now 8.10. In five minutes I have to read a paper to the college literary society, the Martlets, on ‘The Use of the First Person Singular in English Narrative Fiction’. It is only this afternoon, before dinner, that I finished the essay. Although I wrote the bulk of it a few days ago, starting at ten one night, and working right through till three the following morning, I found that after long abstinence from writing I wrote only with great difficulty, and it was only after the first two thousand words that I got into my stride and began writing really well and intelligently.

Then I waited a few days, and this evening wrote the last 600 words. These are not good words. The criticism is unusually bad, and the attempts at humour are gross and vulgar. But it is too late now to change anything.

The Martlets is an old literary society in Oxford. In the old days before the war we had outside men coming to give lectures, men such as Lord David Cecil, and the famous critic C. S. Lewis. Now, every fortnight, the members of the society gather, usually in the Dean’s rooms, drink port, settle down and listen to a paper read by an undergraduate.

A man usually writes only one paper while he is up at Oxford, but I got elected so damned early that I may have to write two papers, or even three. But this is my first. I am only slightly nervous, particularly as I know most of the people I am going to talk to.

This week has been quite a hectic week for me. First, getting the Tory out. Secondly doing a poster for the Oxford Experimental Theatre Group, and designing others for the same group. By the way, I have become infinitely more knowledgeable on the subject of typography. So much so that the printers who do the Tory have said that they regretted that I did the layout. They can put nothing over on me. It is the best compliment, I suppose.

And now I really must stop, and go to this meeting. I shall complete this when I return, and let you know how the whole thing has gone.

Wednesday morning. Well, my dear people, my paper went down like a glass of the best champagne. I had the group laughing whenever I wanted them to laugh. This morning someone told me that my paper was by far the brightest he had ever heard at the society. So it appears that I still retain some of the old fire. In this paper, by the way, I give a dressing down to most people. Defoe: I say people praise him because he is so true. That is hardly a decent criterion any more. Defoe, I said, remains a classic, because Robinson Crusoe was forced down the throats of children who were unable to offer any resistance. The children grow up, and their days of reading are mercifully over.

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