ABSTRACT
A Personal Record, Joseph Conrad’s autobiographical narration, opens with the truism that ‘books may be written in all sorts of places’ (Conrad 1988b: 3). V. S. Naipaul’s fictional autobiography discussed in the previous chapter, however, shows great reluctance to endorse Conrad’s statement and instead insists on (re-)establishing what Conrad seems to do without: a link between place and writing. Naipaul’s literary persona has based his whole career on the belief in some material connection of literature to its point of origin, a point of visual no less than verbal consummation where words and vision truly come together. As I pointed out, with reference to Dabydeen’s critical rewriting, The Enigma of Arrival can be read as a personal record of this recherche for English cultural originals – a search propelled by panic to escape the secondary signifiers in the colony. Naipaul’s narrated conversion to true sight and his attainment of literary status are therefore part of the same authenticating urge which first initiated his journey to the mother country. The only sort of place where books may be written truly, England promises deliverance from the colonial condition of translatedness and constant cultural borrowing. What, then, should we make of the fact that the title of this very book is borrowed, indeed translated from Italian and taken from a painting?
