Books of the Beginnings. The Emergence of the Idea of Literature in V. S. Naipaul’s A Writer’s People

Abstract

The article is an attempt at answering the question how and why the individuals born in social contexts in which strong tradi-tions of literacy are absent come to nurture literary aspirations. The answer is based on the autobiographical essay A Writer’s People by the Nobel prize winner born in Trinidad, V. S. Naipaul. He nar-rates the circumstances of his discovery of literature, in strong connection with the literary activity of his contemporary living on a nearby island, Derek Walcott, as well as his own father. Naipaul’s further musings on the conditions of success and failure in lite - rature lead him to analyse the milieus in which he was involved in England, as well as various minor and major texts of Indian and universal literature. As a conclusion, he points out at the gap between the pioneering and the derived, secondary texts written as an imitation of someone else’s work. Also, the link between the original writing and the private, deeply felt realities is accentuated.