In a Free State is a novel which isn't. It's better described as a short story collection (evidently, there was quite a bit of debate at the time whether or not the book should have been considered a novel--it came very close to not being considered for the award at all). There are brief introductory and closing vignettes, two short stories, and one brief novella. None of the stories have any characters or settings in common. All that ties them together is unity of theme: being exiled to a foreign land.
V. S. Naipaul, who would in 2001 win the Nobel Prize for Literature, is familiar with this sort of exile: his family came from India to Trinidad where he was born. Subsequently, he moved to England, making him a sort of double-exile. In In a Free State, he applies that experience to consider several facets of the colonial experience.
The book begins with an excerpt from a travel journal, telling the story of a passage by boat across the Mediterranean from Greece to Egypt. The ship is an intensely multicultural experience: it's all business, after all, and business must be done. In the end, it's not cultural differences which cause trouble--it's passengers violating the unspoken order of things.
"One out of Many" tells the story of a domestic servant from India who travels to Washington D.C. to care for his patron, a diplomatic official of relative unimportance. It begins as a conventional fish out of water story, as an inexperienced resident of Bombay travels to America, constantly causing disasters and leading a ludicrously poverty-stricken life. To mention that he survives, finds a much more profitable job, and eventually becomes a US citizen makes it sound like a rags-to-riches story of success, though it leaves out the major point that he hates his new situation.
The story "Tell Me Who to Kill" differs in that the central character travelled to a foreign land willingly--to find and help his brother. The unnamed narrator comes from a poor family somewhere in the Caribbean. His younger brother Dayo, the one member of his family who, it was decided, would be destined to succeed, travels to England to study. The narrator follows Dayo when it is apparent the younger man is in trouble, and works to finance Dayo's success. It all ends disastrously, though it's hard to tell precisely what happened--either the narrator killed someone, or the narrator took the guilt for Dayo killing someone--the reality of the situation merges with the Hollywood movies that narrator constantly talks about.
"In a Free State" offers the fewest details on geography of any stories in the book: essentially it's a story of a long journey by car from one unnamed East African city to another (a vast lake appears in the course of the book--if it's intended to stand in for Lake Victoria, then it might be taking place in Kenya, Uganda or Tanzania). There is a civil war either already started, or imminent and inevitable, between the forces of the "King" and the "President." The car is driven by Bobby, a gay civil servant, and the passenger is Linda, the wife of a co-worker. While violence looms in the outside world, the two in the car show increased irritation and verbal violence towards each other. At the end, there is a brief epilogue, another travel journal excerpt about a visit to Egypt, where the narrator is no longer able to tolerate the sight of a local guard threatening Egyptian children from getting too close to a tourist compound.
As Naipaul is a man of Indian ancestry and of Trinidadian birth, you might expect him to automatically side up on the side of the colonized, but that isn't necessarily the case here. He notes that decolonization oftend has ugly results, that the natives are not necessarily the pure, enlightened, simple folk sometimes lionized in fiction (in fact, apparently he has been criticized for opinions believed to be neocolonial).
He seems to sympathize more with the exiles in general, whatever their station, as so often, away from their original home, they try to turn their new country into their homeland, with little chance of success. The most important point is something Linda says in the main story: "It's their country, but it's your life." Being an foreigner does not rob you of all rights, whether you're a government official, a laborer, a cook, a prisoner, or a spouse, whether you're an immigrant or a colonist.
As much of In a Free State had to do with crumbling empire, it sadly suffered in comparison with Troubles by J. G. Farrell, which I had read immediately before. After the humor and rich characterization of Farrell's novel, Naipaul's work seemed dour and sketchy in comparison. However, in retrospect, the brevity of the work, the lack of unnecessary description make it bracing reading.
Next up is G. by John Berger.
No comments:
Post a Comment