The title of this book is, unfortunately, misleading. It does not consist merely of letters between V.S. Naipaul and his father, Seepersad. It also contains many letters between Naipaul and his sisters Kamla and, to a lesser extent, Sati, as well as one or two between Naipaul and his mother. Moreover, many of Naipaul's letters are addressed to the whole family ("Dear Everybody"). And, of course, it is not properly "by" V.S Naipaul, since a substantial portion of it is written by members of his family. So a title such as `Letters Between A Writer and His Family' would have been far more accurate. This anomaly is not explained in the introduction by Gillon Aitken. It would seem to be intended as an act of pietas towards a father who was a writer himself, who was clearly a very important figure for his son and whose memory it is hoped to preserve, but it distorts the actual import of the book.
V.S. (Vidia) Naipaul left Trinidad in 1950 aged 17 on a Trinidad government scholarship to University College, Oxford. Behind him he left his parents, his sisters Kamla, Sati, Mira and Savi, and his young brother and future writer, Shiva. A fifth sister, Nalini, was born in 1952. Seepersad Naipaul, his father, who died in 1953, was a journalist on the Trinidad Guardian for most of his working life. His one book, The Adventures of Gurudeva, a novella with a number of short stories, was first published in 1943 and reissued in expanded form in the 1970s. The letters between him and his elder son do reveal a sympathy and understanding for a writer's life and problems that are not merely familial.
While Vidia (or Vido, as he was commonly known in the family) did have problems in adjusting to life in Britain, the most striking thing about this correspondence is the confidence with which he addresses them. Though his physical journey from Trinidad to England was a long one, and though he did carry the burden of racial difference, the colonial culture he came from provided a homogeneity and uniformity which did much to smooth his path. The enigma of arrival appears to have been quickly solved; he makes his way very surely through the many English mazes. His family back in Trinidad follow his progress anxiously, his father at all times wise, encouraging and helpful. Vidia keeps them posted, informing them, for instance, of such wonders as his first sight of snow.
In a sense, he and his father get on too well for much of the character of either to emerge. More revealing in some respects is the correspondence between Vidia and his sister Kamla. Here there is a greater frankness and openness. The 17-year-old Vidia, for instance, annoyed with his sister over something she wrote to him, has no hesitation in telling her that "You are a silly stupid female, after all". But such occasional outbursts of spleen should be set against the warm and trusting tone that generally prevails.
It is hard not to read this book in the light of Paul Theroux's recently published Sir Vidia's Shadow, with its less than flattering portrait of the artist as a mean-minded egotist. To some extent, this work does act as a corrective, displaying Naipaul in a far more amiable setting. The most prescient words in it, perhaps, are those of his mother, who scarcely ever wrote to him: "You should get yourself accustomed to slanders and mischief-mongers. Just ignore it". This is advice that Naipaul has doubtless taken to heart.
Terence Killeen is a critic and an Irish Times journalist