VS Naipaul Thinks No Woman Is His Literary Match Not Even Jane Austen

The Guardian:

VS Naipaul, no stranger to literary spats and rows, has done it again. This time, the winner of the Nobel prize for literature has lashed out at female authors, saying there is no woman writer whom he considers his equal -- and singling out Jane Austen for particular criticism.

Read the whole story: The Guardian

Comments

[LaHabana]

03:25 PM on 06/09/2011

I think that Mr. Naipaul is a brilliant writer, but he lacks humanity and compassion which unfortunately makes him a less than a brilliant human being.

[RGKahn]

12:10 PM on 06/05/2011

"He added: "My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh. I don't mean this in any unkind way." Of course you did.

[Erewhon7]

02:07 AM on 06/05/2011

dunno about any woman, but VSN is undoubtedly much better writer than Diana Athill

[Bandynose]

04:57 AM on 06/03/2011

You are most certainly no equal of Miss Austen on that we agree, though I suspect for differing reasons.

[MagicalPossibilities]

01:45 AM on 06/03/2011

What a sexist boor...

[Erewhon7]

11:09 AM on 06/05/2011

A boor and a great writer. I 'll take that over a nice lady and an inferior writer any time. You?

[MSchlagel]

11:35 PM on 06/02/2011

My picks: Flannery O’Connor, Beryl Bainbridge, Marguerite Yourcenar, Hilary Mantel, Muriel Spark, Fran Lebowitz, Patricia Highsmith, Adrunhati Roy, Dorothy Parker, Angela Carter, Stella Gibbons, Zora Neale Hurston, Patti Smith, Doris Lessing, Iris Murdoch, Toni Morrison, Ruth Rendell, Zade Smith, Gita Mehta, Josephine Tey, Janet Frame, Pat Barker, Mary Renault, Jeanette Winterson.

I am fascinated by Mr. Naipaul’s novels (“like” seems the wrong word), however, if he has to claim a certain superiority over his colleagues and peers, it belittles what he has accomplished. It might be best to stop now before people remember the desperate flippancy of his impromptu comments rather than his overall body of work.

[Erewhon7]

02:37 AM on 06/05/2011

Feminist nonsense.

[John Dav Redux]

04:07 PM on 06/06/2011

I'll give you $10 if MSchlagel has read even half the people on that list, or if they have, that they think they're actually better than Naipaul.

[heboprotagonist]

10:31 PM on 06/02/2011

Who?

'nuff said.

[John Dav Redux]

11:43 PM on 06/02/2011

Right. Because your ignorance somehow excuses his. Or something.

[heboprotagonist]

10:25 PM on 06/03/2011

I know exactly who he is. Though in comparison to the canon of the authors I've read and studied he ranks "who? nuff said."

Next time remember, sometimes it's more about what wasn't said that what was. It'll take you along way and maybe keep you from passing judgment on a complete stranger. The concept is akin to an economy of language, and basically renders your comment as more revelatory about yourself than I.

[Mum]

09:51 PM on 06/02/2011

Here goes: I can think of dozens of female writers (and dozens of male writers, also) who write literature that is better than that of Mr. Naipaul (to say nothing of the writers, both male and female, who I see as better writers of English prose than Mr. Naipaul), and when asked, "How are they better?", I would suggest that they write more deeply and more broadly about the human condition, that they care about their characters, that there is no sneering condescension, that they understand the frailties of humans - both large and small, and that they skillfully explore the particular, and therewith nudge us toward the universal, bringing me to list as some of those dozens: Jane Austen, Doris Lessing, Virginia Woolf, Margaret Atwood, Christina Stead, Alice Munro, Iris Murdoch, Marilynne Robinson, Cynthia Ozick, Willa Cather, Octavia Butler, Isak Dinesen, Flannery O'Connor, Marguerite Yourcenar, Toni Morrison, Christa Wolf, Ursula K. Le Guin, Rebecca West, Gita Mehta, Barbara Kingsolver, Buchi Emecheta, Janet Frame, Dawn Powell, George Eliot, Marguerite Duras, Sigrid Undset, Anne Tyler, Nadine Gordimer.

[Erewhon7]

02:42 AM on 06/05/2011

Once you throw in low brow sci-fi hacks like Le Guin, the entire opinion turns into preposteorus femi-nonsense.

[Erewhon7]

02:43 AM on 06/05/2011

Once you throw in low brow pulp writer like Le Guin, entire opinion turns into preposteor­us femi-nonse­nse.

[Mum]

04:26 AM on 06/06/2011

That must be why the organizers of a narrative conference at the University of Chicago had Le Guin open a conference which featured as speakers among others Derrida and Kermode because you know how much the University of Chicago really goes in for those low brow pulp writers and how you choose to label Le Guin speaks more of the location of your brow than it does of hers.

[Mum]

09:41 PM on 06/02/2011

Apparently, I'm going to have to make my longer comment in one-sentence installments, as HP seems to be having trouble in posting my comments, or I could write one enormously long run-on sentence a la Jose Saramago and hope that it makes it through moderation; so I will see how this sentence comes through and then proceed from there to make the original comment I've been trying to make for the past two hours.

[Mum]

09:25 PM on 06/02/2011

I had written a much longer comment more than an hour ago, but HP apparently thought that everything beyond my introductory sentence was superfluous.

[thepoliticalcat]

09:24 PM on 06/02/2011

Oh, look, he's just like Newt Gingrich! "Nadira, whom he married in 1996, having proposed to her while his downtrodden first wife, Pat, lay dying of cancer."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1132743/Misogyny-mistresses-sadism-Why-Nobel-prize-winning-author-VS-Naipaul-centre-vicious-literary-war-decade.html#ixzz1OAhA3pHc

[nadiajafri]

09:24 PM on 06/02/2011

Read my comment here: A Sentimenta­l Female Writer According to VS Naipaul: http://livingbetweenworlds.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/a-sentimental-female-writer-according-to-vs-naipaul/

[nadiajafri]

09:23 PM on 06/02/2011

Read my comment here: A Sentimental Female Writer According to VS Naipaul: http://t.co/hRxU21k.

[thepoliticalcat]

09:12 PM on 06/02/2011

Naipaul flatters himself exceedingly, and groundlessly, at that. Despite the fact that she has only one book to her credit, Arundhati Roy is definitely a better writer. I could name at least fifty other female writers who beat the pants off him, but I'm sure my fellow-commenters will do it for me.

[jayquintana]

08:40 PM on 06/02/2011

He's wrong. Joyce Kilmer is a far better writer than V.S.

[MSchlagel]

10:27 PM on 06/02/2011

Forgive me, but Joyce Kilmer was a man

[Alskling]

11:02 PM on 06/02/2011

Evelyn Waugh, then? Gaye Talise?

[MagicalPossibilities]

01:41 AM on 06/03/2011

How about George Eliot? :-P

[John Dav Redux]

11:46 PM on 06/02/2011

LOL @ thinking Joyce Kilmer was a woman. Please at least try to attempt to know what the fuc* you're talking about before you post something.