Books: Naipul & Others

[buckguy]

I didn't care for Naipul's "A Turn in the South" and I haven't particularly liked his pieces in The New Yorker. In "A Turn in the South", he seemed to buy the patrician nonesense that was fed to him. The same sort of things comes across in his other writing---he desperately wants to be part of the establishment and can never be, esp. in the British system.

 

The best things I've read recently include Richard Reeves' bio of Nixon (very instructive in thinking about the current administration's behavior, except I have more respect for Nixon as a pol), "Behind the Screen"---an engrossing history of gay Hollywood, a fictionalized memoir of growing up in early 1960s Bangkok, "Jasmine Nights" by SP Somtow, and an entertaining potboiler, "Lightning on the Sun" by Robert Bingham.