Jaipur festival stages VS Naipaul and Paul Theroux’s public reconciliation

Will he or won’t he? The question that has hung over the lead-up up to the eighth Jaipur literature festival was answered on its opening day when a frail VS Naipaul was wheeled on to the open air stage for his first public reunion in 19 years with Paul Theroux.Festival directors William Dalrymple and Namita […]

Will he or won’t he? The question that has hung over the lead-up up to the eighth Jaipur literature festival was answered on its opening day when a frail VS Naipaul was wheeled on to the open air stage for his first public reunion in 19 years with Paul Theroux.
Festival directors William Dalrymple and Namita Gokhale set the scene by programming a celebration of Naipaul’s name-making 1961 novel, A House for Mr Biswas. It was, said Theroux, “the foundation of Naipaul’s genius” – a novel without precedent, about a little man from Trinidad with big dreams. He recalled discovering it in 1966. “It’s one of the finest books I’ve ever read. I used to go home every night and read five to 10 pages.”
Precisely what sort of genius it displayed was a matter for spirited discussion among the four panellists at the event, with Farrukh Dhondy describing it as Dickensian, while Hanif Kureishi praised its Chekhovian qualities and Amit Chaudhuri said it was really a modernist masterpiece.
Theroux was a university lecturer in Uganda when he first met Naipaul, and followed him to England to become his literary disciple. Their friendship cooled as Theroux began to be critical of his old mentor, and developed into a full-blown feud in 1996 after he discovered signed copies of his own books, inscribed “with love” to Naipaul and his first wife, for sale at $1,500 each in a rare books catalogue.
The pair had a private reunion in the green room at the Hay festival in 2011 , brokered by Ian McEwan, but so uncertain was it that Naipaul would agree a public reconciliation that the Jaipur audience was not told he was even present until the end of the event. He had cancelled a planned BBC interview days before the festival opened.
The signs began to look promising when he greeted a reference to the ups and downs of his relationship with Theroux with an enthusiastic thumbs-up from the front row, but when he was invited on to the stage there was a dramatic pause. Finally the 82-year-old Nobel laureate, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, was wheeled up, though hopes that he might give a short reading from the novel were dashed when he thanked the panellists and dissolved into tears, forcing Lady Naipaul to come to the rescue. “I think my husband is overwhelmed,” she said.
Whether he is reconciled with India of which he has been fiercely critical in more recent work – remains to be seen when he makes his second festival appearance this weekend.