Unable To Quit

In early June I decided to abandon V.S. Naipaul's The Loss Of El Dorado on the not unreasonable grounds that I was getting absolutely nowhere with it. It turns out that I wasn't quite as determined as I may have sounded. I kept going and my aged blotted paperback copy now resides on a bookshelf in Maison KL whence I made it to the final page.

Was I right to keep going? I suppose so, yes, on the grounds you should always finish what you start. (Curiously I typed that initially as 'start what you finish', which sounded better somehow.) But the problem is that looking back I don't feel there was any profit in the enterprise. Naipaul convinces you that history is a messy business, especially for those on its periphery, which is just about everyone in his account, and that people are generally foolish or cruel or foolish and cruel. No one emerges with any credit - in fact, what makes The Loss Of El Dorado so difficult to read is that no one emerges at all in anything close to a fully-rounded sense.

Case in point: much of the central part of the narrative revolves around the rivalry between a chap called Picton (who eventually got himself killed heroically at Waterloo) and another chap whose name I've forgotten and don't care to remember. The rivalry seems to come out of nowhere for no good reason, except to make desolate the lives of those caught up in it. But that seems good enough for Naipaul, who, when you think of it, seems drawn in so much of his work to the shabby, sordid and second-rate. Of course, normally he can make this stuff first-rate even in its bleakness - but not this time, at least not for me.