In a Free State : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: A Minor Masterpiece from V. S. Naipaul
Review: In a Free State won the Booker Prize in 1971 as the best novel by a Commonwealth author. The books consists of two short stories, two travel pieces and the title novella.

The 120 odd page novella, "In a Free State," describes a visit to a remote hotel deep in the African bush. Two Europeans travel overland over rutted roads to a run down deserted hotel. Bobby and Linda travel as a couple but Bobby prefers men. He tries to seduce the African servant boy but is rebuffed. This book marks Naipaul complete departure from the folksy half-joking style of his earliest works. There's no warmth or humor just a cold depiction early post-colonial Africa.

"One Out of Many," a thirty page short story, is more in the style of his earliest works: "A House for Mr. Biswas," "The Mystic Masseur, " and "Miguel Street." It tells the story of Santosh, a poor Hindu who accompanies his employer from Bombay to Washington, where the employer has taken up a diplomatic posting. Santosh had slept on the sidewalk in Bombay, that being impermissible in Washington, his boss generously gives him use of a walk closet as his sleeping quarters. He misses the companionship of sleeping on the Bombay sidewalks under the stars with his friends. He runs away from his boss, to whom he owes his plane fare from India and takes a job at a newly opened Indian restaurant. Santosh is terrified by the race riots that erupt in Washington. He meets a hubshi (black) woman and is disgusted at himself for having sex with her. He has some money because he sells some of the weed he has brought with him from India. This weed, which grows wild and free for the gathering in India, is marijuana. He is so socially inept that he buys a bright green suit. He becomes wise to the ways of the world and demands a raise from his restaurateur boss who has been paying him miserably. All the while he is afraid his old employer will come to take him back or have him deported. On the advice of his new boss he marries the hubshi woman and becomes a U.S. citizen, thereby solving all his problems. The fact that Santosh has a wife and children back in his home village in India doesn't matter.

A very funny touching story that would have made a great novel, maybe titled: "A Green Card for Mr. Santosh." I liked this better than the title novella which is dark, gloomy and has no real action: Bobby and Linda drive through the African bush country, they stay at a run down hotel, they walk through the town one night. That's it!

The other short story is unmemorable. The two travel narratives dealing with sightseeing trips to Egypt are very good and are much like Naipaul's two Islamic travel books for their insightful and critical look at a strange culture.

Rating:
Summary: "My life spoil"
Review: So said the disillusioned and dejected West Indian when confronted with the reality of his ruined life in London. His brother had taken advantage of him, and having denied himself for his brother's sake, the betrayal was all the more bitter. Hate and revenge are now his primary emotions and he shows this with his words "tell me who to kill", the title of one of this book's five stories. The stories are principally about the emotional weight carried by strangers in foreign lands (West Indians in England, Indians in the U.S, English in Africa), and the cultural anomie that comes with it.

This book which won England's Booker prize in 1971 is comprised of two novellas, the short-story that is the book's title and a prologue and epilogue which are in the narrator's voice and describe impressions from his travel journal. Besides exploring the theme of alienation, the common thread that connects these stories is the search for what it is that causes the destructive impulses that lie deep within us to rise to the surface.

In a more recent book, READING AND WRITING, Naipaul in talking about his art said "one day, in my almost fixed depression, I began to see what my material might be" In homage to his brooding inspiration this book then is an excellent exploration of Naipaul's well known darker themes. What makes us cruel to one another? Why do we fear, hate, and oppress others? The stories are harsh and imaginatively cruel: The irrational beating of a hapless tramp and the whipping of some poor Egyptian children who were scrounging for sandwiches tossed by Italian tourists.

Naipaul is genre-bending with his fiction and where others may feel compelled to offer hope and a romantic denouement to their story, this author does not subscribe to such illusions about the human heart. At least not in any obvious way. The positive message is there in the title story, it's just hidden. Bobby and Linda are seeking refuge in the last redoubt of Englishness left in Africa. Like all the other characters in the book they are seperated from their familiar traditions and society. Far from being alienated however they have something within - a sense of self. It gives them wholeness. Here we see the true potential of the human heart to be IN A FREE STATE even when all around us is chaos. As pessimistic a view as this book generally is, I still found it entertaining and because Naipaul offers such a small token of hope, it makes it all the more precious.

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us" (Franz Kafka)

Rating:
Summary: "One out of Many"
Review: The journey of an immigrant landing in the United States for the first time begins long before he sees the statue of liberty and ends long after he qualifies for his first passport. The decision to leave home, leave culture and comfort, the excited transition to a brave new world, and then the acclimatization, the realization that the rest of your life will occur in this new, lonely culture.
V.S. Naipaul's short story "One out of Many", from his collection In a Free State, eloquently chronicles one man's journey to a new life in the United States. We meet Santosh, a poorly-educated servant to a diplomat, and Naipaul beautifully relates his home, his culture, and his community. However, Santosh leaves India with his master to go to Washington D.C., in search, as we all are, of opportunities and of the land of plenty. However, Santosh's journey not only destroys his painful idealism but also raises important questions about identity, both cultural and personal.
The character of Santosh, ill-educated, painfully naïve to American ways, learns much about the United States, befriending a black woman, experiencing the Washington race riots, and sadly, becoming more and more alienated from this world he thought he would embrace so perfectly. The contrast of Indian society with the American way of life leaves Santosh alienated, but also presents to the reader the dilemma of cross-culture assimilation. Should one assimilate into a different culture? Is it possible to truly accept yourself when your identity depends on a community thousands of miles away?
"One out of Many" never tries to represent an entire immigrant population, nor does it make a political statement in that explicit sense. It's simply the story of Santosh, his journey , what he finds, and does not find, in the land of riches, in America. Excellent, relevant reading.

Rating:
Summary: Very well written, somewhat slow.
Review: This book is made up of a short Prologue and Epilogue, and three short stories, the last of which, called "In A Free State," taking more than half of the pages.

This first story is the best. It is a fictionalization of a Uganda-like state whose Idi Amin-like despot president takes over the country, seen through the eyes of two white English folk who are driving across the country in an afternoon. This story builds suspense well and the "reward" of a little bit of action toward the end.

The first story is interesting as well, about an Indian man trying to make it in the US. However, the second, "Tell Me Who To Kill" is the weakest, despite the intriguing title. It seems to have very little point aside from what Naipaul has done in the past, and his great writing skills are ripped to shreds because the story is written in a simple dialect. I would recommend reading this book, skipping or quickly skimming the second story. If it had been taken out I would have probably given the book an extra star.

Rating:
Summary: In a free state
Review: THis collection is one of Naipaul's darkest. While I dutifully plowed through it, I was depressed by the emptiness and psycholigical terror of just about every story. THe Novella of the title is a sad journey in Africa made by two residents of a roped-off European area, through the background of appalling civil war that eventually touches them. They are mediocrities with nowhere else to go, one the aging wife of a has-been journalist, the other a man who exploits poverty-stricken male prostitutes. THe other stories are similarly bleak. One tells of a beaten-down man who is trying to help his brother as they struggle to emigrate to England. Another recounts the misadventures of an Indian man who moves to Washington, DC and marries an American black woman by default.

It is a strange collection of stories and travel, a testament to despair and chaos. Naipaul's other books are better and have far more humor.

Rating:
Summary: Naipul at his Best
Review: V.S. Naipul is my favorite contemporary writer, and this
is my favorite selection of his fiction. It consists of
three short stories, as well as a prologue and conclusion
of Naipul's voyage to Nasserite Egypt. These two non-fiction
bits are seldom mentioned, but I found them even more powerful
than 'An Area of Darkness'.

Naipul notes how the bombastic rhetoric of Nasserite Pan-Arabism
conceals desperate poverty and new foreign patrons.
His decription of a whip-wielding guard keeping child beggars
from hassling affluent foreign tourists (the primary source of
essential foreign currency for a country which once held
grandiose claims to leadership of the Arab World, yet could not
even feed itself) is more evocative than a thousand pages of
statistics and foreign aid reports.

But enough about non-fiction. The title of the collection,
'In a Free State', refers to the third story, which is actually
my least favorite. It is about a group of not-too likable
Europeans in an unstable African country. The story is good,
but the same atmosphere is conveyed at greater length and far
more skillfully in Naipul's later novel, *A Bend in the River*.

The first two stories are far better, in fact absolutely
brilliant. They deal with an extremely important theme
inexplicably neglected by modern writers: the failed immigrant
to the West. The world today (even more in 2001 than in the 70s)
is full of ex-peasants who have left their homes for a better
life. It is implicitly assumed that these immigrants find a
better life in Europe or North America-financial success and
freedom beyond their wildest dream. Naipul shatters this myth.

The first story is about an Indian servant who travels to
Washington D.C. with his patron. The first half is a tragi-comic
story of cultural confusion, as our anti-hero learns to deal with
the industrial western world. The second half is simply tragic,
as our reluctant immigrant, unable to adopt to his new
environment of lonely, meaningless freedom and 'television
life', resigns himself to his new life and waits eagerly for
death. This is the only story I have ever read that actually
brought tears to my eyes.

The second story is about another South Asian immigrant, this
time to England. He is more sophisticated and ambitious, with
his traditional goals of educational uplift and business success.
Living in squalor, sacrificing the present for the future, he
finds his hopes slipping away from him. He turns his hopes to
his brother, who fails him and gradually turns into a blue-collar
cockney. The older brother becomes angry and bitter, resolving
to revenge himself (How can he strike against himself? Or
against his brother and his pathetic friends? His directionless
anger and self-hatred finds an outlet in society itself.)
by murdering one of the racist youths who hassles him.

The title of the story says it all: Tell Me Who To Kill.
While unusally modernist for Naipul and difficult to read,
this story is very good at explaining how and why some
immigrants will turn to fundamentalism and violence.

While very bleak and depressing (the opposite of 'Oprah
fiction'), these stories are among the best I have ever read.
Highly recommended.