“The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.”
Those who frequent this blog have probably noticed the many changes. In addition to changing the title (in homage to a famous Naipaul line), I have also dropped the Pan-Africanist colors and general layout for something quite different. In order to explain exactly what drove me to change the blog, I must explain exactly why I started blogging in the first place.
When I first started blogging in late 2010, it was mainly as a way to avoid inundating social media accounts with excessively long posts or links. Discussions with friends who had been blogging for years inspired me to start what had been, initially, my personal online soapbox. The blog's changing nature and seemingly random subject matter reflects that early approach.
After sharing essays, music posts, rants, book reviews, and my own rather quirky humor, or lack thereof, I realized this blog has actually become one of my main hobbies. Time has also passed rapidly, and I have lost interest in the old layout, color scheme, and rather puerile title. The new title, The World Is What It Is, is more mature and less self-centered or silly, in my humble opinion. The idea struck me after reading Patrick French's well-written but disturbing biography of Naipaul. While I disagree with Naipaul on countless topics, I find his fiction engaging, containing smooth prose, possessing comic genius (in his Trinidad novels, at least), thought-provoking, and sometimes pessimistic, yet encompassing the contradictions of the postcolonial modern world around us. What better line encapsulates that then Naipaul's famous quote from A Bend in the River?
Returning to the subject of the blog, however, I plan on finding some sort of color scheme and layout that works. For now, it will remain as it is with some minor changes along the way. Who knows, perhaps in another couple of years, I will have to change the title again.
Disturbing is mild compared to Paul Theroux's take, below:
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Yes, the world is what it is, often times implacable, other times generous with pleasures beyond measure. Good title. But as a general proposition I would much rather have Wittgenstein's, "the world is everything that is the case."
The first part of the Naipaul's quote suggested something didactic, almost self evident, but what follows is bitter, and at heart anti-democratic, a vestige of Empire. Who would allow himself (or herself) to be nothing? Unless the world consist of those who are worthy and those who are not, those who rule and those who serve. Or a bitter odd internalization of the Raj period into the consciousness of a subject people - that Naipaul is content in his personal life to repeat and replay in social relationships and sexual tableaux without evident irony or reflection.
Its really very nice post.Thanks for sharing..
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