Magic Seeds

"In spite of all the killings, the movement was becoming more and more a matter of these abstract words."

Naipaul's sequel to Half a Life, Magic Seeds, his most recent work of fiction, is underwhelming compared to the interesting plot and earlier life of the protagonist, Willie Chandran. In this sequel, Willie decides to follow his sister's advice and joins the guerrillas in the Indian countryside, drifting for several more years until being imprisoned as a political prisoner, his early 1950s "postcolonial literature" saving his hide as Roger, still in London, is able to get Willie released. Back in London, Willie continues to drift. This is essentially the entirety of the story, with the "meat" set in India amongst a dangerous group of "revolutionaries" who are not aligned with the Kandapalli's group, which his sister Sarojini, had meant for Willie to join. 

The only character from the prequel who actually succeeds in meeting his goals is Marcus, the West African who finally achieves success by having a white grandchild, while Roger is on the path to perdition and Willie reaches a typical Naipaulian conclusion: "It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world." Similar themes abound: the disconnect between the Indian guerrillas and the peasants they exploit in the name of revolution, the unreality of human connection, intimate or otherwise, decay in the postcolonial areas, decline in London (council estate houses, the alleged dependency they breed, according to Roger), a general state of unraveling, of unreality.

Since Naipaul has previously explored guerrillas in a novel with the same name, based on the Black Power movement in the West Indies, this novel, which focuses on a more explicitly Marxist-Leninist group of revolutionaries, brings to mind some critiques of Sendero Luminoso. The revolutionaries Willie joins in the Indian countryside cling to the fiction of fighting for the peasants, for a revolution inspired by Marx, Lenin, and Mao, but the reality of the peasants and their different aspirations contradict them at every turn. 

In the end, the guerrillas become another exploitative force, taking advantage of the countryside's populace without meeting any success. How can one ever launch a successful revolution when one's forces are killing and exploiting the very group one claims to fight for? It is this contradiction, the elusive goal or "unreality" of revolution which plagues the Indian movement Willie joins. In typical Naipaul fashion, Africa is, though acknowledged as a site of colonialism, is portrayed as better off than India because the Africans "know who they are" while India remembers its ancient past yet lost meaning. Both are "wounded civilizations" nonetheless.   

Guerrillas

"Everybody wants to fight his own little war, everybody is a guerrilla."

V.S. Naipaul's Guerrillas is his literary attempt to encapsulate what occurred with the rise of Black Power in the West Indian context. Writing on the subject in his nonfiction, much of Guerrillas is consistent thematically with his other writings on the subject. Here, from one of his essays on Black Power and the killings in Trinidad, is a brief commentary on Black Power: 

Black Power as rage, drama, and style, as revolutionary jargon, offers something to everybody: to the unemployed, the idealistic, the dropout, the Communist, the politically frustrated, the anarchist, the angry student returning home from humiliations abroad, the racialist, the old fashioned black preacher who has for years said that after Israel it was to be the turn of Africa. Black Power means Cuba and China; it also means clearing the Chinese and the Jews and the tourists out of Jamaica. It is identity and it is also miscegenation. It is drinking holy water, eating pork and dancing; it is going back to Abyssinia. There has been no movement like it in the Caribbean since the French Revolution.

With this framework in mind, Naipaul's Guerrillas dissects Black Power into psychological, sexual, political, racial, and economic terms. I disagree with much of his characterization of 'Black Power,' yet find his depiction of white liberals as even more scathing in this unnamed Caribbean location. Roche, a white South African jailed by the regime for his bombings of a powerstation and railway, and Jane, an English woman full of lies and half-truths, come to this island as the gangs (or guerrillas) are threatening the government and status quo. 

However, as Naipaul's essay indicates, the motives and goals of Black Power varied consistently and meant numerous things. Jimmy Ahmed, the Black Power 'leader,' back in the Caribbean after accusations of rape in London, is half-Chinese, was never fully accepted by the Chinese shopkeepers of the island, and exploits his power to abuse slum boys and rape. Much like the riots and dissolution of his agricultural commune, supported by the government and a company, Sablich, Jimmy Ahmed reveals himself to be a sexually frustrated, confused individual whose final actions in the novel leave one breathless. Much like the incomplete sexual climax, this novel ends similarly.

What dragged down the quality of this novel, which, is not too far from Bend in the River, (a novel I hated profusely for its image of Africa and the Congo), is the lack of a first-person narrator. The sort of deracinated Indian figure Patrick French describes as Naipaul's first-person narrator in novels like Bend At the River would have improved the prose, dialogue, and pace of the text. One feels little for any of the main characters (Jimmy Ahmed, Jane, Peter Roche). While surprisingly very critical of certain forms of neocolonialism (US bauxite mining companies and influence, for example), the novel also continues Naipaul's casual derision for the Caribbean as a dependent region with little ideas of its own. 

To its credit, Naipaul manages to describe in great detail an island that could be multiple places in the Caribbean in the 1970s. His vivid descriptions of colors, plants, the bush, social and physical segregation in the capital, and the insistent beat of reggae speak to his personal experience and travels in the region. The frustrations of the local elite, the black and brown poor, internalized racial and class prejudices, and the good intentions of white 'liberals' like Jane and Roche are all depicted as part of the problem in this complex tale of sexual frustration, personal failures, acceptance, and pain. Kudos to Naipaul for managing to keep his narrative together and weave together themes of race, Black Power, apartheid South Africa, and white liberals together.