The book offers insight into the life and thoughts of Naipaul and shows us a more personable side of the author, who seems to be on such a solo mission. Furthermore, we learn of his relationship to his father and the background of Naipaul's greatest character, Mohun Biswas. Naipaul's father was a true writer, a literature buff, unlike Biswas, who liked Marcus Aurelius and kept info in a Shakespeare that he may or may not have ever read. In letters, we don't see much of the temper or the actions of the character Biswas, but we see the meditations of the man who was his source. We also see VS Naipaul's transformation from West Indian student leaving the island for the first time, to a published author four years later. We read that "useless letter" that Naipaul describes in A House for Mr. Biswas, sent home following Biswas' death, and we learn all about the sympathy and respect that Naipaul had when writing this character. From this time on, he knew he would be a writer. He has longings and inklings towards India and Africa, he is already an anglophile with a strong rejection of coloured people, and an inclination to disassociate himself with these people, whom he finds ignorant and barbaric, a common criticism of his literature. There seems to show, in the uncommented upon letters, some of Naipaul's faults and prejudices and feelings of shortcomings, as a West Indian in England, as an outsider, always. But he never rejected his family, and was in fact a very sincere and loving brother and son. This is somewhat surprising considering the coldness that he sometimes can exude. His discussions of loneliness, of brotherhood and the need to take care of each other seem like preludes to stories from "In a Free State." Naipaul describes his life as an extention of his father's, fulfilled. And his father was already talking about writing an autobiography in the third person. Naipaul may have fulfilled this in Biswas, a fictional account. There is a hopefulness in Naipaul's letters that may not be as apparent in some of his later works, there is also the dark depression and dim view of the world and its inhabitants that is seen. His social attitudes and the way he writes about them shed more insight into his characters' social interactions as well. "The women I have known I have met quite by chance. Acquaintanceship is struck up almost unconsciously." This is similar to relationships that develop in Bend in the River and other books. Mostly, this is the development of the ideas of writing, the motivations, financial (primarily), emotionally. Both Naipauls saw writing as a profession, not a spiritual letting out of feelings or something, they approached writing professionally and with dignity, even in their letters, which they do critique. This book is a primary source of insight into the life and mind of one of the greatest writers of our time. I recommend it to any Naipaul enthusiast. Naipaul's literary career seems to have been well-plotted and worked out before it even began.
