Reading and discovering Naipaul is an exploration into your own self.  Whenever you follow the works of certain authors, you look for some aspect of your inner feelings that will be reflected on the pages.  But somehow Naipaul cuts too close to the bone; and the hurt is a kind of illumination.  I feel a deep empathy when he talks about growing up on a small tropical island in the Caribbean, his manic obsession to get away from all that mediocrity surrounding him, a place that has stopped producing great people, and a place that was exhausted of life itself.

  The anxiety and the ambition.  The former about your place in the larger scheme of things, and the latter about a certain kind of person you want to be.  I get the impression that all my life I’ve been preparing for something, you think that the abstract nature of your education is a kind of freedom, but it can also shackle you into pretending and knowing when you don’t know.  You haven’t anything to go by; the memory does the selection when it comes to examining your own experiences.  The world is what it is.  When your time comes, your time comes.  In that respect, I owe a debt of gratitude to Naipaul for making me gain a better footing on this slippery slope of decay and renewal.