Talk:V. S. Naipaul/Archive 1

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POV

Does anyone else find the "Personal Life" section to be a tad ridiculous? If it isn't cleaned up, it either needs to be deleted, or this article needs a POV tag, because there is way too much judgement going on there. --Alladiheir (talk) 13:04, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Maybe. But the OBVIOUS Edward Said worship on this page is clearly contradictory to what the great scholar would have wanted. Someone [the reactionary Catgut!] needs to catch up on his or her reading and current trends in the critical status of "postcolonial" theory. Not that it could possibly matter in a bourgeois forum such as Wikifacebook. Or whatever this is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bigsaidlover (talk • contribs) 04:13, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

This article is not about Said, but Naipaul. Please discuss your ideas regarding Said's profession on the respective talk page. Btw, this here is not "Wikifacebook", but the English language Wikipedia, where principles like WP:NPOV and WP:SOURCE are to be followed. --Catgut (talk) 18:05, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry--my mistake. It just feels so much like another way to waste intellectual labor on the emphemeral. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bigsaidlover (talk • contribs) 19:50, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Year of Knighthood

The article says that he was knighted in 1990, however the AP source that I found in the NYTimes.com says 30 Dec 1989. Not sure if this is officially in the year of 1990 even though it was two days before. DutchTreat (talk) 22:07, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

It was gazetted in the New Year Honours List of 1990 published on 30 Dec 1989. His knighthood was actually conferred in 1990. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.102.236.63 (talk) 07:19, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Nadira's family

I find mentioning Major General (Retd.) Amir Faisal Alavi rather unnecessary - it would have made sense if this were Nadira's biography. VS Naipaul is most notable for his literary works and personal details are needed only when it enhances the description of Naipaul himself, not of some other persons who happen to be cousins, brother in laws etc. If we were to mention all the relatives, then BLPs would be too cumbersome Zencv Lets discuss 14:12, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

When you mention the family of a Notable person then other notable person related to him are always mentioned in BIOs.
Refer to family section in George S. Patton for an example. "His 7th great-grandfather was Louis Dubois, a French Huguenot immigrant, who with 11 others founded the town of New Paltz, New York. Another of Patton's ancestors was Francis Gregory, a first cousin of George Washington. Gregory married Francis Thornton III, a first cousin twice removed from James Madison and three times removed from Zachary Taylor. ...".
Also Sylvanus Morley's bio which is aa Featured Article mentions "Felix (Sylvanus' maternal grandfather) was an immigrant to the United States from newly independent Belgium, where his father had been a judge in the Belgian Supreme Court.[5]"
Mentioning other notable relatives is perfectly fine for a Bio. None of the text about Gen Alavi violates any policies of [WP:BOLP].
I hope it would be understood that removing the changes was rather quick and without discussion. The information about Nadira Naipaul's relation to the former Chief of Pakistan SSG is relevant. After his death he is being referred to as Naipaul's brother-in-law in the media eg. here. If you are convinced great. I don't want to get into edit war here Zencv please revert your changes to the previous edit. By the way Nadira Naipaul's surname is spelled Alavi not Alvi. Indoresearch (talk) 14:54, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
I agree that in a BLP, other notables who are friends, relatives etc. may be mentioned. But this has to be done with some discretion. Here the problem I find is that there is a profound difference between the notoriety of Naipaul and his brother in law(I hope you would agree with this). Then VS Naipaul may be noted as a relative in Amir Alavi's Bio., but the other way around is confusing, esp. for (most of the) readers who don't know about Amir Alavi. If you had mentioned Naipaul as a relative on Alavi's Bio., this problem wouldn't have existed. I hope I have made it clear, but if you still want to add it, go ahead and I will not object Zencv Lets discuss 16:05, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Visiting professorships

To the IP who wrote in his/her edit summary, "i bet a dime fowler can produce none of these dozens of visiting professorships which fowler claims; s/he just wants what s/he wants and will create any reason to justify her or his claims." Given your reckless gamble, let me offer only one. Naipaul visited Makerere University, in Kampala, Uganda during the year 1966, met Paul Theroux there for the first time, and began a long and tortuous friendship ... Let me also suggest, before you lose more dimes in your piggybank, that writers are usually writers-in-residence at colleges/universities, not visiting professors. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:48, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Education

Could we get some information about his education, instead of all that silly gossip about his marriages to obscure women? 208.87.248.162 (talk) 02:28, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes I will be adding some of that soon. Thanks for posting. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:04, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Rewriting

As many editors have observed above, this article does great disservice to a major writer. It seems to have been hijacked by various editors, each keen to highlight their favorite facet of Naipaul: Indo-Trinidadian, Indian, Pakistani-by-marriage, misogynist, misanthropic, sexually dissolute, sexually repressed, as caricatured by Edward Said, -Derek Walcott, -Salman Rushdie, -the Post-colonialists, -the journalists, and the Naipaul-wannabes. A reader unfamiliar with Naipaul will learn nothing about his life or writing, only the eternal verities pronounced by his enemies and friends. I believe he deserves more that than. I shall be rewriting the page, first rather quickly without citations in the next few minutes, based on what I remember from reading him. I will then add the citations, and reinstate from what I have taken out that which is encyclopedic. Please bear with me. Regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:14, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I have quickly written the first two sections, all from memory. I will come back very soon to correct the mistakes, add the cites, add more sections, ... Please do not make changes or corrections for now. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:04, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
The writing is coming slowly, in part because I have to begin sourcing statements as the article is gathering heft, in part because I have to create or expand other articles which are being Wikilinked in the text, in part because I am rereading all of Naipaul from Mystic Masseur to Magic Seeds, and that is taking time. There is a lot of stuff out there. Naipaul is a man who has written a lot about his background and there is a fair amount of biographical literature on him, including the "authorized biography" by Patrick French. However, very little of the literature is truly scholarly. Naipaul for example, in his investigations into his putative Brahmin past, has looked mostly at his mother's family; the father's past remains murky. In Patrick French's biography, F.P. Wilson, the Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford, who failed Naipaul in the oral exam for the B. Litt degree in February 1954, is described as a retired professor who was known for being "taciturn and socially awkward." Moreover, Naipaul, according to French, said this was "deliberate and a racial thing" on Wilson's part. Wilson's own Wikipedia page was the merest of stubs, so I had to rewrite it. In doing so, I discovered, he was very much not-retired and at least according to his ODNB biography (revised 2004), "he was remembered as the most learned Elizabethan scholar of his generation, as well as a master of social graces and a witty conversationalist." Wilson was a popular lecturer at Oxford, had a powerful reading voice. As a hobby he "collected" proverbs, leading to his revised Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs. Given all this, who does one believe: a 21-year-old graduate student who is under a lot of pressure from all sides (family, financial instability, no job prospects), who has half-heartedly enrolled in the B.Litt course, but who has exceptional and precocious literary talent or the leading Elizabethan scholar of his generation with many literary "hobbies" and wide experience of lecturing in Britain and the US. It is possible of course that Wilson was a racist, but it is equally possible that Wilson decided that Naipaul was not prepared and not invested enough in that area of research. Or the truth is somewhere in between. I can't put that in the article, but this shows the problems that arise in writing a Wikipedia biography, if one wants to do it with any rigor. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:13, 28 September 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for your efforts to clean and rewrite the page; really would appreciate seeing some movement here though. The bio doesn't yet go past the 60s. 68.82.181.158 (talk) 04:41, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
Having just come across this article, I'm sorry to say I think your changes, well-meant though they undoubtedly were, have been in some ways for the worse. Comparing the version of this article before you began editing it[1] with the current version, I'm actually inclined to prefer the original. Both are pretty flawed, but in trying to correct the flaws of the earlier version, I think you've gone too far in the opposite direction.
The earlier version of the article lacked information about Naipaul's life, and was somewhat negative. But the current version is inadequate, as it consists only of a biography that cuts out in the 1950s. It has much about Naipaul's life, but little about his literary career, and virtually nothing about his reception and significance as an author. I appreciate you wanted to expand on the limited biographical information in the earlier version of the article, but removing almost all its content was a mistake.
The current version of the article is also over-decorated with unnecessary pictures, lacks sufficient inline references, and is written in a more journalistic than encyclopaedic style. This is inevitable when one person takes it on themselves to write a whole article - you're never going to get it all right. I recommend reading the Manual of Style, or looking at Featured Articles for examples, for help in these respects.
I don't just want to blindly revert, but the current version of the article is not adequate. I hope you'll read this and take it on board, and take steps to improve it. I don't mean to undermine the work you've done on the article (which is appreciated), but to highlight how it's currently lacking or out of step with Wikipedia guidelines. Thanks for reading. Robofish (talk) 01:05, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
As my user page indicates, I've had a family emergency and have been off Wikipedia. There's nothing that you've stated above that I don't already know. I wrote the first draft from memory with the intention of later correcting it and supplying the in-line citations. So, please bear with me, I'll fix it, but don't be patronizing by insinuating the possibility of blind revert. I've forgotten more Naipaul than you are every likely to read. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:28, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
Actually, why don't you guys post some more untutored ruminations on Wiki MOS, Naipaul, the art of biography, FAC, etc. It will get me angry enough that I'll make the time to start rewriting the article. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:42, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
I'm sorry if my comment above made you angry. I didn't mean to, I was just trying to help; but I didn't know about your family emergency. That's an entirely good reason for spending time off Wikipedia - and in any case, we can't demand a certain level of commitment from anybody. As the saying goes, there is no deadline. Feel free to take as much time off as you need, and I look forward to seeing future versions of the article as you continue to work on it. Robofish (talk) 17:43, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
I've just added the {{Under construction}} template to indicate to other readers that this article (more than most) is currently a work-in-progress, and should not be judged as though a finished article. Robofish (talk) 17:49, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

I am very concerned by the dominance of one highly biased user over this article. Naipaul has been criticized extensively as racist and sexist, and user Fowler&Fowler is using his evident expertise on Naipaul to monopolize his biography, hostilely reacting to criticism and creating an overelaborate and fawning Naipaul biography that excludes many of the important controversies about this writer. The authorship of this article urgently needs diversifying, and control wrested back from its single uncooperative author. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.132.173.25 (talk) 05:49, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

This article may need to be rewritten entirely to comply with Wikipedia (February 20, 2014)

For reasons outline in the previous two sections of this Talk page, I have put a slug on this article suggesting it should be rewritten. Chisme (talk) 01:57, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

I see that you've quickly removed your previous statement here: "I didn't comment on my mistakes because I didn't make any. I've put a rewrite slug on this article to encourage contributors to bring it into the 21st Century. See you at Michaelmas jolly old chum! Chisme (talk) 01:53, 21 February 2014 (UTC)" Just making that note. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:44, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for restoring that. The case is clear that this article needs writing. The superfluous detail, the stilted words, the lack of focus -- it needs rewriting badly, as others have also pointed out. Cheer-e-o, old bean! Chisme (talk) 04:09, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Let's start with the most annoying aspect of the writing -- the unnecessary or useless details. From there, we can attack the POV and the stilted prose and anachronisms. Then we can look at removing the needless photos. Chisme (talk) 06:23, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Unnecessary and useless details

In "Background and early life: Trinidad," the article doesn't need the following:

  • The geography lesson concerning a) where Trinidad is located, as a link to the island would suffice; b)where Chaguanas is located, since the link suffices
  • The brief history of Indian immigration to "the outposts of the British Empire, such as Fiji, Guyana, and Suriname, risking deathly sea voyages." "Deadly" is the proper word, but no matter, since a thumbnail sketch of Indian migration patterns isn't necessary. The reader only need know that his ancestors came from India.
  • Brahmin dietary laws, especially "chicken and fish had become honorary vegetables at the family's dining table." It isn't clear to thinking people what is meant by "honorary vegetable." Can fish and foul be honorary? Does this mean "stood in for"?
  • "The sari...was in Trinidad not only being accessorized with belts and shoes, but its hemline had risen slightly in belated imitation of that of the skirt." What does this mean for Naipaul? This sartorial digression is not only impossible to understand ("belated imitation of that of"), it is wholly unnecessary.

In "Education: Port of Spain and Oxford," the article doesn't need the following:

  • The details of his travels from Trinidad to England via New York, especially the "baked whole chicken and roti bread made by his mother" and the pencil he purchased for "recording the impressions he was about to soak up" (soak up?). It is only necessary say he went to Oxford to begin his studies.
  • "(the pencil) which a Pan Am stewardess sharpened for him." A stewardess sharpened his pencil? Unless this is a double entendre, this detail is unnecessary.
  • That he arrived at "Michaelmas term."
  • "By Hindu tenets, it fell on (this should say "fell to") Naipaul to light the funeral pyre..." Is this level of detail regarding Hindu burial rituals really necessary?

In "1954–56: London, Caribbean Voices, marriage, novel":

  • Enrolled in a post-graduate degree, failed his "B. Litt. exam." You may as well state whether he passed his driver's license exam too.
  • All the stuff about Patrick French. You can just link to his article so curious readers can go there.

POV

The following clearly comes from a Wiki editor's imagination and is POV. In "Background and early life: Trinidad":

  • "By dint of effort and the good fortune of receiving some education, he (N.'s father) had become an English-language journalist..." Who's to say it wasn't his writing talent. This is POV.
  • "The sari, the draped female garment of timeless India.." Putting aside the question of who the female is draped over, the notion that India is "timeless" is a romantic one and is probably POV.

In "Education: Port of Spain and Oxford":

  • "Naipaul displayed enthusiasm, preparedness, and promise." Says who?

In "1954–56: London, Caribbean Voices, marriage, novel":

  • "He was increasingly dependent on Pat, who kept calm and carried on, offering him in equal measure money, practical advice, encouragement, and rebuke, but all the while firmly expressing her love." Here we have a reference to the famous Keep Calm and Carry On motivational slogan of WWII England. Is this supposed to be cute, or did Pat view her budding marriage as a kind of bombardment by the Luftwaffe?
  • " The sparsely furnished freelancers' room in the old Langham Hotel flowed with the banter of Caribbean writers and would-be writers, providing camaraderie and fellowship." More likely it flowed with beer, not banter, as banter isn't a liquid. Still, to say banter "flowed" this way is POV.

Stilted prose and anachronisms

Needless photos

Back now

user:Chisme, I understand your frustration. I am back now. Please give me a month to finish the article. We can then have user:Brianboulton or user:Tim riley or someone else experienced such as user:Ian Rose (FAC director) or user:Stfg or user:Dank peer-review the article. How does that sound? Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:33, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

While requesting a day or two to complete in-progress edits would be reasonable, asking to put an article on hold for a month is not - see Wikipedia:Ownership of articles. Chisme has pointed out clear cases of NPOV writing, and I support that editor's position that all of these be reworded or removed to bring this article's language back to the standard used elsewhere on wikipedia. Dialectric (talk) 14:43, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
I started rewriting this article in September and had to put it on hold on account of serious illnesses in my family. Neither you nor user:Chisme, said anything earlier. As I say, I am back now. The article cannot be completed (ie. the years 1959 to present) in one or two days. As I also say above, once completed, I myself will have some of Wikipedia's best reviewers, user:Brianboulton, user:Tim riley, user:Stfg (former coordinator of the league of copy editors), user:Dank (current coordinator of the league of copy editors), or user:Ian Rose (FAC director) peer-review the article. Literature pages, typically, are allowed a leisurely pace and some literary license. (see for example user:Awadewit's many FAs, such as Mary_Wollstonecraft#England_and_William_Godwin, Sarah_Trimmer#Motherhood_and_philanthropy, Mary_Martha_Sherwood#Early_life). Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:10, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
This is a clear-cut violation of Wikipedia:Ownership of articles. As Dialectric points out, this article doesn't belong to anyone and therefore can't be put "on hold." And where does it say that "literature pages" in Wikipedia "are allowed a leisurely pace and some literary license"? Respectfully, I think you are taking the wrong approach to this article, Folower, and you should refrain from editing it. Let's allow people who have an objective outlook take a hand. Chisme (talk) 15:48, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
I was not suggesting that Fowler&fowler (or anyone else) finish the article in any given amount of time. The article's being unfinished is not license to keep plainly NPOV content. If you wish to write an essay or wikibook on Naipaul, there are other places for that, including your userspace. I'm prepared to remove the content myself, and rather than a preselected set of 'peer-review' editors, the place to take this if the conflict is not resolved is a WP:RFC.Dialectric (talk) 23:04, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
How are user:Stfg (former coordinator of the guild of copy editors), user:Dank (former coordinator of the guild of copy-editors), user:Finetooth (veteran copy editor), user:Brianboulton (FAC veteran), user:Tim riley (another FAC veteran), user:Awadewit (yet another FAC veteran), user:Ian Rose (FAC director), user:Laser brain (FAC delegate) or user:Tony1, principal author of WP:Manual of Style, a "preselected set of 'peer-review' editors." Between them, they do most peer-reviews on Wikipedia and have hundreds of FAs to their credit. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:30, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
PS For anyone who is reading, this is the so-called NPOV version of my first two sections as edited and amended by user:Chisme. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:56, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Yes, and I stand by my edits. I think Dialectric hit on the problem here when he wrote, "If you wish to write an essay or wikibook on Naipaul, there are other places for that." We are working on an encyclopedia entry, not an ebook or essay. People come to encyclopedias to get the facts. For example, have a look at the Encyclopedia Britannica online entry for V.S. Naipaul here. It devotes two or three sentences to his childhood, as I did. Your version has all kinds of extraneous and off-topic material: the geography of Trinidad, the geography of where his family came from in India, "deathly (should be 'deadly') sea voyages," his father "carving out an unlikely career for himself," "the new world memory of their (his family's) genealogy," "chicken and fish becoming honorary vegetables at the family's dining table," "the sari, the draped female garment of timeless India," how the sari was "accessorized with belts and shoes, but its hemline had risen slightly in belated imitation of that of the skirt." Surely you can see how far you stray from the topic -- V.S. Naipaul, the English language's greatest living writer. Anyone with a curiosity about the great man is only going to be confused by your rambling, incoherent essay. Chisme (talk) 00:28, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

The Britannica article has only two paragraphs. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:52, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Cooling it

Note: An editor has expressed a concern that User:Finetooth (talk • contribs) and User:Brianboulton (talk • contribs) have been canvassed to this discussion.


I've not been involved at any stage with this article, but as my name has been mentioned I can offer a few reflections:

  • The article has an "underconstruction" banner which advertises to everyone that it is work in progress, in the course of development. It is not necessary, therefore, to add a separate "quality standards" banner to drive home this point. I would remove that redundant banner myself, but it would be better if the editor who put it there did.
  • The construction banner invites editors to help with the article. The most effective help is that given co-operatively, in a context of talkpage discussion, rather than simply beginning to edit. Wikipedia invites editors to "be bold", but not to forget normal good manners.
  • Edit summaries are a terrible way of conducting a discussion. This form of dialogue can rapidly escalate into hostility and abuse. Now that the discussion has reached the talkpage the tone has become distinctly confrontational.
  • The question of "ownership" has inevitably been raised. There is a distinction between ownership of an article, and temporary responsibility for it. Articles are often developed to the highest standards because an editor, or a group of editors, takes responsibility for it. Often this involves dozens of hours of research, source-hunting, image-hunting etc., quite aside from the actual writing. I think that the encyclopedia benefits when editors who do this are supported and encouraged, rather than assailed by accusations of WP:OWN violations.
  • F&F has a history of solid work on the article; until a couple of days ago no one but he had made more than a handful of edits. I think it would be in everyone's interests if he were given a little space to complete his work to a reviewable standard. If that takes a month, so what? The article has been incomplete for years, and a short further wait, while something positive is being done, is surely acceptable. F&F should be given the opportunity to produce a working draft.
  • When the article is ready it can be peer reviewed, an open process to which anyone can contribute, so no opinions will be suppressed. I will certainly look forward to reviewing it, as I think Naipaul is a wonderful writer, worthy of the best possible article. Brianboulton (talk) 00:59, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
I agree with Brianboulton. Finetooth (talk) 02:45, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Thank you Brian and Finetooth. I will have the article finished in a month, and it can then be peer-reviewed in a transparent and open process. I apologize to user:Chisme for losing my cool in the edit summaries and on this page. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:48, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
I agree that the "quality standards" banner is not necessary as long as the under construction banner is in place. I've removed it for now, as we're actively discussing the issues here.
If you will read back in the talk page a bit, you will see that concerns were raised with regard to Fowler&fowler's edits and tone back in early January, and that F&f has largely brushed aside these concerns, rather than inviting discussion, with comments like 'I've forgotten more Naipaul than you are every likely to read.'
Though Chisme's language may also be overly confrontational, he has pointed out specific sentences in the article which have problems. POV issues are a particular concern as this is a BLP. I have yet to see a response from F&f that addresses these specific concerns.Dialectric (talk) 10:05, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
All that can be discussed, dissected, and debated in the peer-review when the article is finished. There is no need to add cn tags. I am aware that many sentences need citations. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:44, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Let it be noted that Fowler canvassed User: Finetooth and User: Brianboulton to this discussion, which a violation of wiki rules. I think the only way to handle this is with a WP:RFC (Wikipedia:Requests for comment) before more damage is done. And I'm quite certain Fowler's request that no one touch this article until he/she is finished with it will be met with dismay. Let's cool it and see what comes of the request for comments. Chisme (talk) 22:22, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

A frivolous, tendentious, and now disruptive interruption

An earnest plea:

user:Chisme and user:Dialectric are together now planning to initiate a Wikipedia conflict resolution. See the posts , titled "Happy Michaelmas," on user:Chisme's talk page and user:Dialectric's talk page. Let me suggest politely that they not waste my time and everyone else's time by filing a frivolous, indeed tendentious and disruptive, conflict resolution. Dialectric, is an editor who had made a sum total of three edits on the V. S. Naipaul page, (the last one four years ago) before he made his six edits yesterday. Here are the three edits:

user:Dialectric's edits to VS Naipaul:

If you scroll down each page, you'll see the poor condition of the edited page and the lack of any sourced statements; yet user:Dialectric, was not moved to put even one cn tag on the pages. Yesterday, however, out of the blue, in quick succession, he added five "cn" tags, which I easily removed by adding the relevant sources.

user:Chisme, had made no edit whatsoever to the V. S. Naipaul page, until he appeared three days ago. He keeps suggesting that the article is poorly written and has produced a number of spurious examples. I will just discuss one of them, his claim that "deathly voyage" is incorrect usage, a claim he has repeated at least three times.

Like many words, "deathly" has multiple meanings, and shades of meaning.

According to the OED, it means: 1. "Causing death, deadly." and 2. "Of the nature of or resembling death, deathlike; gloomy, pale, etc. as death." (Oxford English Dictionary);

Similarly Webster's Unabridged gives three meanings: 1. "deadly, fatal, mortal, destructive," 2. "like or having the characteristics of death," 3: "of, relating to, or suggestive of death"

Finally Merriam-Webster Inc. (1984), Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms: A Dictionary of Discriminated Synonyms with Antonyms and Analogous and Contrasted Words, Merriam-Webster, pp. 211–, ISBN 978-0-87779-341-0 makes a clear distinction between the two words:

2 Deadly, deathly are frequently confused although in precise use they are not synonyms. Deadly applies to an agent which is bound or extremely likely to cause death (see DEADLY I); in one of its extended senses, it applies to something which is so implacable or virulent or so relentless that it can result only in death, destruction, or ruin <a deadly enmity existed between them> <the two railroads are engaged in a deadly conflict over rates> Deadly may imply no more than an extreme of something <deadly monotony> <why are you in such deadly haste> or it may suggest a disgusting extreme of some depressing or spirit-destroying quality <the city is deadly in summer> Deathly applies only to that which suggests the appearance or the presence of death <his deathly pallor> <the deathly stillness of the place>

The reason why I am using "deathly" is that the immigrant ships, much like slave ships of the century before, were symbols of death, indeed reeked of it: 40% (sometimes 60%) of the passengers did not survive the passage. Death was a constant feature of life aboard these ships. Other examples of such usage abound:

Besides, both user:Chisme and user:Dialectric don't seem to understand that when a page is "under construction," the text evolves as a result of several waves of revision. To latch on to a few things in an early version, which is soon to be changed, is unproductive. I urge both user:Chisme and user:Dialectric to let me finish the article and we can then discuss in an open and transparent manner all the issues they object to (or will object to). A conflict resolution, by definition, require a history of such conflict. Neither user:Chisme, nor user:Dialectric have any history on this page.

Finally both user:Chisme and user:Dialectric mention "POV" a number of times. Yet, the "NPOV" version of my first two sections that user:Chisme produced was nothing but a series of simple sentences (with several errors (e.g. ("who immigrated to Trinidad from Indian (sic) fifty years before his birth.") involving grammar (past simple ("who immigrated') instead of past perfect ("who had")), usage ("immigrated to," instead of "emigrated to" or "immigrated into,") and coherence ("He fell into a state of depression during his years at Oxford, what he later called "a nervous breakdown." (ambiguous modification)) as well; I'm disregarding the typo, "Indian."). Surely, that is not what we want for an improvement. NPOV doesn't entail doing away with complexity. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:02, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Please. These ships were not "symbols of death." They "caused death." This makes them "deadly," not "deathly." You simply can't allow anyone to alter this article, even when you are clearly wrong. While we're at it, can you fix "By Hindu tenets, it fell on Naipaul to light the funeral pyre..."? This should be "fell to." A task or duty falls to someone when it is his her responsibility. "Falling on" at a Hindu funeral smacks of the sati. Chisme (talk) 17:40, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
I disagree about "deathly." There was death already in the holding camps before the immigrants boarded the ships, cholera, malaria, and many other contagious diseases, as the quote in the footnote indicates. Death was a constant feature, as opposed to death caused by an accident, such as a shipwreck. The "deathly" implies "gruesome" or "grim" or "morbid," "gloomy," "deathlike," that "deadly" does not. I have already produced examples of usage that refer to the middle passage. The journey from India to the Caribbean was twice as long. Here are some more examples: a)McKissick, Floyd Bixler (1969), Three-fifths of a man, Macmillan, p. 124 Example: "t is said that the route taken by the slave ships in the deathly journey from Africa to America is strewn with the bones of Black Men who — were they the fortunate ones? — did not make it." b) Holtzman, Linda (2000), Media Messages: What Film, Television, and Popular Music Teach Us about Race, Class, Gender, and Sexual Orientation, M.E. Sharpe, p. 214, ISBN 978-0-7656-3012-4 Example: "The 1940s film, Cheyenne Autumn, directed by John Ford, focused on a love story between two white characters rather than the deathly trip of the Cheyennes from Oklahoma to Montana in the 1870s." It can be discussed futher in the peer-review. b) As for "fell on," I did make a boo-boo. :) I have changed it to "fell to" Thanks very much for pointing it out. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:29, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
Reconstructing a page is not blanket license to remove entire sections of referenced content added by all other editors, as you did here [2]. Please restore the section. Dialectric (talk) 14:11, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Done. The section which was almost entirely composed of quotes has been restored. In addition, I have added a source for three unreferenced quotes, and removed the cn tag you had added.Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:19, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
I should also add that the preliminary draft which I am now writing, the basic story line, will, by necessity, depend heavily on the authorized biography of Naipaul by Patrick French. The reason for this is that it is the most complete biography, French being the only person who has been allowed access to the Naipaul archives (at the University of Tulsa, Okhlahoma) which are closed to the public. The archives have 50,000 documents including "notebooks, correspondence, handwritten manuscripts, financial papers, recordings, photographs, press cuttings, and journals (and those of his first wife, Pat, which he (Naipaul) had never read) ..." The later revisions will incorporate other versions of the story line, as well as the all-important literary criticism, worldview, etc. and will use other references. All will go into the making of the first draft. Regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:17, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
PS Another point: the preliminary version will have a surfeit both of textual details and images. Once it is complete, I will prune both to exclude what is not most relevant, enough, that is, to bring the article in compliance with FAC guidelines. It is easier for me to start with a detailed version and prune down than to start with a skeleton version and flesh out, mainly because I cannot assess what parts of the text are less important (and what images are less relevant to the text) until I have seen everything in perspective. Thanks, and best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:50, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for restoring the section.
While I still have issues with the tone and scope of the article, in line with the concerns Chisme raised above, these would ordinarily be resolvable through discussion and collaborative editing. The driving motivation for seeking conflict resolution is the overarching issue of article ownership. In my 6+ years of editing, I have never seen an editor try to reserve an article for even a week, let alone a month. Wikipedia is a collaborative space, and one which offers multiple alternative spaces, user and draft, to work free from disruption. Working in either of these spaces would give you ample time and space to add and prune. The main space is not an appropriate place for this unless you accept that other editors have a legitimate stake in the article and are as free to make changes as you are.Dialectric (talk) 23:36, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

As Brianboulton says above, feature-length articles are written as a result of one person taking temporary responsibility, and completing a first draft. Neither you nor Chisme had shown any substantive interest in this article. You hadn't made a single edit to the article in the last four years, and before that three trivial edits (as I demonstrate above) and Chisme none since he arrived on Wikipedia three years ago. Consequently, the "driving motivation" to resolve the "overarching issue of article ownership," whether or not you have seen it elsewhere in in your 6+ years, begins to border on POINTy behavior. For there to be a conflict, there has to be a minimal history of engagement. You will get plenty chances to have your say as will everyone else, once we have some solid text to say something about. You and Chisme are both very welcome to leave constructive general suggestions on this talk page as I develop the first draft, even specific suggestions if you want, as long as they are not overwhelming; after all, I have incorporated some of Chisme's critical comments and changed the language in section 1 to make it more precise. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:42, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

"Feature-length articles are written as a result of one person taking temporary responsibility, and completing a first draft." Nonsense! The "first draft" of this article was written on October 2001. Over 1500 edits were made to this article between that day and 14 September 2013 when you erased the work of all editors before you (12 years of other people's work) and appointed yourself the task of writing a "first draft." I really ought to take this to a notice board, not a Request for Comments. You erased the work of numerous editors so you could put this article on hold and work on it yourself. That is contrary to the spirit and purpose of Wikipedia. Chisme (talk) 17:29, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
  • I had not intended to comment further on this matter. However, it seems I am being somewhat misquoted. What I wrote is not the statement imputed to me above, but: "Articles are often developed to the highest standards because an editor, or a group of editors, takes responsibility for it" – not quite the same thing. In other words, the best WP articles are produced by collaborative effort. Sometimes a group will harmoniously edit together; sometimes, however, the best collaboration involves letting an editor with expertise and resources get on with the job, while others provide help and support in other ways. This, in my view, is as much the "spirit and purpose of Wikipedia" as the "anyone can edit" mantra, and is the means whereby much good work has been and is being done. I hope that even now the parties concerned will be prepared to end this discussion, and work constructively together for the sake of the article. It is unlikely be improved in an atmosphere of hostility and threats. Brianboulton (talk) 00:33, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
I apologize for misquoting you. It was late night for me and I was tired—even said so in an edit summary. It doesn't excuse me, of course. I have scratched the sentence. I agree with the drift of your remarks. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:33, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
user:Chisme, Please note that I had made a post on the talk page in September indicating that I was expanding the article, and that same link you provide above has edit summary, "removing major sections per talk page, will reinstate relevant distillations; moving nobel up in lead; adding first paragraph of early life" I wasn't content blanking, simply removing content temporarily during the expansion of the article, in order to reinstate it in improved form later. What I removed temporarily was mainly gossip (personal life) and a series of quotes or unsupported statements in the "Reception" section. There were only two sections in the article. The article then had a 1,000 words. It already has 3,500 words. Nothing encyclopedically relevant to Naipaul in the previous version will be disregarded in the final version of the first draft. Please understand. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:09, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
Fowler&fowler asked above about specific suggestions. This talk page shows two clear suggestions that Fowler&fowler has ignored or rejected. The first is the over-use of images. "over-decorated with unnecessary pictures" Robofish (talk) 01:05, 31 December 2013 and "cluttering it with pictures of matchbooks is a distraction." Chisme (talk) 18:11, 20 February 2014 (UTC) I agree that a number of images in the article have too little connection to the subject, and should be removed or moved to other articles. The second is the removal of criticism. "[Fowler&Fowler's version] excludes many of the important controversies about this writer." IP 130.132.173.25 (talk) 05:49, 13 January 2014 (UTC) This is also a concern of mine. While removing criticism for a week or two while restructuring might be reasonable, the relevant, cited sentences have been removed now for over three months. I have opened the ANI for this discussion as it seems we are still far from agreement about how this article should be handled. Full link is Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Dispute at V. S. Naipaul.Dialectric (talk) 19:03, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

You quoted user:Robofish, but did not note that after I replied to his post, he immediately wrote:

I didn't know about your family emergency. That's an entirely good reason for spending time off Wikipedia - and in any case, we can't demand a certain level of commitment from anybody. As the saying goes, there is no deadline. Feel free to take as much time off as you need, and I look forward to seeing future versions of the article as you continue to work on it. Robofish (talk) 17:43, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

You also forgot to mention that I have already said above:

Another point: the preliminary version will have a surfeit both of textual details and images. Once it is complete, I will prune both to exclude what is not most relevant, enough, that is, to bring the article in compliance with FAC guidelines. ...

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:07, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Multiple issues

Whilst I accept your removal of the cleanup tags as the article is currently "under construction", please bear the following in mind when "bring[ing] the article in compliance with FAC guidelines."

  • The article contains too many or too-lengthy quotations for an encyclopedic entry.
  • The article's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia.
  • The article may overuse or misuse colour, making it hard to understand for colour-blind users.
  • The article's images may require adjustment of image placement, formatting, and size.
  • The article's lead section may not adequately summarize key points of its contents.

► Philg88 ◄ talk 10:08, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Philg88, I'm keeping those in mind. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:14, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
@Philg88: I did have one question about color. Are you referring to the background color in the quote boxes? What colors can be easily seen by color-blind users? (Does the color being only in the background still affect comprehension of the text (in black)?) Thanks. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:41, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
@Fowler&fowler: I ran some tests using [this tool] and there seem to be no problem with the two colours used for the quote boxes. However, there is a wider issue here, which is why these are needed in the first place. The scope of the article is V.S. Naipaul, and aside from a bibliography of his works, I do not follow why multiple blocks of prose extracted from his works serve any useful encyclopedic purpose. I also did a quick survey of 10 randomly chosen articles on other well-known writers, viz Salman Rushdie, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Kingsley Amis and John Milton —not one of which contains any of the author's prose, which would suggest that there is no precedent for its inclusion. ► Philg88 ◄ talk 13:42, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
@Philg88: Thanks for your helpful post. I got the idea of quote boxes from FAC itself. Indeed I remember a number of literature Featured Articles having quote boxes. In the finished article, there will be fewer boxes and they will likely be in the writing style and later sections. Best regards Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:21, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
@Philg88: Here are some FAs with quote boxes: · Maya Angelou· Anna Laetitia Barbauld· Neville Cardus· Emily Dickinson· Early life of Samuel Johnson· Ernest Hemingway· Samuel Johnson· Nancy Mitford· Ezra Pound· Rabindranath Tagore· Sarah Trimmer Regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:31, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
I agree that the quote boxes are an unnecessary distraction. Of the examples that you've provided F&F, none have the number of boxes you've added here, and in a number of cases where such boxes do appear, they quote a 3rd party work or a memoir/diary. Selecting passages from fiction to call out is undue weight unless you have independent refs showing the importance of that passage. This is a minor part, however, of the larger problems, which were discussed a month ago - the problems Philg88 points out are real and significant, and have been noted here several times. As the article has been 'under construction' now for over two months, I think now is the time for me to start actively cleaning up the page.Dialectric (talk) 15:04, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
I also have concerns about this article that go beyond color boxes. Sentences like "Naipaul showed snatches of behaviour that tried the patience of his support group" do not reflect the tone or style of an encyclopedic. And sentences like that are numerous. I'm afraid the author has put so much work into this article (some of it quite good), that he will oppose any edits whatsoever by other people. This is the danger of letting someone put an "under construction" tag on an article and letting him keep it there for months at a time. What about it Fowler? Can others start editing this article now? Chisme (talk) 17:02, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
@Dialectric: and @Chisme: Thanks for your helpful posts. Since you are fans of Naipaul and have read most of his books, you can certainly help by expanding the Wikipedia articles on the books most of which are stubs or are non-existent. Ones that need most work are: Miguel Street, The Mystic Masseur (novel), The Suffrage of Elvira, and Mr. Stone and the Knight's Companion. Any Featured Article run will require more expanded articles on his books (and he's written a few). That will be very helpful. I'm happy to help out if you need sources. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:01, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
For example, I recently reread The Mimic Men (and found it much harder going than I did the first time). I then created the page The Mimic Men. If you can expand the early novel pages mentioned above to the length of The Mimic Men, it would be great. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:23, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
PS Actually, I'll take care of Mr. Stone. But if you can help out with the first three, it will be great. I can also email you what Patrick French, Bruce King, Gillian Dooley or Helen Hayward have to say (I have them on Kindle) about these books. I can also email you some scholarly articles from JSTOR. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:41, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Away until mid-August 2014

I was hoping I wouldn't need to take a Wikibreak just yet, but I do. I will be away until mid-August 2014. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:13, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

I added an incomplete template as you have not yet returned to finish editing this page. Perhaps someone else can start in your place? 50.185.115.122 (talk) 18:28, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that. You can read how I argued above against Fowler taking over this article and excluding others from editing it. Wikipledia shouldn't allow that. Fowler never completed his work and now we're left with a total mess. Chisme (talk) 18:33, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Revert to earlier version of article?

Fowler has been gone for a year. The article he bruised and bloodied is incomplete and simply too much trouble to correct. Does anyone object to reverting this article to what is was before Folower sullied it? Chisme (talk) 20:31, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree that the article is a mess, and the issues pointed out a year ago haven't been corrected. The old version is much closer to encyclopedic style. There may be some salvageable content from the new version, however. I can spend some time in a day or two to go through the article with this in mind.Dialectric (talk) 02:18, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
Please do. And thanks for your help. The problem is that Fowler went into far too much detail in the early years so that now, after giving up, we're left with detailed information about the first half of his life and hardly anything about the second half. Also he relied on a single source -- Patrick French's biography, which he just paraphrased. What a mess! Chisme (talk) 16:34, 22 April 2015 (UTC)
Looking again, I think you should go ahead with the revert. I will try to pull together a short early life and education section from the current content, but can do that using the history. The rest is in my view unsalvagable.Dialectric (talk) 20:59, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
That is the conclusion I reached -- to revert. Fowler included some good material, but it's just too much work to go back and fix this article, the way it stands now. Do we have a consensus for reverting? It's just the two of us. Shall I go ahead and do it? Chisme (talk) 17:28, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
I suggest you make the revert under WP:BOLD. If anyone reverts or objects here, I'd avoid re-reverting/edit warring, and have a larger discussion - if that happens, I can post to some related wikiprojects (authors, literature?) for outside input.Dialectric (talk) 23:55, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Biography

I notice VS Naipaul does not yet have a proper length biography, unlike Edward Said, which is odd considering Naipaul's long literary career. Evidence of liberal bias in Wikipedia? I hope not.

Liberal bias? What does "liberal bias" have to do with Naipaul? I'm confused. Guettarda 19:51, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This devotes way too much attention to his politics. He won the Nobel Prize for his artistry as a novelist. This whole entry needs rewriting. --Griot


Yes, I agreed there should be more about the novels, and I don't think the list of fiction is correct as "The Loss of El Dorado" is definitely non-fiction. --Alan 23:01, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps due to the prohibition about speaking against the prophet are there too few entries regarding the esteemed Mr. Naipaul. One billion people acceeding to a prohibition leaves few to make commentary. -- [Ethicalone503]

There's a prohibition against speaking ill of V.S. Naipaul, and one billion people "acceed" to it? Who knew? Griot 23:48, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
User:Ethicalone503 was referring to Naipaul's criticisms of Islam. 70.23.177.216 09:13, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I knew that. And I was making fun of using Ethicalone503, who doesn't know what "acceed" means. Griot 19:07, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh. 70.23.177.216 16:37, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Can somebody fix the infobox errors? Randhirreddy 15:07, 21 November 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Randhirreddy (talk • contribs)

Of all the talk pages of all the pages in WP; this one has done the least in terms of contributing to the betterment of the main article. And, I just joined the bandwagon with this comment. ~~Abhishek 21 March 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.215.87.3 (talk) 15:12, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

--Glad to see Said's perspective tempered a bit in the history of this page, especially given his malicious opposition to Naipaul's work.

If there was anything we could do to eradicate Said from this entry completely, that would no doubt be a drastic improvement. Said was an ideologue and distinctly mediocre scholar; the more we can do, collectively, to limit his presence on Wikipedia, the better. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Emerson22 (talk • contribs) 06:13, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

What vile hypocritical bullcrap. -- Jibal (talk) 15:04, 13 August 2018 (UTC)


Me too! And I don't understand this obsessive "catgut" individual, who seems far more invested in asserting the semantic power of "postcolonial theory" than he/she is in the truth. Edward Said WAS a pianist. That's pretty much all we know about him, aside from his vituperative, intellectual fictions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Enigmaofarrival (talk • contribs) 05:56, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly. Edward Said is far more important as a minor classical pianist than anyone could possibly be as a postcolonial theorist. Whatever that is! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kcboat (talk • contribs) 06:06, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I added a POV dispute, because this article is totally biased and unsourced. Please, SOMEONE give it a read-through. It reads like his publisher's PR bio for him. It's full of unsourced statements and emotional terms. Please, please let's begin to clean it up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.132.173.197 (talk) 04:32, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Restoring old material about his life post 1958 to this article

As of today (Feb 19, 2014), this article days Naipaul to the year 1958. There is no mention of his work from 1958 to the present. There is a photo of a book matches from a match company he used to work for! What happened here? This is a disaster. I am restoring portions of this article that were excised when somebody decided to take it over and make it their hobbyhorse. Chisme (talk) 21:49, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

If you were paying any attention, you'd realize that he didn't actually work for that match company. Pictures give a feeling for the time of writing. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:03, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
I was paying attention. If you took the time to notice that this is an encyclopedia, you would see that cluttering it with pictures of matchbooks is a distraction. This article desperately needs to focus on its subject, not on his youth in Trinidad or secondhand Indian heritage. I am a big fan of his work, have read all he's written, as well as French's biography and Thoreau's memoir. A stranger coming to this article would think Naipaul is a provincial Indian regional writer from the Caribbean. You carved up this article and turned it into nonsense. You should no fix it. I took a stab at fixing it, removing what is extraneous and making it read like a modern essay, not a 19th Century Horatio Alger story. I hope you will respect my edits or at least understand that phrases like "by dint of good fortune" have no place in modern writing.
BTW, are you a native English speaker? Your writing is quite stilted and awkward. Chisme (talk) 18:11, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
I'm afraid this is not the Simple Wikipedia or for that matter the Junior High School Wikipedia, nor is it ungrammatical ("it is near to Venezuela" (instead of "nearest") "who immigrated to Trinidad from Indian fifty years before his birth" (simple past instead of past perfect), "Naipaul attended high school in Queen's Royal College in Port of Spain" (wrong preposition) in the article or "you should no fix it" (above)) There is no WP:MOS mandate or directive that the writing be restricted to simple sentences. As for "dint of good fortune," it is used all the time in modern writing. Finally, as for English, perhaps you should also go edit both the English Grammar and History of English grammars pages, both of which I have majorly edited. I am reverting all your poor edits. The article has barely reached 1958, when Naipaul was a young immigrant to England, barely yet a British writer. I say above on this page that I've had family emergencies since October, that is why I had to stop editing this page (my user:Fowler&fowler user page proclaims this as well). I've been editing WP for for eight and have several featured articles and featured-class-articles to my credit. You, on the other hand, have 832 edits, and for all your interest in Naipaul, made your first edit on the page (since you arrived on Wikipedia three years ago) yesterday. The article was in much worse shape earlier. I am reverting all your poor edits. Let me finish the article, then you can come complain. Please read the discussion above before you make any further ill-considered edits. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:28, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
I can see that you and I aren't going to get along, but suffice it to say, I am not the only one who objects to your turning this article into some kind Indian schoolboy hagiography project. See the comments by User 130.132.173.25 and Robofish above. I don't care which Wikipedia articles you've polluted, English Grammar or History of English grammars, the following risible Dickensian intonations don't qualify as modern English:
"By dint of effort and the good fortune of receiving some education"
"In the new world memory of their genealogy...."
"chicken and fish had become honorary vegetables at the family's dining table...."
"The sari, the draped female garment of timeless India" (and I thought it was a big robe!)
"Arriving at Oxford for the Michaelmas term" (Michaelmas!)
"Hale and Naipaul soon became intimate."
And is it really necessary to say what food he carried when he left Trinidad ("He however carried with him a baked whole chicken and roti bread made by his mother.")
Your claims to having contributed more to the article than others, and your request that I and all other Wikipedia readers wait for your family problems to end so you can finish this article, lead me to conclude that you think you own this article. This is against community rules. See Wikipedia:Ownership of articles ("All Wikipedia content is edited collaboratively. No one, no matter how skilled, or of how high standing in the community, has the right to act as though he or she is the owner of a particular article"). I've attempted to show you the light. I think I'm going to have to take this to the admins. Chisme (talk) 01:28, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
I suggest you go edit the Simple English Wikipedia, its article on VS Naipaul is a stub and awaits your edits. Apparently, you forgot to comment on your mistakes (both in the article and above), to which you've added new ones: intonations? Michaelmas term is very much used, today. As are "soon became intimate", "By dint of effort" all 21 century usage (as books published in the 21st century are using them.)Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:39, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

user:Chisme, I understand your frustration. I am back now. Please give me a month to finish the article. We can then have user:Brianboulton or user:Tim riley or someone else experienced such as user:Ian Rose (FAC director) or user:Stfg or user:Dank peer-review the article. How does that sound? Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:30, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Chisme has brought the Dunning-Kruger effect to illiteracy. -- Jibal (talk) 15:13, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
Dunning–Kruger effect. I've learned something new. It caused a lot of heartache at the time forced me to quit. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:07, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Give an emphasis on the platform

People from all low-class social systems, when they reach native-English nations grow up to their higher potential. This basic fact has to be mentioned with regard to all persons who are not native-English, but have arrived into such nations, and get to discard their original native-land tag and slowly acquire the native-English nation tag. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2405:204:D38E:A672:A0D8:F27C:C562:4E3 (talk • contribs) 06:45, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Not sure what this IP from Kerala, India, is saying. If he means native English-speaking (and not Britons), he's wrong. Caribbean English is usually considered a regional variety of native English in contrast to the regional variety of second-language English spoken in South Asia. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:43, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

The ill-fated rewrite

I began to rewrite the article a few years ago, getting as far as the early 1970s (after Guerillas but before A Bend in the River). Granted it had a lot of detail, but I was enjoying writing it. I had to reread his early Caribbean novels. I had to especially reread his lesser-known 1960s works, Middle Passage, Mr Stone and the Knight's Companion, The Mimic Men, and Loss of El Dorado. Along the way, I created little spin-offs on F. P. Wilson (Naipaul's professor at Oxford), Copying pencil (I forget the context now), and The Mimic Men. Then family emergencies got in the way. It didn't help that two editors appeared who were keen on skirmishing. Eventually, they delivered the death by a thousand cuts that led me to quit. (Incidentally, for all their claims of knowledge, they failed to add anything to the article other than, repeatedly, a mention of Nadira Naipaul to the lead.)

Given VSN's prolific literary career, any good article is not easy to write. I might look at it again, but I'm traveling overseas. Strangely enough Mr Stone and the Knights Companion (the Russell edition reprint from 1978) is the only book of Naipaul in my hosts' library. I notice that someone has recently redirected the book's Wikipedia red link to this (VSN's) page. I might write a plot summary if I can find the time. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:23, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

His Paternal Heritage is Nepali Pahadi Bahun (Nepali Hill Brahmins).

As many writers from Darjeeling, India, like Mahananda Paudyal, Mangal Singh Subba had tried to focus the paternal heritage of V.S. Naipaul as Nepali Bahun category with surname Nepal that has fallen into anglicized version of Naipaul. Like Kanpur to Cawnpore, Kathmandu to Catmando, Balbhadra to Balbudder, British wrote records of their own version. Nepal surname was written as Naipaul when there were army registration in Indian Hills. In his biography, there is told that his family came from around Gorakhpur and writers suspected a migration from Nepalgunj, Nepal to Gorakhpur, India. Once V.S. himself told my patriarch is Nepali Brahmins Bahun. (Source:http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2001/naipaul-lecture-e.html) Nepal surname is a famous family name originating in the Midwestern hills of country Nepal. Former PM Madhav Kumar Nepal, current Governor of Nepal's Central Bank Chiranjeevi Nepal are famous peoples from this surname. Thapa Kazi999 (talk) 10:36, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

This is what Naipaul said in his Nobel speech:
I know nothing of the people on my father's side; I know only that some of them came from Nepal. Two years ago a kind Nepalese who liked my name sent me a copy of some pages from an 1872 gazetteer-like British work about India, Hindu Castes and Tribes as Represented in Benares; the pages listed - among a multitude of names -those groups of Nepalese in the holy city of Banaras who carried the name Naipal. That is all that I have.
That's all we know. It's fairly ambiguous. -- GreenC 00:19, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
And here is the actual source, page 108 of the book Hindu Tribes and Castes as represented in Benares by Rev M.A. Sherring. (See the title page). It is dubious mid-19th century Raj ethnology (later roundly criticized when anthropology had become a modern discipline). Judging from the preface, I feel the book is not so much (as Naipaul seems to suggest in his Nobel speech) about the Nepalese Brahmins actually living in the Hindu holy city of Benares, but about the names of all the different castes and tribes of India collected by interviewing people living in Benares, which as a holy city attracted numerous visitors Pages 107 and 108 are about Nepalese brahmins. It says among other things, that they were considered "degenerate" by the Brahmins of the plains of India on account of their diet and drink, which included water buffalo and alcohol respectively. I should add that in the 1870s the romanization of Indian names in the Raj was not standardized. "Nepal" was also rendered "Naipal" and "Nîpâl" The author, an Anglican cleric, feels no admiration for the Indian caste system; indeed he thinks it is "a monstrous engine of pride, dissension, and shame, which could only have been produced in a utterly diseased condition of human society." Nevertheless, he is recording the castes in the spirit of Terence's "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto" ("I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me."), which appears on the title page as well. All in all, I agree, the two pages are fairly ambiguous. Naipaul did not know his paternal grandfather. Whatever this relative's caste status was, of whatever region of South Asia, there is little evidence that it played any significant role in Naipaul's upbringing. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:59, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Missing work?

In the 'Early life' section, the article says '"In a prologue to an autobiography" (1983)...' but this work isn't listed in the 'Bibliography'. JezGrove (talk) 21:37, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

@JezGrove: Prologue to an autobiography is a (long) essay that had first appeared in a 1983 issue of Vanity Fair (the feature piece of the second issue after its 1983 revival). It was later republished as one-half of Naipaul's 1984 book Finding the Centre: Two Narratives, along with The Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro, which had originally appeared in the New Yorker. That is why the 'Prologue' is not listed separately in the bibliography, although there may be a way to include this information in the article. Abecedare (talk) 22:09, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for your quick reply Abecedare. Best wishes, JezGrove (talk) 07:42, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
Thank you @Abecedare:. I remember that Vanity Fair issue well. It is still there in my shelves. I had the sense though while reading the essay that the raw material of his more distant past was becoming exhausted. A formal autobiography never came, but A way in the world and Enigma of Arrival were both autobiographical novels. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:11, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Whitewashing of Naipaul's domestic abuse

I added this referenced line to the article: In Patrick French's biography, Naipaul recounts that he often beat Margaret up: "“I was very violent with her for two days with my hand; my hand began to hurt. . . . She didn’t mind it at all. She thought of it in terms of my passion for her. Her face was bad. She couldn’t appear really in public. My hand was swollen.

The edit was undone by User:Fowler&fowler, stating: You are quoting out of context. You are quoting selectively. I have just examined Patrick French. It is more complicated. If Fowler can answer two questions please: What is the context? What's the complication? I hope it isn't some misplaced moral relativism that ends up justifying this malum in se, no matter the context. And, okay, I will also admit I added the longish quote, which stokes prurience, in a fit of disgust, but even if we don't mention the whole quote, as it can be impractical or be seen as sensationalist in a biographical entry I don't know, the domestic abuse has to be mentioned in the article, which in its current form seems a bit generous and sympathetic. Do let us know the context and complications... GeorgeBajrangiShaw (talk) 06:25, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

No one is saying he wasn't misogynistic at times, even misanthropic. He did physically assault his (extra-marital) lover Margaret. But there was a context to the assault. You need to find French and paraphrase both the abuse and the context accurately. You can't just quote by incompletely using the New York Times, not in a high-level article such as this. I could do it, but I won't because I think it belongs to a separate section which has not been begun yet. I don't think it should be stuffed willy-nilly in "personal life." Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:55, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
Ok, I have done so, please have a look. If you feel it can be further improved, please do let me know, or feel free to edit it yourself. As the article stands, there isn't a better section to put it under than 'Personal life'; you can move it to the more appropriate section (which I presume would be called "Controversies: subsections: misanthropy, misogyny, sexism", just like Wagner has racism and antisemitism) whenever it begins? Still, the absence of an appropriate section provides no grounds for outright rejection of my edits; or for anyone to think my edit was "stuffed willy-nilly"... Regs GeorgeBajrangiShaw (talk) 11:05, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
GeorgeBajrangiShaw While it's good that you're engaging here, you and Fowler&fowler need to agree on the final text here instead of just re-inserting the disputed text. Guettarda (talk) 12:31, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
A few things that jump out at me: Naipaul confesses to having sadistically abused Margaret:. Both "confesses" and "sadistically" are problematic. Calling something "sadistic" is a judgement, which Wikipedia can't make. You can attribute that to a source, but you can't state it as an unquestioned fact in Wikipedia's voice. Secondly "confesses" only applies if someone acknowledges wrongdoing, and there's nothing here that makes it clear that Naipaul saw what he was doing as wrong. "Admitted", yes. "Confessed", no. Guettarda (talk) 13:31, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
Hi Guettarda, noted your point about "admitted", but that also sounds as if he's acknowledging wrongdoing. Maybe "recounted" would be more neutral? Also, I see your point about using "sadistically", but here it is description, not judgement--as borne out by the accompanying quotes that show he derived pleasure from inflicting pain. GeorgeBajrangiShaw (talk) 14:03, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
If the source doesn't call it "sadistic" then neither can we. And saying he "derived pleasure" is a conclusion, not something that's in the supported by the quote at all. I personally find it horrifying, but I can't get to his state of mind from that quote. So there's no way we can call it sadistic in Wikipedia's voice. Guettarda (talk) 14:45, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
Understood your point about Wiki voice. Have added a basic NPOV version, letting the quotes speak for themselves... GeorgeBajrangiShaw (talk) 05:33, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Bibliography

I have commenced a tidy-up of the Bibliography section using cite templates. Capitalization and punctuation follow standard cataloguing rules in AACR2 and RDA, as much as Wikipedia templates allow it. ISBNs and other persistent identifiers, where available, are commented out, but still available for reference. This is a work in progress; feel free to continue. Sunwin1960 (talk) 06:06, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Revising again

I shall be revising this article again in the coming weeks. I see that too many people have been tinkering with what I had originally written. As usual, everything I add or subtract will be meticulously sourced and WP:DUE. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:14, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Trinidad(ian) vs Trinidad and Tobago

@FreeEncyclopediaMusic: Please use the talk page instead of repeatedly editing the article. Onus is on the person making the change.

It's pretty simple though: the country's name is Trinidad and Tobago. Yes, something from Trinidad is "Trinidadian" the same way someone from New York is a New Yorker. But we use subnational entities to describe people, especially when those subnational entities have no legal standing. (This isn't like English vs British - England is a constituent country of the United Kingdom. There is no political entity called Trinidad. Guettarda (talk) 14:57, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

General Incompleteness of the biography from 1970 onwards.

Biography is incomplete from 1970 onwards. There is large gaps in chronology. Also, major works and the creative ideation behind them are missing. Personal life should have been a separate paragraph with two distinct sections - his partners and the background of his family. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.245.86.244 (talk) 04:20, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Yes, at least I am aware of it. Much personal life appears in his biography, for example, his family background; his relationship with the woman who was to became his first wife, Patty Hale; Shiva Naipaul; his father; and so forth. Have it in my mind to complete the biography. Thanks. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:28, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

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