The Writer and the World (85 page)
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Authors: V.S. Naipaul
A later realization—I suppose I have sensed it most of my life, but I have understood it philosophically only during the preparation of this talk—has been the beauty of the idea of the pursuit of happiness. Familiar words, easy to take for granted; easy to misconstrue. This idea of the pursuit of happiness is at the heart of the attractiveness of the civilization to so many outside it or on its periphery. I find it marvellous to contemplate to what an extent, after two centuries, and after the terrible history of the earlier part of this century, the idea has come to a kind of fruition. It is an elastic idea; it fits all men. It implies a certain kind of society, a certain kind of awakened spirit. I don’t imagine my father’s parents would have been able to understand the idea. So much is contained in it: the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice, the life of the intellect, the idea of vocation and perfectibility and achievement. It is an immense human idea. It cannot be reduced to a fixed system. It cannot generate fanaticism. But it is known to exist; and because of that, other more rigid systems in the end blow away.
1992
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, AUGUST 2003
Copyright © 2002 by V. S. Naipaul
Introduction copyright © 2002 by Pankaj Mishra
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published
in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2002.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Some of the essays in this work were originally published in the following Alfred A. Knopf titles:
The Overcrowded Barracoon
, copyright © 1972 by V. S. Naipaul;
The Return of Eva
Peron
, copyright © 1980 by V. S. Naipaul;
Finding the Centre
, copyright © 1984 by V. S. Naipaul.
The following essays were first published in the publications below: “The Air-Conditioned Bubble” in
The New York Review of Books
(October 25, 1984); Section 6 of “Argentina and the Ghost of Eva Perón” was previously published as “Argentina: Living with Cruelty” in
The
New York Review of Books
(January 30, 1992); “A Handful of Dust: Cheddi Jagan in Guyana,” in
The New York Review of Books
(April 11, 1991); “Heavy Manners in Grenada” in
Harper’s Magazine
(March 1984).
“Our Universal Civilization” was a speech given at the Manhattan Institute.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Naipaul, V. S. (Vidiadhar Surajprasad), [date]
The writer and the world : essays / V. S. Naipaul.—1
st
ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-56129-9
I. Title.
PR9272.9.N32 W74 2002
824′.914—dc21
2002020813
CIP
v3.0
