The Writer Motif in V.S. Naipaul: The Post-Colonial Maverick: Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

A motif is a recurrent, distinctive or dominant theme that surfaces in the writing of a literary artist. There are several motifs like loss of identity, emotional instability, culture conflict, psychological crisis, economic deprivation, alienation, racial discrimination, rootlessness of diaspora and so on. It is alienation for Anita Desai; marital discord for Nayantara Sahgal; economic deprivation for Mulk Raj Anand; rootlessness of diaspora for Jhupma Lahiri and the motif of the writer for V.S. Naipaul. As the son of an iconoclastic journalist, he is a bundle of contradictions. He is an East Indian in a primarily black West Indian society, a colonial in the English metropolis, an East Indian who is a West Indian out of place in the motherland of India, a writer from a developing country living in a developed country, and writing about peoples in developing countries and a non-believer among believers. He emerges as a writer from a distant former British Colony who by his talent and sheer dint of determination made a place in literature. His literary oeuvre comprises fiction, non-fiction and a uniquely characteristic fusion of narrative styles. He resorted to the blurring of generic boundaries, and there is constant experimentation in them. His literary career is in conformity with his childhood desire to become a writer. The writer motif is predominant in Naipaul. For Naipaul, writing is a passion amounting to worship. It is his first and final love. This is evident in the proud assertion in the notes on the author, at the beginning of his works, "He has followed no other vocation". Few writers have writer so comprehensively about the vocation of writing as Naipaul. He has shown his deep concern for writers and the writing process. Right through his writing career, from 1957 to 2001, the image of the writer is a vital part of Naipaul’s oeuvre. It proves to be a focusing point that illumines a variety of issues that shaped and moulded "The World’s Writer".