Philp on Naipaul on Walcott
Last week Kwame Dawes wrote a response to V.S. Naipaul’s recent essay on Derek Walcott. Now Geoffrey Philp has stepped into the fray, with an essay titled “Moral vs. Ethical Writing”:
"Caribbean Odyssey" contains rare signs of empathy that Naipaul has never revealed before. In Naipaul's revelation of his idiosyncrasies, especially towards poetry and book buying, he reveals cultural habits that need to be explored further, and they show a grasp of Caribbean life that many other writers have yet to comprehend. In this respect, Naipaul's foibles in denying the wealth and abundance of "local" beauty, a trait that is endemic throughout the Caribbean, shows that he is indeed one of us....
