Between Father and Son : Family Letters - Hardcover

At the heart of the book lie Naipaul's undergraduate life at Oxford and his father's deeply moving support for his son as he strives to maintain his own writing career while Naipaul's literary talent flowers. The minutiae of Naipaul's college life offer a fascinating account of the genesis of the querulous, fussy, and patrician Naipaul of later years. The letters are full of stories of his endless rounds of tea parties, writing for the Oxford journal Isis, flirting with women, and endless requests for cigarettes from home. But the most revealing and moving dimension of the collection is the love and friendship between father and son. Seepersad vents his own literary frustrations upon his son while at the same time assuring Naipaul of his unconditional support: "I feel so darned cocksure that I can produce a novel within six months--if only I had nothing else to do. This is impossible. But I want to give you this chance." Seepersad's sudden death is very affecting, as is Naipaul's telegraphed response home: "Everything I owe to him." This is a deeply revealing collection of one of the most enigmatic writers of the postwar period, and it offers an absorbing insight into Naipaul's early fiction, particularly The Mystic Masseur and Miguel Street. --Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk