Since the establishment of the Nobel Prize in 1901, the Commonwealth Caribbean has produced three individuals whom the Nobel Committee have honoured with what many consider to be the world’s most prestigious award. Interestingly, although the Nobel Prize is awarded for achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, economics, literature and for peace, literature is where the region has so far, made its most indelible mark.

Sir Arthur Lewis of St Lucia was the first West Indian to earn the nod of the Nobel Committee in 1979 for his contribution to economics. Later, in 1992, poet and playwright Derek Walcott would cop the prize for literature while, in 2001, almost a decade later, V.S. Naipaul would become the first, and to date only Trinbagonian, to be honoured with the prestigious award, also for his literary contribution.

Starting this year and continuing until 2009, the St Augustine campus will be celebrating these three geniuses– Sir Vidia in 2007, Sir Arthur (posthumously) in 2008 and Derek Walcott in 2009.

As part of the V.S. Naipaul celebrations, an evening of appreciation was held by the campus on April 18, 2007, during the week and a half long visit of the celebrated UK-based author.

Hundreds turned up at the UWI SPEC to catch a glimpse of the man many still consider to be an enigma and to hear his views on various topics.

In opening the event, campus Principal, Dr Bhoendradatt Tewarie described the event as a coming together “to acknowledge the formidable body of work produced by this creative genius and to underscore the value of his work as a significant contribution to letters. We appreciate this work as a bridge to our deeper understanding of our human condition and as a magnificent endowment to Caribbean and World civilization”.

Dr Tewarie, himself a Naipaul scholar, pointed out that the road to success for the Chaguanas-born, St James-bred writer was not easy. “The journey to become a recognized writer and to make a living by writing has been long and hard, full of uncertainty and exhausting,” said Tewarie.

“Recognition came easier; writing and composing have always been exceedingly difficult; wealth, for the most part, elusive. V.S. Naipaul left Trinidad at the age of 18 to become a writer. After Oxford, as he sought to fulfill his ambition, he did not know where to begin until one day, when the inspiration came, suddenly. This is how Naipaul explains it in his Nobel acceptance speech:

“At last one day there came to me the idea of starting with the Port of Spain street to which we had moved from Chaguanas … This street life was what I began to write about. I wished to write fast, to avoid too much self-questioning, and so I simplified. I suppressed the child-narrator’s background. I ignored the racial and social complexities of the street. I explained nothing … I wrote a story a day. The first stories were very short. I was worried about the material lasting long enough. But then the writing did its magic. The material began to present itself to me from many sources. The stories became longer, they couldn’t be written in a day. And then the inspiration, which at one stage had seemed very easy, rolling me along, came to an end. But a book had been written, and I had in my own mind become a writer.”

With the enthusiasm and appreciation of one who is totally enthralled by the sights, sounds, smells and emotions evoked by master-writers, the campus Principal continued, “even today, it is difficult to imagine how a young man of twenty-five could begin to put together a work as formidable and as penetratingly impactful as A House for Mr. Biswas. But this work brought recognition and gave stature, a mere seven years after the submission of his first manuscript.

“From here on, though, the challenge was how to continue to write, because not to write meant ceasing to exist. Not to write meant that the man V.S. Naipaul might be alive walking the streets of London but that the writer in him, the creative self, would be dead, extinct. And so the life of the writer V.S. Naipaul has been one of perpetual struggle after the completion of each book, first of all to summon the muse to begin the next one and then, to tap the creative genius required to sustain it through to the end”.

As Sir Vidia’s career develop, so too did his interests and canvas expand. Noting that “travel would lead Naipaul to write about India, Africa, the Muslim world and Latin America,” Dr Tewarie argues that “all of these were present in his consciousness in a vague way while in Trinidad but, awaiting exploration and discovery to become real by virtue of the writer’s hand”.

Sir Vidia though, has always been a controversial figure, his insights as contained in his work, often provoke and get under the skin of leaders, academics and even ordinary citizens in the societies about which he writes, especially his West Indian brethren.

Even so Dr Tewarie opined that humanity must “celebrate the fact that our place Trinidad and Tobago gave birth to such a genius and that his genius has given Trinidad and Tobago stature and presence in the world and something to be proud of”.

“But Naipaul’s writing has always sought to fulfill another need—to discover self and to fill in the blanks about things with which he was familiar but about which he did not know much; what he himself has described as his “areas of darkness.” Hence the Loss of El Dorado which is a history of Trinidad up to 1813; hence his interest in Latin America, whose Venezuelan coast is only seven miles away from Trinidad at their nearest points; hence the interest in India from where his ancestors came; hence his interest in Africa from where the majority of the population of the West Indies came.

“That is why his early works are about Trinidad Indians, dominantly Hindus, in the context of a creole world outside the community and the larger, wider western civilization impacting significantly from time to time whereas, from Mimic Men onwards, his writing as well as his characters become much more international in scope and cosmopolitan in origin and perspective”.