Jane Austen and V. S. Naipaul

“I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.” - Jane Austen, Letters

On May 31st during an interview portion with the Royal Geographic Society the writer V. S. Naipaul, who is considered one of the greatest living writers of English prose, was asked if he considered any woman writer his equal. "I don’t think so," he replied. Until this point, his statement was no big deal, for a great number of the public believes that Jane Austen is very sentimental, many coming to this conclusion based on their perception of the movies adapted from her novels, saying that he "couldn't possibly share her sentimental ambitions, her sentimental sense of the world."   .But then he went further in his explanation:

I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me….[A] woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too…My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh. I don’t mean this in any unkind way...- Buffalo News.Com

Sir V. S. Naipaul, in his house, Wiltshire, England. © AP Photos | The Sidney Mourning Herald

I will say nothing about Naipaul's ouvre, because I've never read one single line of his work. It is conjectured that his opinion of Jane Austen is perhaps a mix of his notorious misogyny and the need to keep himself in the public eye, if even for a short time.

I wonder if he will still be as greatly admired as Jane in the next two hundred years. Poor fellow...  In case I am accused of a partiality to Jane, I shall finish the post with George Eliot *:

“Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.” - George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such

In this quiz the reader is asked to distinguish whether a male of female writer wrote the passages! How well can you guess the author's sex?


Sources:

• The New York Times (2009) “V. S. Naipaul, a Man Who Has Earned a Knighthood, a Nobel and Enemies Galore ”
•  “A grown man does not worry ”, Tom Adair, The Sydney Morning Herald.
• *The Telegraph: “Hay Festival: no woman writer will ever be as good as me, says VS Naipaul ”.

Post contributed by Raquel Sallaberry, Jane Austen em Portugues