The Middle Passage

Rating:
Summary: A book to read and reread
Review: 'The Middle Passage' is the account of a sunny journey across the Caribbean in 1960-61. During his travelling, Naipaul enjoys the calypso in Trinidad, takes a memorable hiking trip to the Nutchi falls in British Guyana, travels around the picturesque roads of Martinique, enjoys a cool beer in Brazil, and goes to the beaches of Jamaica and Surinam.

However, Naipaul is not primarily interested in the joys which an average tourist might take from such a dreamt-of holiday. 'The Middle Passage' is a book with a purpose: it seeks to dissect the ways in which different Caribbean territories deal with the legacy of more than 400 years of European domination. There is very much Naipaul doesn't like about the people living in these (post-)colonial societies. But his sharp eye and elegant prose lead to a cascade of eye-opening, stunning and often merciless observations which makes this book still mandatory reading today.

On the multi-layered social structure of Trinidadian society, Naipaul says: "[The Trinidadian] is adaptable; he is cynical; having no rigid social conventions of his own, he is amused by the conventions of others. [..] If the Trinidadian has no standards of morality he is without the greater corruption of sanctimoniousness."

On the Indians of British Guyana: "Among more complex peoples there are certain individuals who have the power to transmit to you their sense of defeat and purposelessness: emotional parasites who flourish by draining you of the vitality you preserve with difficulty. The Amerindians had this effect on me."

On Martinique: "Martinique in the interior is prettily feudal, with a white or coloured gentry and a respectful mass of straw-hatted black people who can only be described as 'peasants', the twentieth-century literary discovery, whose soft manners, acquiescence in their status and general lack of ambition or spirit can be interpreted a 'dignity'."

Finally, on 'poor whites': "[H]ere and there in the West Indies are little groups of 'poor whites', whose poverty is their least sad attribute. [A]merindians 'sickened and died'; these Europeans [..] only sickened, and are like people still stunned by their transportation to the islands of this satanic sea."