Journey to Nowhere: A New World Tragedy, by Shiva Naipaul (Simon & Schuster, 336 pp., $13.95). The title is accurate. But the subtitle might better be “Shiva Naipaul’s Tragedy,” because, like his better known brother, V. S. Naipaul, Shiva sees through everything and believes in nothing. Rootless exiles from Trinidad, where they grew up hating (not without justification) black power, yet failing to identify with their own people (Indians), who were and still are its victims, both Naipauls have made the world their oyster —and the oyster stinks. Especially the American component, which is big enough and rich enough—and tolerant enough— to be saddled with all the blame for the feckless incompetence of the Third World. Naipaul takes a typical component of that world, Guyana, and after demonstrating why that Soviet-oriented black dictatorship was the perfect place for Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple to commit suicide, proceeds to “prove” that those deluded dropouts from Southern California typify the American people—and were set up by the CIA to do what they did! It’s the false Chile syllogism all over again: the Communist Allende made a total mess of Chile; the CIA made a half-hearted and unsuccessful effort to finance Allende’s feeble opponents; therefore the CIA is responsible for the failure of democratic (!) government in Chile. If the Naipauls and their ilk could be made to put down on paper what values and people and forms of government they do believe in, confused American publishers (my own) might stop disseminating their elegantly phrased poison and adding to the confusion of the American reading public.
Selden Rodman
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