A Turn in the South

By V. S. Naipaul

The Nobel Prize-winning author delivers a revealing and disturbing book about the American South—from Atlanta to Charleston, Tallahassee to Tuskegee, Nashville to Chapel Hill. • “His comprehension is astute and penetrating.... The book he has written brings new understanding [of] the subject.” —The New York Times Book Review

In the tradition of political and cultural revelation V.S. Naipaul so brilliantly made his own in Among The Believers, A Turn In The South is his first book about the United States.

“Naipaul’s chapters honor the diversity that marks the South.... Conservatives and liberals, whites and blacks, men and women speak for themselves, and reveal the dark side of the story in their own ways … fascinating and revealing.” —The New Republic

“Mr. Naipaul travels with the artist’s eye and ear and his observations are sharply discerning.” —Evelyn Waugh

“A master of English prose.” —Nobel Prize Winner J. M. Coetzee, The New York Review of Books

"His writing is clean and beautiful, and he has a great eye for nuance.... No American writer could achieve [his] kind of evenhandedness, and it gives Naipaul's perceptions an almost built-in originality." —Atlantic Monthly

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Mar 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307789280

V. S. Naipaul

V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He came to England on a scholarship in 1950. He spent four years at University College, Oxford, and began to write, in London, in 1954. He pursued no other profession. His novels include A House for Mr Biswas, The Mimic Men, Guerrillas, A Bend in the River, and The Enigma of Arrival. In 1971 he was awarded the Booker Prize for In a Free State. His works of nonfiction, equally acclaimed, include Among the Believers, Beyond Belief, The Masque of Africa, and a trio of books about India: An Area of Darkness, India: A Wounded Civilization and India: A Million Mutinies Now. In 1990, V.S. Naipaul received a knighthood for services to literature; in 1993, he was the first recipient of the David Cohen British Literature Prize. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. He lived with his wife Nadira and cat Augustus in Wiltshire, and died in 2018.

Reviews for A Turn in the South

[drbrand-271246 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Naipaul seeks to know about the South through a connection with his own experiences. There is an element of inductive reasoning in his writing in which he finds southerners as extra-religious based on his informants, both black and white, who seemingly confirm this hypothesis. Of course, there is a danger in how he renders an understanding of the South—we are to trust his sources, assume the sample is varied and valid, as well as have faith in the complete nature of the information provided. Each point raises cause for concern, but I don’t think Naipaul was trying to make sweeping generalizations with his writing as much as provide a different bias. Naipaul makes no attempt to hide his experiences as a boy in Trinidad, his education in England, or his Indian heritage. In fact, it seems that these aspects of his character may enrich his commentary. There was also an obvious attempt to let narratives and their possible meaning occur as naturally as they could under the given circumstances. He states that “travel of the sort I was doing, travel on a theme, depends on accidents: the books read on the journey, the people met." The assumption is that Naipaul was simply allowing his informants to represent themselves. Who he chose to interview, what he may have asked them, and what he hoped to find exists in tension with what these people actually said. Assuming they were accurately quoted, I believe they were diverse enough to convince the reader that Naipaul avoided one select group over another. Black radicals, jaded politicians, whimsical writers, fundamentalist Christians, yuppie businessmen, iconoclastic ideologues, and other characters speak in concert to provide an understanding, while incomplete, of particular southern mentalities. Even more surprisingly, Naipaul admits when certain people were rude to him, uninteresting or uninterested, surprisingly likable, or downright elusive, which allows the reader to intimate his biases and decipher the information accordingly.This approach to rendering the South may be the only reasonable way to do so because to understand the South is to negotiate the different conflicting voices all speaking with supposed authority. Naipaul leaves us without an epilogue or conclusion, but can we blame him? The book is a gestalt, as is the South. There is no monolithic South and no single group has the privilege to singularly express southern identity. Any major conclusions would have inevitably been an attempt to synthesize the material into a cohesive understanding of southern identity, but that is simply not the point of the book.Globalism, while never directly addressed, is omnipresent in the book. Naipaul draws historical parallels and connections with his birthplace of Trinidad—one informant even professes that his family at one time had a legal claim to the island. In another passage, Naipaul insinuates continuity between swept yards in the South, Trinidad, and even Japan, which to him represent the shared cultural values of order and cleanliness. Interviewees also express concern, excitement, and everything in between regarding the emerging global industrialization that is occurring in the South. Immigration, slavery, and global capitalism are all directly discussed by both the author and his informants, but no single understanding of how the South has interacted with the rest of the world is presented. In a way, the global/local intersection is implied more than it is ever stated in the book. Many of the informants seem to have an awareness of how they are perceived by the world, but most of them seem oblivious to how the world has shaped them. At one point, Naipaul observes an “almost Indian obsession of the South with religion, the idea of life beyond the senses." This line struck me because it not only illustrates his preoccupation with southern religious life, but it draws a direct connection between his culture and the culture he is observing. It is in sentences like this that Naipaul reveals an emotional involvement with his subject. The religiosity of the South seems omnipresent to him as he speaks to each person about their experiences and opinions of the region. Honestly, it’s possible that many of his informants may have been posturing for the author, but this proves his point regardless. Whether genuine or not, it seems that most of those he spoke with felt the need to address religion to some extent as a factor in southern identity. The pioneer mentality is another reoccurring theme, but religious obsession is shown as a shared feature across all social levels. His quote also compared southern religiosity with Indian religiosity, which seems to provide a means for Naipaul to better understand and empathize with his subjects. I think the “obsession with religion” he found is better understood as an ongoing negotiation with a historical institution. Southerners are forced to define themselves within or against religious institutions because of their prominent role in Southern social life. Many of his informants most likely spoke about religion because they assume it is something with which they are expected to define themselves against.

[leowillemse · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I agree with my colleague who wrote: "This book was a slow read for me. At times, I felt like I was trudging through it."Compared to his great book about traveling in Islamic countries, this book is slow, slower, "slowst" and not like th living in the South. That's what I remember from reading, 20 years ago.

[admassu4 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was a slow read for me. At times, I felt like I was trudging through it.The author sometimes uses phrases and sayings that may be common in England or Trinidad. But these phrases and sayings are awkward and almost out of place when used to describe the American South.Some reviews dubbed this book as an "even handed," almost objective look at the South by an outsider. But I thought the author frequently applied his experiences and values from a similarly agrarian former slave society, Trinidad. This made for great insight and comparisons but not the "even handed" approach described by some reviewers.I did enjoy the last chapter about Chapel Hill and tobacco road, where I thought the author was at his best: so descriptive you can smell the tobacco, feel the scorching sun, and see the red earth. One interesting technique he used was interweaving the work of a local poet, describing childhood on a tobacco farm.

[ben_a_11 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reading Naipaul always reminds me how well my background and upbrining predict the course of my life. Naipul, by contrast, is a marvel of self-creation.