Rick Skwiot's Reviews > The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief

I was a sympathetic reader going in. I have read and admired V.S. Naipaul’s fiction and nonfiction for decades. I anticipated his newest tome, The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief, enough to pre-order it. But I came away disappointed not only in the book but in the Nobel Prize-winning author as well.

It was bad enough that Naipaul skims the surface here in his investigation of traditional African religion. He seemingly conducted no scholarly research (there is none cited or footnoted) and interviewed no experts, relying instead on anecdotal evidence taken from literary and political operatives and a few reputed and urbanized holy men, tribal chiefs and witchdoctors. But even then he might have pulled off this disorganized and eclectic travelogue if he had taken the time to actually write some decent prose. But it reads like a first draft, and as Hemingway said, “All first drafts are shit.”

Here, for example, is a portion of the Nobel Laureate’s account of his visit to the home of former Ghana President Rawlings:

“The house was well run. No word had been said but, to bridge the gap left by Rawlings and his wife, a well dressed waiter appeared with coffee and fruit juice. I went to the lavatory. I saw the family dogs in two big paved cages at the back of the yard. One cage had small dogs. The other cage had big dogs, a Dalmatian and various hounds, all fine and well exercised and happy. While I watched I saw them fed by a servant who entered the cages with their food. I could have looked at the feeding scene for a long time.”

This was the sort paragraph I would love to come across when reading freshman compositions. I would have its author copy it on the chalkboard and then proceed to instruct the class in basic prose craft: When and how to combine sentences. How to vary sentence structure. Where to add sensory details that make a scene come alive. How to use action verbs instead of flaccid state-of-being verbs like “was” and “had.” And then perhaps to talk about larger issues, such as developing a taste for what a reader might find interesting. Thus I would also instruct the Nobel Laureate.

I could cite scores of similar examples in the book, but I have more consideration for my readers than does Naipaul, apparently. Now pushing 80, he drags us from one superficial encounter to another, humorless, tired and at times admittedly frivolous. Driven not by desire to grasp and understand African belief but, seemingly, to fulfill a book contract obligation.

His powers of observation dimmed, he seems rather bored by his subject and the people he meets. Perhaps in part because he meets with the wrong people. Much of his reporting is hearsay rather than direct observation. A lot of talk without much point, and even Naipaul himself often questions the credibility of his sources. But the book is well subtitled, as all we get here are mere glimpses of traditional African religion, and no cohesive and revealing portrait.

However, we do stumble across some fascinating tidbits about Islam in Africa: its practice of polygamy and opposition to the nuclear family, seen as selfish and ruinous to societies; the harsh realities of harem life; the use of Egyptian eunuchs as harem guards. Alas, these are contemporary, not historic accounts, albeit second-hand, as Naipaul was denied access to the harems. Nonetheless, one wishes he had devised a way to interview a eunuch or a concubine. He also reports the horrid yet compelling recent history of Uganda, as well as other African locales.

I suspect that Naipaul’s agent and publisher encouraged him to write and publish this book, figuring to earn some fast cash off the venerated author. Had they, instead, been looking out for his legacy and reputation, they would have encouraged him to rework or, better yet, recycle his manuscript.