Paul Theroux on a very difficult friend
The English novelist Paul Theroux was a friend earlier in his life of the novelist and essayist, and later Nobel Prize winner, V. S Naipaul. His description of their friendship was quoted in a mailing from the London Review of Books.
The first impression I had of V. S. Naipaul was the intensity of his intelligence, his severity in conversation, his insistent interrogation, his scrupulous correctness, his domineering personality. “What do you mean by that?’ “Define that word.” “You know that’s nonsense, don’t you?” He had no patience with casual conversation or idle thought. Chit-chat enraged him — he called it “chuntering.”
He was the most demanding friend I have ever known, and certainly the harshest teacher. He was a drill sergeant: hard to please, confident, correct, taskmaster, pedant, perfectionist, occasional bully and intimidator. As my superior officer he prepared me for battle. Had he known the film Full Metal Jacket, he would have routinely shouted: “What is your major malfunction, numb-nuts!” He was often funny — in the right mood he liked jokes and repartee — but even when he was guffawing over his cherished absurdities it was rarely relaxing to be in his company.
People have often asked me how I was able to quote him so exactly, why I had such a clear memory of his observations or his speechifying. It was because I was nervous, because I was expected to be at my best, and mine was an animal alertness. No creature is more wired than an animal in unfamiliar surroundings — every faculty is twitchingly alight, every synapse engaged. I was fully awake in his presence and fearful of making a blunder.
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