SOURCE: "The Ironic Approach: The Novels of V. S. Naipaul," in Critical Perspectives on V. S. Naipaul, Heinemann Educational Books, 1977, pp. 178-93.

In the following essay, Rohlehr discusses Naipaul's ironic approach toward and "sympathetic rejection" of Trinidadian culture.

About Naipaul's first three novels George Lamming writes in The Pleasures of Exile:

His books can't move beyond a castrated satire; and although satire may be a useful element in fiction, no important work comparable to Selvon's can rest safely on satire alone. When such a writer is a colonial, ashamed of his cultural background and striving like mad to prove himself through promotion to the peaks of a 'superior' culture whose values are gravely in doubt, then satire, like the charge of philistinism, is for me nothing more than a refuge. And it is too small a refuge for a writer who wishes to be taken seriously.

This is...