[V. S. Naipaul's essays in] "The Return of Eva Perón"] "meditate" on what he and Joseph Conrad would agree are "half-made societies," composed of those who are "prisoners of their cultures," trapped in "lunacy, despair."… [Naipaul] proves himself to be, incidentally, the best journalist of imperialism to have bothered to write in the English language. He is a kind of portable tree, who removed himself in order to invite lightning; by that brightness, he took notes on his own scars.

The "half-made" society, emotionally, is "parasitic"; it dreams of a "removed civilization," Europe. It apes the master even as it cuts the master's throat. A half-made society, historically, institutionalizes "a process of forgetting"; it substitutes legend and myth for fact and consequences. It consumes "the culture and technology of others." A half-made society sponsors "bad art" in "a country that hasn't really worked" because the redeemers who...