SOURCE: "V. S. vs. The Rest," in Vanity Fair, Vol. 50, March, 1987, pp. 64-8.

In the following interview, Atlas offers insight into Naipaul's methods and motivations

"Whatever the labor of any piece of writing, whatever its creative challenges and satisfactions, time had always taken me away from it," recalls V.S. Naipaul in The Enigma of Arrival, out this month from Knopf. "And, with time passing, I felt mocked by what I had already done; it seemed to belong to a time of vigor, now past for good. Emptiness, restlessness built up again; and it was necessary once more, out of my internal resources alone, to start on another book, to commit myself to that consuming process again."

From this process has come Naipaul's most self-revealing book, the chronicle of an inward journey that proved more harrowing than his travels in darkest Africa. The Enigma of Arrival marks a...