SOURCE: Eder, Richard. “The Big Chill.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (25 October 1998): 2.

In the following review, Eder describes Sir Vidia's Shadow as fascinating yet deeply flawed by Theroux's recriminations against Naipaul.

Suppose that James Boswell, resenting his own long deference, had appended to his immortal account of Samuel Johnson a sneering denunciation of his subject's work, arrogance, bad table manners and physical ugliness. Or that Robert Louis Stevenson, saddle-sore and irked by some final bit of stubbornness, had ended his engaging Travels with a Donkey with a savage lambasting of the furry Modestine.

The damage down the centuries would not be done to Johnson or Modestine. It would be done to the vital balance of two remarkable books and to their authors.

Paul Theroux has been condemned for writing an account of his longtime friend and mentor, V. S. Naipaul, that some critics have called “pathography,” Joyce Carol...