A Wounded Animal – Pt 2

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
August 26, 2018

PART 2

Reporting the world and its past, the past as a wound, the present as loss, has been Naipaul’s dedication and business, a sort of unillusioned mourning” (Frank Kermode, London Review of Books, 4 May 1989).

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIt was a Saturday evening in the fall of 1988. I had just arrived at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and was having dinner with a colleague when my nephew shouted from the first-floor bedroom: “Uncle Selwyn, Mr. Naipaul on the phone.” You could have heard a pin drop. Everyone became silent.

I went upstairs to answer the phone. In my best Trinidadianese, I intoned: “Good evening, Mr. Naipaul. This is Selwyn Cudjoe.”
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