A U T O B I O G R A P H Y • A N D • F I C T I O N

"I have no memory at all. That's one of the great defects of my mind: I keep on brooding over whatever interests me, by dint of examining it from different mental points of view I eventually see something new in it, and I alter its whole aspect. I point and extend the tubes of my glasses in all ways, or retract them." 

                                                                               – Stendhal, The Life of Henry Brulard

   Is with this quote that V.S. Naipaul opens the first chapter of his book, Reading & Writing: A Personal Account. The quote greatly expresses and fit the line of thought Naipaul gives in this chapter. Across this brief but deep chapter, Naipaul recounts to us, the reader(s), about his experiences with his Indian family in his new home, the island of Trinidad. He also recounts his experiences while growing up in the island and the diverse memories he had while in school and in the university. As one keeps reading, the reader finds that Naipaul is recounting his inner journey while he is discovering a side of himself that he had been having trouble with since he was a child. This side is his own desire as a writer. He recounts how he has several anthologies of parts of books that he liked, and how this would differ from the own likings of his father. 

    His father served a rather special role in this journey. His father served as his role model, and his inspiration for the things he wanted to achieve. We can observe in this chapter as he struggles while wanting to become a writer, not having nothing to write about but his experiences, which frustrated him greatly. But what's rather impressive in this chapter is how Naipaul uses a rather peculiar way to recount his tale. He gives real people characters, and uses a rather peculiar way to tell his journey.As one keeps reading, one gets caught up in the stories, which makes it more interesting when reading, since it provokes an interest in the reader to keep reading and find out what happens.

     While reading Naipaul's chapter, one may think is rather easy to write this way, but it actually is a rather difficult task. I find it rather hard to write a personal experience as a story and assign real people characters in that story. While Naipaul uses his rather fun and entertaining way to write, we can see in other authors like Carl Jung, that there is a tendency to exaggerate and even have the possibility to alter the memories or alter the success of events as they really happened. I personally think that this is a normal part of writing an autobiography, since most of the time we can't remember the event in full detail; I make the remark that some people do possess this amazing ability to remember everything in full detail. That's why we must be careful when writing, even more so if it's an autobiography, because we can get caught in writing everything as a fictional tale and forget the actual event, and start exaggerating or change the actual story when writing about it, just so it can fit more into the fictional tale we are trying to tell. 

"An autobiography can distort, facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies. It reveals the writer totally."

                                     – V. S. Naipaul