Naipaul Says He Won’t Write Anymore

Apparently Sir Vidia has had enough of literature, fame and fortune. At a reading in India for the launch of his novel Magic Seeds, he declared that it is “likely to be [his] last book” and that he was too old to continue. A more interesting aspect of the announcement came a bit later, when he talked about the novel as a genre, when he said:

“I have no faith in the survival of the novel. It is almost over. The world has changed and people do not have the time to give that a book requires. A book needs great thought.”

I’m getting tired of all the gloom and doom predictions about the death of the novel, and I fear they may act as self-fulfilling prophecies. I mean, seriously, how can the novel be dead when you have Star?