SOURCE: Thelwell, Michael M., and Irving Howe. “Contra Naipaul.” In Duties, Pleasures, and Conflicts, pp. 200-07. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987.

In the following exchange of letters first published in the New York Times Book Review, Thelwell criticizes and Howe defends Naipaul's literary treatment of African culture.

To the Editor:

Had the brothers Naipaul not existed, would you have had to invent them? One suspects so. For how else would it have been possible for little brother Shiva to pontificate in your columns [Shiva Naipaul's North of South: An African Journey reviewed by John Darnton] that “the African soul is a blank slate on which anything can be written, onto which any fantasy can be transposed.” That was May 6. In your May 13 issue, senior brother Vidiadhar compounds the nonsense by intoning dramatically, to the quite evident titillation of interviewer Elizabeth Hardwick, that “Africa has no future.”

Enough already...