Should’ve been called A House for Mr Bitchass because that’s all he does all day — bitch about life and doing nothing much else besides. A House for Mr Biswas is one of those novels that successfully crafted an unsuccessful life where the protagonist doesn’t achieve much at all. He makes pretty crappy decisions which put an insurmountable barrier between him and the greatness he sets out to achieve. I honestly can’t think of many books like this, which also writes the story of mediocrity so beautifully.
Naipaul’s background is colourful, he is a naturalised global citizen: born into an Indian family in the Carribean and eventually adopting London as his home, where he died. In some ways, the book is as mixed as Naipaul ‘s background— that first and foremost, it feels like an Indian book with Trinidad in the backdrop. Indian culture flows through the veins of the book, through the voices of the characters. The first part of the book, where Mr Bitchass, I mean Mr Biswas was still living under the shadows of his in-laws were largely secluded to his interactions with his family and the in-laws’ extended family. The latter parts of the book, when Biswas started to take control of his life (in his own sense) when he ventured out into Port of Spain and made a career for himself, the Carribean shades of the book start to rear its head. But even during these parts, it is still a predominantly Indian book. The book in many ways, feels like it came from Naipaul’s personal space.
Mr Biswas (and Biswas is preceded by Mr when referred to by the narrator) was set up to fail since he was a child. Born with an extra finger, and the local fortune teller advising his parents that trees and water are bad for the boy, the odds were already stacked against him. A tragedy early in his life proved not just this prescient misfortune, but also his cowardice. It is difficult to say that this tragedy affects his life choices later on in his life as he hesitates to take great risks, or whether it is in Biswas’s nature to be a coward.
By chance, he was married into the Tulsi family, to a wife no older than he was, skipping the courtship altogether as he was pushed into the marriage by the matriarch. Marrying into the family was detrimental to Biswas’s independence and his ability to take charge of his life, as his livelihood depends on the Tulsi family, including the food that he eats, how his offsprings were taken care of, where he lives and also the job to sustain him. The jobs, in some ways, are merely a façade to show that he is doing something with his life.
Biswas’s life is a struggle between his ambitions, his idleness and keeping a fine balance with his extended in-laws family. The relationship with the Tulsis are complex, not to mention with his own wife, who has divided loyalties between her own family and her husband, and who more often than not side with her own family. And for me, to read this struggle should have been enjoyable, an embittered man who really cannot look after himself, who talk back to his in-laws and sometimes getting physically abused for it, and has a happy-go-lucky approach to life; but it is a difficult read because I couldn’t respect Biswas, and therefore I just can’t like him. Naipaul succeeded to portray one of the most pathetic characters in literature, but failed to make me like the book because of the same reason.
Yet, there’s a lot to like. It’s a depiction of a traditional family structure in decay. The Hanuman house where the Tulsis and those who married into the family live, are only as good as the fabric of the family which upholds it. Fabric is prone to wear and tear, and we see the decline of the Tulsi family as it gets too big too quickly. Naipaul is a master in manipulating and depicting the micro-relationships between the members of the family, especially between Biswas against everyone else.
Not many writers have addressed the concept of the house as a subject matter as Naipaul had in A House for Mr Biswas. Over the course of his life, Biswas lived in various houses, only a handful of which he can call a home. In Hanuman house, living with his in-laws, he was never the master of his own routines, as it is already pre-defined and he was not a strong enough person to make changes there. In some ways, his failure to acquire a house for himself reflects the shortcomings of his life. In Green Vale, he spared a land to buy a house, but his haphazard and gradual building from his meagre journalist salary left the house to languish. The house reflects the natures and destinies of its master.
Biswas had never been a man of property, maybe because he had no ambition for property, but fell into it. A property that keeps him going for as long until his untimely death, with the house mortgage unpaid and his offsprings left to shoulder the debt for an overpriced and only half-functional house. If anything his skills in fatherhood is lacklustre and he gives much control of his children to his in-laws family. He is a somewhat gifted writer that he was able to move to Port of Spain, with panache called the Editor in Chief for a job in a local newspaper and creative and bold enough to hold his own column for a while. So what’s his ambition then — his primary motivation?
It is to show up the doubters, mainly the combative in-laws and relatives who look down upon him. If we look at it in this light, it is a superficial reason to live, and also the primary reason why I cannot respect Biswas, because if this is what it takes to get him going — to feel superior than anyone else, it is deeply vain and selfish. Personally, I have an issue with arrogant people in general. Another dangerous question is whether Biswas is a reflection of a culture with this toxic element — that you must surpass your peers to feel “fine”, to be “accepted”. It is only in our personal observations based on our experiences that we can compare this, and we do need to compare on a case by case basis.
But there are other elements of Biswas’s identity that turn things on its head, such as his Brahmin caste which was part of the reason why the Tulsis was willing enough to marry him to one of their daughters. Though I know little about the caste system, it seems that it is a moot system that promotes elitism over merit. Biswas did not have merit, but he would not have been accepted into the Tulsis if it had been otherwise.
Throughout the book, the character of Biswas annoyed the shit out of me to the point that I doubted that I really wanted to finish the book, but I knew that I had to. There are other main characters like this in literature who I really have no respect over, and the reading of it, regardless of the beauty of the prose really puts an indelible tarnish on the book. But when the ordeal of the book was complete, I was still glad to have finished it.
