From twerp to sourpuss

Oh my, is Antilles becoming too Naipaul-heavy again? A couple more reviews of Patrick French's biography The World Is What It Is, as it sweeps its way across North America. Allen Barra in Bookforum (he neatly describes the book as "authorized but not compromised"); Michael Dirda in the Washington Post:

...there's not much to like or praise about V.S. Naipaul as a human being. He starts life as a twerp, then fairly quickly becomes a jerk and ends up an old sourpuss. The best overall epithet for him is infantile -- though one shouldn't neglect the claims of such adjectives as whiney, narcissistic, insulting, needy, callous, impolite, cruel, vengeful, indecisive, miserly, exploitative, snobbish, sadistic, self-pitying and ungrateful.