Take a drink!

A Naipaul drinking game? Doug Childers, writing in the Richmond Times/Dispatch, has a suggestion for readers of The World Is What It Is:

Enjoy a shot every time somebody in its pages takes a shot at V.S.

First up, the sister-in-law: "When he was young, he was snobbish but he was always joking; later he was just snobbish."

Take a drink!

And what's that the composer Vanraj Bhatia said about him? "He was snobbish, nothing nice to say -- a thoroughly nasty human being."

Knock back another!

And while we're piling on, how about this zinger from a student who suffered through a class Naipaul taught at Wesleyan University: "He was, simply, the worst, most close-minded, inconsiderate, uninteresting and incompetent professor I have ever met."

Cheers!

Meanwhile, in the New York Times, Dwight Garner offers a more, ahm, sober review of Patrick French's biography.