Late Late Night: Dumbasses of the Week (V.S. Naipaul and Kenneth Del Vecchio)

This guy:

This past week, the Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul was interviewed at the Royal Geographic Society in London about his phenomenal career, which spans six decades. It should have been a glorious moment. Instead, Sir Vidia told an interviewer that no woman could ever be his literary match. Then he singled out Jane Austen and said that he couldn’t possibly “share her sentimental ambitions, her sentimental sense of the world.”

Naipaul also called a book by his former female publisher, “feminine tosh.” And that, he said, is because a woman has a “narrow view of the world, since she is inevitably not a complete master of the house.” This from a man the New York Review of Books called “the greatest living master of English prose.”

His comments somehow reminded me of this guy and this scene:

The real dumbass above went after women authors and the fictional dumbass went after women characters and women readers, but the criticism pretty much seems to boil down to stereotyping all female writers, characters, and readers as irrational, overly emotional, unworldly chick lit lightweights.

On the other hand, Jack Nicholson was playing a misanthropic novelist whose life had been debilitated by obsessive compulsive disorder, whereas V.S. Naipaul is a Nobel laureate who once said of his mistress: “I was very violent with her for two days. I was very violent with her for two days with my hand. My hand began to hurt.”

His poor, poor hand. So burdened doing all those enriching “master of the house” things.

This is the guy who can’t think of any girl writer who is his literary equal? Or…gasp…a girl writer that is better than him?

I’m sorry we can’t all write from the experience of having physically assaulted someone for two days. Our poor little wimmen pea brains and our narrow little existences.

Here’s what I think.

Naipaul needs to go sit in a fetal position and put on some Depends if need be and read Zadie Smith.

As a matter of fact, I just did a cursory search on whether he has and found this from an interview in 2008:

The conversation turns briefly to Zadie Smith. Naipaul has not read White Teeth, but sympathises with the author’s predicament: ‘The problem for someone like that is: where do you go, how do you move? If you’ve consumed your material in your first book, what do you do?’ He shakes his head. ‘All those stages are full of anguish.’

Why hadn’t Naipaul read White Teeth by 2008? That’s pretty ridiculous. It was published in 2000 and was highly acclaimed. I think this is a case of a big ego masking insecurities.

Be sure to check out Diana Abu-Jaber’s open letter to this dumbass — From One Writer To Another: Shut Up, V.S. Naipaul (h/t Ramsgate, over in the comments at my Sat. crosspost at TM’s.) Teaser:

Your use of the word “master,” is chilling. My father’s family is from a part of the world that has been colonized and conquered many times over. For many Jordanians, education and literacy has come in the form of British schools and the English language: but can anyone claim that the colonized subject is the master of his or her own home?

Cujo359, another regular over at TM’s, had this to say about Naipaul:

I’ve never heard of that guy, but I’ve heard of Jane Austen. Just sayin’.

The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates urges us–quelle surprise-to not deprive ourselves the genius of Naipaul because of Naipaul’s misogynist (and racist) blinders:

The fact of the thing is this: We don’t get to choose our teachers. If you’re going to be an artist, or a thinker, or even a full person, you better be able to make yourself into something more than the shadow of someone else’s bankrupt philosophies. You better be more than an obvious and predictable reaction.

To which I say, hey Coates, where was this attitude when you went off on Cornel West? Where was the PSA saying “Just ignore Cornel West’s comments about Obama as a black man and learn from what he is saying about Obama being a corporate tool. You don’t get to choose your teachers…” ? Just wondering.

Switching gears…

Here’s another creepy dumbass (h/t Dakinikat) — NJ GOPer Premieres Anti-Abortion Suspense Flick This Weekend:

Kenneth Del Vecchio, a Republican candidate for New Jersey state Senate and a producer of conservative-themed films, is premiering a psychological thriller this weekend with a pro-life twist: Three pregnant women, who intend to have abortions, are kidnapped and forced to carry their pregnancies to term.

The movie, called “The Life Zone,” was produced by Del Vecchio’s “Justice For All Productions,” and is premiering Saturday at the Hoboken Film Festival in Teaneck, N.J. A press release describes the festival as “one of the nation’s largest film festivals, which Del Vecchio founded and chairs.”

From the release:

The controversial premise of THE LIFE ZONE: three women have been kidnapped from abortion clinics and are being held for seven months–until they all give birth. The film, which appears to cut right down the middle, examining the topic from both sides, offers a powerful, anti-abortion climactic twist.

Well this looks like as good a spot as any for me to put up some footage from The Last Supper. If you’re unfamiliar with this dark political comedy from the ’90s, it’s about a group of stereotypical bleeding hearts who invite all kinds of rightwing nutjobs to dinner to kill them and rid the world of their evil. Without giving the final scene entirely away, I’ll just say that the message of The Last Supper is that all politically motivated violence is ultimately futile.

Not sure whatever the hell the “anti-abortion climactic twist” is supposed to be with “The Life Zone” (interesting how the title mimics The Last Supper).

Is it that kidnapping women and holding them for seven months to force them to have babies is not a “culture of life” thing to do? Somehow, I’m not convinced.

Anyhow, here’s The Last Supper trailer: