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Johan Garcia's Reviews > Miguel Street
Miguel Street
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Miguel Street probably ranks as the most poignant work of art I have ever read, stirring inside of me emotions that no piece of literature has ever had the power of doing. From the narrator's perspective, we are introduced to every character in his vicinity, portraying the diversity and the interaction between them. From banter to jokes, laughs and sorrow, intellectual conversations and heated arguments, this is a community within Trinidad where everything that happens in Miguel Street is nothing but the world for each and every one of the characters. It is a place where we hurt and laugh, but when we leave at the end with the character, tired by the pain and the inability of every character to fulfill his or her dream, it remains place that creates a nostalgia that makes us want to return to those dilapidated buildings and those forgotten roads that the government and the upper class may prefer to ignore as belonging to some slum that has no particular importance whatsoever. For those of us that read Miguel Street, we know better.
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Quotes Johan Liked
“Look, boys, it ever strike you that the world not real at all? It ever strike you that we have the only mind in the world and you just thinking up everything else? Like me here, having the only mind in the world, and thinking up you people here, thinking up the war and all the houses and the ships and them in the harbour. That ever cross your mind?”
― Miguel Street
― Miguel Street
Reading Progress
Finished Reading
March 1, 2012
– Shelved
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Alan
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rated it 5 stars
May 07, 2012 10:16PM
Agreed. It's unique--and unique in Naipaul's work, of which I've read a dozen. Used to teach it in community college Freshman English--maybe fifteen years, often twice a year. It never got old to me. My "teaching" was largely aloudreading, including my class who were fearful of the accent. Once in awhile a student had been there, would try to recreate some. I find it a comic achievement of the highest order, rather like (and unlike) Faulkner's As I LAy Dying. Man-Man's dog is a wonderful creation, roughly equal to Shakespeare's Crab, the clown's dog in Two Gentlemen of Verona. I wonder if a film of it is even possible, maybe by a Brazilian film-maker? The humor would be tough to represent visually. The brand-new truck "repaired" by the compulsive tinkerer--lovely. I would use the book as the first of five in my course, others including a Shakespeare play and a memoir or non-fiction. It really got the class off to a great start. Of course, Naipaul grew into a bit of a zero--dissing women authors, whoring, etc. But if we can forgive politicians, why not geniuses?
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