Journey to Nowhere

Powerful, well written, classic. I have been researching the rise and fall of the Peoples' Temple since 1980, and Naipaul has written a documentation that is not only deep and probing but also prophetic.The powerful were not manipulated -- they were complicit. This much I know, and they remain complicit. I know things today about the Temple that Naipaul did not. Still, Naipaul's rendering is as balanced as it is unbiased -- something you don't find very easily anymore.While the racial aspect of what happened in Guyana is such an obvious factor, what is not clear is why. Naipaul has a theory as eloquent as it is powerful:"The CIA killed them. America killed them. They had gone to the Guyanese jungle because they wanted to live a life free of racism, sexism and poverty. ... One can think of them (Blacks) as the human equivalent of the radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants: sterile and potentially lethal. What, the ecologists ask, is one to do with this waste? Bury it miles underground? Shoot it into outer space? Discover some way of breaking it down and rendering it harmless? The junk people. The human waste left behind by American history, are no less negative, no less dangerous a quantity. One sees them on the streets of midtown Manhattan, carrying glittering noisemaking machines, dressed to kill, the ugliness and the hatred of the discarded slave glowing in their eyes. You see them in Harlem, standing drunk or drugged on street corners. What is to be done with them?"What a concept. Not because of what or who they are ... but because of what we have made of them. The concept boggles the mind with it's clarity and coherence!What is also true is that because the world believed they were all suicides (they were most assuredly not) no church would accept their bodies for burial. How can a travesty become any more horrendous, as the bodies bloated and leaked their toxic fluids in the tropical heat? Again, not something Naipaul was privy too, but I have learned since.Further on, at the end, the book becomes even more prophetic in terms of where the concept of "mind control" took of from Jim Jones, validating theories that are unfolding as we speak. First copyrighted in 1980, it is amazing how clear his vision truly was. I love this book, and highly recommend it for insights into what is happening in this world at this time.

I love Naipauls work--always thought provoking and eloquent. It reminds me of the more recent memoir by the author and survivor of Jim Jones encampment in Guyana South America, Deborah Layton. Her book, Seductive Poison explains how the political elite were seduced into providing favors to the Peoples Temple--both in Guyana and the United States. Read together, Journey to Nowhere and Seducitve Poison are powerful bedfellows.

While Shiva Naipaul's fiction is powerful - I am thinking principally of his first work Fireflies - one can not deny that his legacy lies in the realm of non-fiction. He was, after all, a highly regarded travel writer.I would contend that Shiva Naipaul was much more than a very good travel writer. While Journey to Nowhere uses settings, scenery and environment well to disturb the complacent Westerner, who has not had to witness the breakdown of the social order as the Guianese have, it also triumphs in simply telling a good story, something Shiva's older brother has a hard time doing in his Among the Believers.Nowadays, the amount of fiction published is shrinking, while non-fiction is flourishing. This emphasis on non-fiction, fueled by a desire to cater to specific segments of society in order to increase profitability, has resulted in the production of some of the most boring books anyone will ever see. Proof of this is Edmund Morris' Dutch: non-fiction is so boring one has to make up characters to liven it up. Whatever happened to all the wonderful stories that life presents to us everyday? Is life so totally devoid of anything interesting that we must turn to our imaginations?Shiva Naipaul's Journey to Nowhere stands far above the mediocre titles in non-fiction today, simply because Naipaul tells a good, albeit complex story. Naipaul traces the breakdown of the social order in Guiana to attitudes characteristic of the American Left. Eerie parallels can be found between Guianese strongman Forbes Burnham, Jim Jones, Huey Newton, and even - gasp - R. Buckminister Fuller. Nationalistic ideals people like Burnham, Jones, and Newton foster go hand in hand with leftist nonsense that R. Buckminister Fuller fostered. The dots are difficult to connect, but Shiva Naipaul connected them in this masterpiece which is certainly worth reading.