The mystery of arrival: on the road again and again. Why on earth?

I have been reading Naipaul's The Enigma Of Arrival since the beginning of this month. I have been reading more than 200,000 words for more than 20 days. It's hard to immerse yourself in it from the beginning. I have read it twice so far, but I want more. This seems to be a mystery.

I learned that Naipaul was recommended by a teacher last summer. After reading Miguel Street, his most famous collection of short stories, I immediately fell in love with this Indian-British writer who once won the Nobel Prize in Literature. So, when I heard that there were Naipaul's books in the library of my husband's unit, I chose this The Enigma Of Arrival. It stands to reason that this book should have been returned a long time ago. I still want to see more, because once I return it, I guess I will say goodbye to it forever, which is a little reluctant. On the one hand, it shows that "books are not borrowed or read" is indeed a truth. On the other hand, it also shows that I am possessive of books, and of course it also shows how much I like them.

But The Enigma Of Arrival and Miguel Street have completely different styles. At first glance, it is hard to believe that this is written by the same writer. Miguel Street tells the story of a street resident in Port of Spain, a British colony in South America, from the perspective and style of a child. The language is light, childlike and humorous, and it feels interesting to read. The Enigma Of Arrival, on the other hand, has a slow pace and often gives a long description of the scenery. If you haven't given up reading page ten, I absolutely admire your patience. The five chapters in the book-Jack's Garden, Journey, Ivy, Crow and Farewell Ceremony-seem to be loosely connected.

To tell the truth, when I first saw The Mystery of Arrival, it almost became my sleeping pill. However, I still want to understand why it is known as Naipaul's "most impeccable" book and "most durable" work. It's said that you shouldn't always read books that are not difficult, so I kept myself going. Sure enough, I didn't let me down, so I felt lucky.

Some people say that The Enigma Of Arrival is Naipaul's autobiographical novel, others say it is a collection of essays similar to Walden, while Chai Chunya, the chief screenwriter, screenwriter and director of Phoenix.com, thinks it is a cross-style work, which is also my opinion.

Because, if it is an autobiographical novel, most of the contents are the changes of a manor in Wiltshire, England, where the author lived for ten years, and the stories of the characters living in it. The author's role is more as an observer and narrator, although it is also interspersed with many personal thoughts and feelings; If it is a collection of essays, there are many characters and plots. Although the plot is not tense, tortuous and bizarre, there are no fewer than seven or eight people who write about death, and some characters can leave a vivid impression on readers even if they don't have much pen and ink.

Of course, it also has some autobiographical nature, especially in the second chapter "Journey", the writer tells in detail how to follow his dream, from a small colony that can hardly be found on the map to a distant suzerain country to study, how to turn frequent travel into the normal state of life and work, and start again and again, and how to start from a writing dream but find no writing theme and characters.

The origin of the title The Enigma Of Arrival appears in one third of the book. That's the name of a surreal painting hung by the author in the small stone house where the manor lives. It depicts a port. There are two people in the abandoned street, both of whom are wrapped tightly. One may have just arrived, and the other may be a port native. The picture is desolate and mysterious, and the author feels that it shows a mystery of arrival. When he first arrived at the manor, he had a difficult manuscript in hand. As soon as he saw this painting, he was inspired, hoping to write a book called "The Mystery of Arrival" in the future, and even made several prefaces for it.

The mystery of arrival, which was finally drafted many years later, should be very different from the original idea. The biggest difference is that, judging from the opening paragraph he wrote, it seems to be a fictional work, but what we can confirm now is that The Enigma Of Arrival belongs to a non-fictional work.

So, why is the author so fascinated by the word "arrival"? This depends on the author's life experience to find the answer.

In fact, Naipaul was an outsider at all stages of his life to the place where he lived. This is also the reason why he has been insecure.

He was born in Trinidad, South America. He was first discovered on Columbus' voyage. He originally belonged to a Spanish colony, so his family lived in Port of Spain. After the decline of Spain, Trinidad became a British colony again, so a large number of Indians moved away from India, which was also a British colony, including Naipaul's extended family.

Maybe it's because he can't find his identity and lacks a sense of belonging. Since 18 left Trinidad, his birthplace, for the first time to study in Oxford, England, Naipaul has been looking at his environment from the perspective of a stranger, and found again and again that what he saw in front of him was not the same world as he imagined, and he always had to adapt to every psychological gap. When he first came to London, he thought he had learned about this place from the British writer Dickens, but he didn't expect to be so strange. When he returned to Trinidad for the first time after leaving for five years, and every time after that, he would find many changes before he realized that it no longer belonged to him, although it had become the eternal theme of his writing.

Perhaps it is because of this identity that Naipaul has made extraordinary achievements as an immigrant writer. At least, every departure and arrival gives Naipaul an indispensable and important feature as a writer-sensitivity.

In fact, not only Naipaul, but also ordinary people. We often want to travel far away and often want to come back.

I remember last year 1 1 month, after leaving college for many years, I took the opportunity to participate in the marathon and returned to my alma mater. As far as I can remember, tea gardens and pine forests everywhere on the hillside outside the campus have long been nowhere to be found. Instead, there are noisy loops and rows of tall buildings in the city, and even the school gate is not in its original position. Originally, I was a little nostalgic, but things have changed, and I can only find the shadow of the past from some clues. The feelings in my heart are really complicated, strange, lost, disappointed and sad. Fortunately, for a moment, the breeze brought the unique fragrance of camphor trees, reminding me that there are still some things that have not changed.

After reading the mystery of arrival, it is inevitable to think, why are we on the road again and again? Maybe we have our own "mystery of arrival".