The Language of Advertising and the Novel: Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas

Abstract

Modernity in Trinidad, then, turns out to be extreme susceptibility of people who unsure of themselves and, no taste or style of their own, eager for instruction. In England and America there magazines for such groups; in Trinidad instruction is now provided by advertising agencies, which have been welcomed by people not only for this reason but also because advertising agency is itself modern thing. --V. S. Naipaul (The Middle Passage 47) Naipaul's acerbic reflections in The Middle Passage (1962) link advertising agencies to three things: modernity, derivative modes of taste, and instruction. Given that Naipaul's account assumes somewhat distorted view of history of colonial and postcolonial advertising, why should it warrant further scrutiny? (1) Objections to broader historical perspective evinced in The Middle Passage by now familiar, and I shall not rehearse them here. (2) Instead, I wish to focus on relatively neglected of Naipaul's remarks: in linking rise of advertising in Trinidad to modernity and to people who, having no taste or style of their own, eager for these statements imply striking connection between advertising and genre of novel. This connection, in turn, illuminates thematic and formal significance of language of advertising in several of Naipaul's novels. Guerillas (1975) opens with slew of ads, from the side wall of concrete house ... painted over with an advertisement (3) to signs for Thrushcross Grange, each bearing the name of firm that had put sign up: local bottlers of Coca-Cola, Amal (the American bauxite company), a number of airlines, and many stores in city (4).The narrator of The Mimic Men (1967) bemoans commercialization of his native island, noting that in the recent tourist publicity for Isabella, boys who will dive for small change and even rotten fruit are again presented as feature (60). In particular, Naipauls early work, A House for Mr. Biswas (1961), addresses themes of modernity, instruction, and derivative modes of taste by foregrounding way that forms of advertising implicated in modern anxiety over self-definition. Mr. Biswas--a painter of signs, student in Ideal School of Journalism, and an avid consumer--must simultaneously make sense of his life in highly commercialized world and attempt to break free from its illusory constructions. If language of advertising creates vivid, luxurious, and appealing world of future promise, constructed around importance of possessing advertised object, then it is within particular constraints and possibilities of this world that Mr. Biswas must carry out his lifelong struggle for autonomy As theorists such as Ian Watt and Michael McKeon have demonstrated, rise of novel is closely linked to those aspects of modernity that Naipaul associates in The Middle Passage with growth of advertising culture. The upheaval of various categories of social class identity, as well as rising influence of booksellers upon literary play powerful roles in shaping evolution of novel as genre of mass appeal. The constitution of general reading public by expanding middle class establishes market in place of patron, and necessitates growth of new institutions for publicity and distribution of reading material (Heyck 25). Indeed, according to William B.Warner, eighteenth-century novel is increasingly characterized by disrepute and illegitimacy that ... results from its close entanglement with market, and many of vices attributed to these novels also traits ascribed to market: both breed imitation, incite desire, oblivious to their moral effects and reach into every corner of kingdom (95). In illicit relationship between novel and advertising performs role of panderer: first, generating niche markets for diverse kinds of novels, and second, enabling formulation of desirable identities for potential readers qua consumers. …