Friday, October 05, 2007

V.S. Naipaul Seeks Out Erotic Carvings

I went to the Nepalese Temple, 'disfigured', Murray's Handbook said, by 'erotic carvings; they do not catch the eye, provided that the attendant can be discouraged from pointing them out'. The attendant was a youth with a long switch; I begged him to point them out. 'Here man and woman,' he began unexcitedly. 'Here other man. He Mr. Hurry-up because he say, "Hurry up, hurry up.'" Tourist lore: the gloss did not please me. The pleasures of erotic art are fragile; I wished I had followed Murray's advice.
--From pp. 266-7 of V. S. Naipaul's An Area of Darkness: A Discovery of India.

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