It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. And after today, it must surely be a truth universally acknowledged that V. S. Naipaul has never read Jane Austen.
Before I go any further, I shall put my hands up and admit that I have never read any of Mr. Naipaul’s fiction either – so the below is purely based on his comments at the Royal Geographical Society.
He said of Jane Austen that he

couldn’t possibly share her sentimental ambitions, her sentimental sense of the world.

Now, anyone who has read Jane Austen and engaged with the text for about 30 seconds would struggle to call her work sentimental. I often joke that Austen gets her own special exception to the Bechdel Test. While she has plenty of female characters and they do often talk to each other, they rarely talk about topics other than men. And yet, every time a female Austen character discusses men, she is actually commenting on the social and economic conditions of her time. There is nothing at all sentimental about being one of five daughters who will be left penniless after their father’s death, and for whom therefore securing an advantageous marriage is a matter of survival. Mr. Naipaul’s understanding of both Austen and the world in general seems incredibly limited if he cannot get his head around this.
Of women writers in general, V.S. Naipaul says

Women writers are different, they are quite different. I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me.

He puts this down to their “sentimentality, the narrow view of the world”.

And inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too.
My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh. I don’t mean this in any unkind way.

I especially love that final disclaimer – almost like he realises he’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar but can’t quite work out why this is a bad thing. Then again, “unkind” is perhaps too mild a word to apply to Mr. Naipaul’s comments. With a few words, he invalidates the experiences of half the human race, makes it clear that he finds nothing of value in those experiences or in women’s attempts to express them.
I guess that’s his prerogative – just as it is mine to think that V.S. Naipaul has failed to meaningfully engage with the world around him. So I for one shan’t be engaging with his work.