vs_naipaul_2016_dhaka

18-2a__anthony_pantin

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/in-memoriam/v-s-naipaul-archbishop/"></div><p>Trinidad-born novelist V. S. Naipaul, who died last week at age 85, will always be twined in my memory with Trinidadian Archbishop Anthony Pantin, who died in 2000.</p>
<p>In 1974, between my sophomore and junior years of college, I spent two months in Trinidad, staying in Laventille at the home of the great-aunt and great-uncle (siblings) of one of my university friends. Laventille was a working class neighborhood on the Eastern Main Road close to both the capital, Port of Spain, and the University of the West Indies’ St. Augustine campus. Laventille is where the steel drum was invented and where the House of Angostura, which makes Angostura Bitters, is headquartered.</p>
<figure id="attachment_8918" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-8918" style="width: 378px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-8918" src="http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/18-2a__anthony_pantin.jpg" alt="" width="378" height="500" srcset="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/18-2a__anthony_pantin.jpg 378w, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/18-2a__anthony_pantin-227x300.jpg 227w" sizes="(max-width: 378px) 100vw, 378px" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-8918" class="wp-caption-text">Archbishop Anthony Pantin</figcaption></figure>
<p>Catholic Archbishop Anthony Pantin (1929-2000) was an important figure on the island, not just because 20-25% of Trinidadians were Catholic, but also because he provided a reformist counterweight to Prime Minister Eric Williams, the Oxford-educated historian who was Trinidad’s Prime Minister from Independence in 1962 until his death in 1981. Williams’s rule was harsh by the standards of former British colonies in the Caribbean.</p>
<p>Pantin was a trusted mediator during both the 1970 Black Power Crisis and the attempted coup in 1990. A beatification process began in 2013 to have him declared a saint. In thumbnail, Pantin resembles Pope Francis: In a 2001 article in the <em>Los Angeles Times</em>, Mark Fineman referred to Pantin as the “people’s priest” and wrote, “Pantin chose to live in Trinidad’s poorest parish during his first five years as archbishop. He drove a Volkswagen Bug. He picked up hitchhikers. He was adored by the poor. And he alienated many among the nation’s rich.”</p>
<p>When he was Father Pantin, the Archbishop was my university friend’s dean at St. Mary’s College, a secondary school, so when I contacted him, Pantin invited me to the Archbishop’s House. He was dressed in a white cassock when we met, and after talking for half an hour, he suggested a tour of Laventille, where he had served as a parish priest. Driving his aforementioned 1960s VW Bug, he showed me the church my friend had attended and other places of interest. He knew many of the people we passed by name and waved as we drove by.</p>
<p>Pantin was well read and had a fine sense of humor. We talked about Prime Minister Williams and C. L. R. James, two of Trinidad’s leading intellectuals of the 20th century. Then the conversation turned to V. S. Naipaul, a Nobel laureate known equally for his literary gifts and for portraying Third World people in an ungenerous light; he viewed the Caribbean, as well as Africa and India, through the lens of Oxbridge and judged them sorely lacking. Of course, the Great Britain Naipaul revered couldn’t live up to that standard either.</p>
<p>Asked about Naipaul, Archbishop Pantin sighed and, after a brief pause, replied, “If I had an attitude like his, I’d have to hang up my cassock.”</p>
<p>The Archbishop had the last word.</p>
<div class="at-below-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/in-memoriam/v-s-naipaul-archbishop/"></div>

V. S. Naipaul and the Archbishop

5ecfb15ca183b018fc97a776190de9a9

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/encountering-derek-walcott/"></div><p>By <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/contributor/alan-warhaftig/">Alan Warhaftig</a></p>
<p>Derek Walcott, born in St. Lucia in the Windward Islands, died on March 17, 2017 at the age of 87. He was the greatest poet produced by the strong literary culture of the Anglophone Caribbean, and is often listed among the greatest poets of the English language of the second half of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 and was knighted in 2016. <a href="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/encountering-derek-walcott/#more-3642" class="more-link">Read more</a></p>
<div class="at-below-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/encountering-derek-walcott/"></div>

Encountering Derek Walcott

<strong>Alan Warhaftig taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District for 28 years. In retirement, he is pursuing his longtime interest in Caribbean studies. </strong>

Alan Warhaftig

C. L. R. James: Renaissance Revolutionary

"For a long time now I haven't been I."
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">— Fernando Pessoa, <em>The Book of Disquiet</em></p>

Around the World

"There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers' battle with the heavens that cover them." — Federico García Lorca

Nonfiction

"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." — Mark Twain

Fiction

"You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to." — Molly Ivins

Politics

Don’t Be Afraid of Going Wrong: Conversations with C. L. R. James

Going in Beauty: An Interview with Tony Hillerman

"The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter, eh?" — Dashiell Hammett

Noir

"Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors." — Simone Weil

Cultural Studies

Alan Warhaftig taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District for 28 years. In retirement, he is pursuing his longtime interest in Caribbean studies. 