his description of Mott, a minor gringo:nMott always looked sprightlynand pleased with himself, likenHarry Truman at the piano,nwith his rimless glasses andnneatly combed hair. He hadngone crazy in the army andnnow received a check eachnmonth, having been declarednfifty percent psychologicallyndisabled. Had they determinednhim to be half crazy all the timenor full crazy half the time? Mottnsaid the VA doctors never wouldnspell it out for him. He hadnwhatever the opposite ofnparanoia is called. He thoughtneverybody liked him and took andeep personal interest in hisnwelfare. But then everybody didnlike him.nStuff like that, of course, cannot alwaysndistract us from the progression of plot,nor from learning why ‘”The passwordntonight is L.C. Smith.'” The bumpynride of Gringos proves that CharlesnPortis has still got what it takes, and thatndown-home thoughts about food suggestnsomething too about the enjoymentnof novels: “Mashed potatoes arenthe better for a few lumps, in mynopinion, and gravy too for that matter.”n/.O. Tate is a professor of English atnDowling College on Long Island.nOn the Way Homenby Gregory McNameenQuerencianby Stephen BodionLivingston, Montana: Clark CitynPress; 154 pp., $12.95nThe literary map of New Mexiconincludes the names of many wellknownnwriters. To the north, in thenheavily publicized vicinity of Santa Fenand Taos, are Rudolfo Anaya, JohnnNichols, Haniel Long, Erna Fergusson,nMary Austin, Paul Horgan. Dotting thenredrock canyons and high mesas of thenwest are a roster of Native Americans:nLeslie Marmon Silko, Simon Ortiz, N.nScott Momaday, Luci Tapahonso. Tonthe south, in the dusty Tularosa Valleynwhere Billy the Kid made his way intonhistory, lies the territory of EugenenManlove Rhodes. Nearby, one findsnRoss Calvin and, every now and again,nLarry McMurtry.nThe map is pitch-black with inkneverywhere but the section marking thenhigh grasslands to the north of the BlacknMountains, between Socorro andnSpringerville on the Arizona line. ThisnBRIEF MENTIONSnINDIA: A MILLION MUTINIES NOWnby V.S. NaipaulnNew York: Viking Penguin; 521 pp., $24.95nstretch of west-central New Mexico isnfine, mile-plus-high, lonesome country,nvisited by archivists of the Farm SecuritynAdministration in the 1930’s and bynastronomers from around the worldntoday, who come by to check in on thenso-called Very Large Array of radiontelescopes (featured in the film 20JO)nnear the hamlet of Magdalena. Apartnfrom the occasional hunter and a fewnThe gifted Naipaul brothers descended from migrant workers who a century ago werenpart of a flood of immigrants arriving from India in the lower Caribbean, notablynTrinidad and what was then “B.G.,” or British Guyana. The elder brother—V.S., asnhe is locally known—has shown unrivaled critical insight into these enclaves; thenyounger, Shiva, died a few years ago, leaving us A Hot Country, the finest WestnIndian novella ever written. V.S. has now been deservedly knighted, but says henrefuses to use the title.nWhen V.S. Naipaul returns to the land of his fathers, he finds himselfnimmediately immersed in a vast, fragmented continent, with its deities, splinternreligions, sects, sub-sects, shrines, cults, castes, and contradictions (the Marxist-nLeninist faction of the Communist Party of India was split into 20 groupings byn1973). A group of “Maoists” ape the stars of Tamil cinema. A purveyor of burntncow-dung cures relishes American commercial fiction. A scientist observes dietarynprohibitions, a doctor regulates his behavior according to astrological “laws.” Anman who once lived under a rooftop water tank has risen in life to become a filmnwriter. A Brahmin publicity girl must submit to the strictures of her clan, such asnthat menstruating women are pollutant at 15 feet and that pipe water corruptsnfemale morals. The editress of a new women’s magazine proffers advice on how tonbehave during the humiliating “bride-seeing” visits.nThese are the “million mutinies” of the book’s subtitle, rebellions against “lifenlived at an extremity.” Naipaul has done an amazing amount of legwork,nparticularly in Bombay, Goa, Bangalore, Madras, Delhi, and Calcutta. IncrediblenCalcutta, where corpses lie abandoned on sidewalks and buzzards perch on thenledges of hotel windows, gives Naipaul “the feel of an abandoned Belgiannsettlement in central Africa in the 1960’s, after Africans had moved in andncamped.” Unfortunately, some of the people whom Naipaul has interviewedn(often with the help of a translator) are considerably less interesting than others.nAnd it is difficult to reconcile the instances of a rabid endemic violence withnNaipaul’s vision of a new India made finally whole.nIn summary, Naipaul writes: “It was what I felt — in a lesser or differentnway — about my own Indian family background in far-off Trinidad. I felt that thenphysical conditions of our life, often poor conditions, told only half the story: thatnthe remnants of the old civilization we possessed gave the in-between colonialngenerations a second scheme of reverences and ambitions, and that this equippednus for the outside world better than might have seemed likely.” And: “The verynmultiplicity of Indian castes and communities made for some kind of balance.”nThis is very fine. The “multiplicity” he speaks of is religious, and religion herenpermeates life lived at an extremity, giving Indian culture the confidence of itsndignity, against the parvenu colonial (not excluding the communist) one. Also,nmultiplicity helps explain the remarkable affinity and affection upper-class Englishnfelt for India, e.g., Kipling and Forster whose Aziz, in the last pages of A Passage tonIndia, nevertheless shouts after taking note of that country’s various sects, “Hurrahnfor India! ” Ironically, and despite the violence, V.S.’s splendid book echoes thatncry. Sectarian excess has so disgusted the sectarians themselves that “there was innIndia now what didn’t exist 200 years before: a central will, a central intellect, annational idea.”n— Geoffrey WagnernnnJULY 1991/41n