Not only have there been many accounts of the macabre events [of the Jonestown Massacre] but the question of interpretation has continued to intrigue many commentators…. [With] so much data already on hand, it seems unlikely that any startling new facts will be uncovered and the question of interpretation becomes more pressing. ["Journey to Nowhere: A New World Tragedy"] stands out by its resolute attack on this question and its refusal to accept easy answers. Mr. Naipaul … is a sharp, sometimes pitiless observer. He is a masterful writer. And he was determined to gain an independent understanding of the Jonestown phenomenon. These qualities make for a book that no one interested in the matter can afford to ignore.

Mr. Naipaul's quest for an explanation took him both to California and to Guyana, to the beginning and end points of the movement, and "Journey to Nowhere" is an account of these travels as much as an interpretation of Jonestown. Travelogue and commentary keep on intersecting, but given the evidence of a fine mind working to understand a complex and shocking subject, one tends to get as interested in Mr. Naipaul as in what he is writing about so well. Whether one finds the constant intrusion of the author into so terrible a story a flaw or a benefit is a matter of taste; be this as it may, in Mr. Naipaul's case, the continual presence of the inquiring author makes the book lively and readable.

Other authors have interpreted Jonestown as an expression of America as a "sick society," or as yet another product of the anti-American madness that previously spawned Charles Manson and the Symbionese Liberation Army. The ecumenicity of Mr. Naipaul's antipathies protects him from the simplicities of either cliché. Mr. Naipaul's Guyana is a country beyond redemption—hopelessly stagnant, corrupt and violent. He did not like California either, and, one gathers, this dislike extends to America as a whole. California is for him the perfect symbol of all the ills of Western civilization, a place without meaning or identity, and therefore vulnerable to any doctrine, however lunatic or murderous, which promises a semblance of either. The present reviewer has very little knowledge of Guyana (though, even thus ignorant, one finds it hard to believe that any country could be so bereft of hopeful features); he is in a position to dissent vigorously from Mr. Naipaul's vision of California, not to mention America. Curiously, though, such disagreement does not detract from Mr. Naipaul's essential interpretation of what took place at Jonestown and, before that, in Jones's American movement. (p. 8)

Mr. Naipaul's is a harsh perspective; it is also a very persuasive one. To be sure, a less idiosyncratic writer would have softened his interpretation, introduced more nuances, perhaps shown more compassion. One strength of the book is that Mr. Naipaul does none of these things, letting the reader make his own modifications if he is so inclined….

There is one omission in "Journey to Nowhere," though, that must be mentioned as a serious weakness: Except for some passages about the rather pathetic remnants of the Black Panthers in Oakland, Calif., Mr. Naipaul's account barely touches on the motives and the fate of Jones's black followers…. By no stretch of the imagination can they be seen as products of the "California syndrome." They were fascinated by Jones's putative gift of healing, seduced by his cynical use of traditional Protestant rhetoric and touched by his concern (which, for all one knows, may have been genuine at the beginning). It would have been important to enter into their story too, along with the stories of all those assorted gangsters, revolutionaries and deranged intellectuals. What is more, an examination of their story might have introduced the note of compassion that one misses in this book. (p. 20)