There must be two V. S. Naipauls: One, in full control of his materials, sets up a world populated by beautifully rendered West Indian, Hindu, or British people, and keeps his plot line so tense he never lets go. The second appears a prey to certain appetites and obsessions and tends to dissipate both story and characters. Here the nonhero watches himself carry out self-destructive deeds, then watches himself watching, and analyzes the analysis. In these happenings the leading men like to drift into dimly lit, dimly described barrooms, devour, let us say, one hundred oysters for no reason, drink too much, and then complain about not feeling well when they end up with a woman they didn't want in the first place. Alas, the curtain is not drawn. Instead, we are offered an annex of lamentations about youngish men ill-fitted for the hard labor of escalating love campaigns.

This ceaseless self-pitying, this frenzied defeatism—after awhile as predictable as the sunny heroism of Rudyard Kipling's colonials—nearly wrecked the author's novel The Mimic Men, and it also wrecks, now unconditionally, the title story of A Flag on the Island. Our examples of oyster gluttony and drinking brawls were drawn from this attempt at creating a “Ulysses in Nighttown” sequence with a Caribbean setting. Not only does Naipaul constantly switch viewpoints, he hasn't made up his mind whether to carry out his assignment or write a blackish farce against it. His assignment, as stated in a bitter preface, was to create a “musical” story for a film company, which also demanded much dialogue, much sex, and a leading American character. The author has smudged his blueprint at every corner, and the outline wavers as giddily through the landscape as its alcoholic chronicler, an American black-marketeer, Second Class.

However, the other ten pieces of fiction are definitely the work of the other Naipaul. While all of them offer much pleasure, some are remarkable, and three, in my opinion—“A Christmas Story,” “Greenie and Yellow,” “The Heart”—should be reprinted in anthologies of “The Best …” In “A Christmas Story” a Hindu named Choonilal, disgusted with his “meek, cowdung faith,” has converted to hygienic Presbyterianism and acquired a golden possession; the name Randolph. (These changes of name, signifying attempted changes of self, occur frequently among the West Indian protagonists.) Randolph gains headmastership of a school, ultimately marries a lady of “attainments”—she turns out to be a scold—but never earns enough money. His rationalizations of his bungling, rendered in pious Presbyterianese, are delicious; and the microcosm of village characters and their intrigues is rendered with a crystallinity that is a little reminiscent of Gogol's pictures of Russian bureaucracy.

“My Aunt Gold Teeth,” “The Raffle,” “The Enemy,” and “The Mourners” are composed and orchestrated in a similar manner. If a couple appear to be anecdotes rather than finished stories, they are all spicy and lean, the language never trying too hard. The only tale narrated in a sort of lingo—and a joy to read although a veritable obstacle course in Calypso—is “The Baker's Story,” in which a black baker from Grenada has to hide behind some local “Chinee” to finish his H. Alger-crawl to wealth.

“The Heart” and “Greenie and Yellow” show the author at his very best. The first is set in a drab Hindu dwelling somewhere in Trinidad, the second in Mrs. Cooksey's inimitable London parlor. Both are centered around pets. Both could be called psychological horror stories; both succeed on every level. With “Greenie and Yellow,” however, I think the author has entered new territory, and I hope he'll come back to it often. With a clinical bravura that would have pleased Guy de Maupassant he relates how a shrewish landlady, whose own marriage is a painful void, tries to force a Perfect Marriage in the world of caged birds, and in the process causes nearly all of them to die. Of course, Mrs. Cooksey, a model of sublime insensitivity, never recognizes herself as an instrument of destruction. This tale will outrage animal lovers and the many old ladies who like to feed those rats with feathers known as pigeons. Actually, the stories have enough in them to insult everybody, with special machine-gun bursts reserved for preachers of the Black Power gospel.

As for the unhappy film company that commissioned the title story, their officers could concoct a nice movie dish by 1) taking the plot of “A Christmas Story,” 2) mixing in elements of “The Baker's” madcap Calypso, and 3) simmering the mixture in a generous broth of Antillian lore, obtained from all the other narratives dealing with Hindus, Chinese, West Indian Negroes, half-Negroes, half-Chinese, British, half-British, etc. In the meantime, for people enamored of the Caribbean, this collection should do nicely as required (but infinitely pleasurable) reading.