Nothing is ever right with Naipaul's characters. Their incompetence is pervasive: in their speech, their vocations, their bodies, their possessions. In the early books they speak an English patois, a language of misconjugated verbs (“What happening there, Hat?”) and misused pronouns (“But we have Americans on we side now.”). When they speak English correctly, it is with visible strain and a loss of spontaneity. Lorkhoor, one of the amusing demagogues of The Suffrage of Elvira, speaks correctly English “in a deliberate way as though he had to weigh and check the grammar beforehand.” He is regarded suspiciously by his compatriot Trinidadians as a tourist from Bombay. Indeed, the very correctness of his speech on occasion causes him to commit “a social blunder,” when, for instance, he pronounces Mr. Cuffy's name Coffee as it should be rather than “Cawfey” as Mr. Cuffy in the spirit of the “incorrect” speech of his people prefers. The genius of Miguel Street (Naipaul's first collection of stories) loves to take auto engines apart but cannot quite put them back together again. Those who study hard to escape the squalor of life in Trinidad either fail their exams or their success is tainted by sloppiness and plagiarism. (Mr. Biswas' son's exam paper is a mess, making his success a puzzle.