The coldness of V.S. Naipaul's narrator (and of VSN?)

In the second section, The Journey, of his 1987 (sorry, had date off by a year in earlier posts) novel, The Enigma of Arrival, V.S. Naipaul presents in summary the life story of the narrator (who seems to match in all known details VSN himself) insofar as his life story is constituted of his "arrival" as a writer - that is, this section is the back story of the man whom we meet in the first section as a successful writer who has moved to Wiltshire in part to get away from the pressures of life in the literary circles of London. Just as the first section (Jack's Garden) delineates the narrator's initial misperceptions about the lives of simple "country folk" and farm laborers - which turn out to be more complex and melodramatic than he had anticipated - the 2nd section show how in some ways the narrator got the facts but missed the story: From his arrival in London, he tries to write about a London based on his preconceptions and fails to recognize that the lonely people in the boarding house where h spent his first few months were a great source of material themselves. Similarly, it takes him some time to realize that his best "material" as an aspiring writer came from this childhood in Trinidad (which became the subject of his first 4 novels, in particular his breakout, A House for Mister Biswas). His fear is being pigeonholed as a regional writer, an exotic - and to counter this fear he embarks on travels in the U.S. and in Africa, without any real assurance that these adventures will pay off; in fact, a publisher turned down a piece he wrote on commission about several Caribbean nations - the publisher wanted more of a travel guide, and the narrator aka VSN wrote a scathing history, not neglecting the poverty, the racism, and the harsh living conditions. The section ends w. narrator/VSN ensconced in his Wiltshire home and working on his African novel (A Bend in the River), with the surprising revelation that he lived in Wiltshire for 10 years; the last pages in the section consist of a letter from a woman named Angela who helped manage the boarding house and to whom the young narrator was attracted; she tells of her marriage and her difficult relation w/ grown daughter and asks narrator for some kind of help, possibly financial. The narrator had not heard from her for about 30 years; coldly, he notes that he never responded to her lengthy, heartfelt letter (though he uses her as "material": further evidence that narrator/VSN is a misanthrope who hardens himself when approached by others, contemptuous of those not his intellectual or literary equals, carefully guarding his hard-earned independence and renown. Halfway through this novel, we have come to sense that VSN is a brilliant writer, as thoughtful and observant as Proust, but w/ a more direct and aggressive style - but also a man without feelings, with no sense of empathy, with few friends or companions (if VSN was ever married, his narrator gives no hint and appears to live a solitary life).