Naipaul's Pessimism

I've never known quite what to make about this, but it has been in my notes since the novel was new:

My family were not fools. My father and his brothers were traders, businessmen; in their own way they had to keep up with the times. They could assess situations; they took risks and sometimes they could be very bold. But they were buried so deep in their lives that they were not able to stand back and consider the nature of their lives. They did what they had to do. When things went wrong they had the consolations of religion. This wasn't just a readiness to accept Fate; this was a quiet and profound conviction about th vanity of all human endeavour.

I could never rise so high. My pessimism, my insecurity, was a more terrestrial affair. I was without the religious sense of my family. The insecurity I felt was due to my lack of true religion, and was like the small change of the exalted pessimism of our faith, the pessimism that can drive men on to do wonders. It wa the price for my more materialist attitude, my seeking to occupy the middle ground, between absorption in life and soaring above the care of the earth.

VS Naipaul, A Bend in the River 16 (1978)