What do You think about The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1977)?
I'm puzzled by the popularity of this novel. I own a small new and used book store and I cannot keep this book stocked. It simply won't linger on the shelf. I have people asking for it all the time. After reading it, I can't for the life of me figure out why.For the first fifteen pages, I was agog at the odd use of language. I thought I had found an early predecessor to Gordon Lish and Gary Lutz. Not a father or grandfather. Maybe a queer uncle or family friend. But soon, I found myself frowning and sighing and "Oh, godding!" Not because of the strange English (in fact, that was the one saving grace of the novel) but because what I realized I was reading was a kind of a fable or folk tale that lacked, completely, any hint of subtext. I realized I was reading someone's dreams.Have you ever had to sit through the telling of a dream? Dreams are not "adventures" and there is nothing "incredible" about them because you can do anything you want in a dream so nothing means anything. It's funny, maybe, for the first few seconds or half-minute. But then it's just deadening. Because dreams aren't stories. And the story of a dream, told in a Kerouac rat-at-tat-tat, without craft or craftiness, is just not worth listening to. Or reading. And when I think of it, if this book had been read to me, in short bursts, I might have appreciated it. Maybe. Probably not. I don't know.
—Brent Legault
Dear Mr. Amos Tutuola,When I was a small boy I was told the story of a perfect gentleman who went to a market and returned from it with a girl that followed him. As he went back home, he kept giving back the pieces of him that were borrowed, so that by the time he got to his home, he was only a skull. And the girl deceived by his beauty now only a slave.Well, Mr. Tatuola, thank you very much for taking me through many indescribable adventures and many incomprehensible mysteries. I enjoyed them well, as a child should. But they reminded me of those days, when I was a small boy. Of the time I got scared when the lamp was taken away, and my fear disappeared when the light was restored. Of when I did not know how to be afraid when there was light, and when there were people around me. Now, I remember those days and I wonder why fear will be here beside me even when the sun shines, and people around me smile. Those days I was only worried about tomorrow if I hadn't talked my homework, because mother would scold me and my teacher would cane me. Mother won't ask me now whether I have done what I have to do, she'll ask me where is the result of what I have done. If I meet her by the road, - my childhood teacher, she'll be looking to see whether I have a suit and a tie, whether my smile says that I have seen and conquered. And my fear may be that she will only wave, and ask what art has done to me. Not what I have done to art.I want to go back to one of those days, when laughter was laughter and not the superfluous hiding of what lies beneath. When stories genuinely scared or made me genuinely happy, whether the next day I had forgotten them or not. When I knew that tomorrow will come, and apart from its simple fears, it will come and go. When I knew there was a man up there, beyond the infinite skies, that said son, I hold the universe together, in perfection, and if you only believe this, everything will unfold as it should. I want a tiny bit of those days. And to meet men like you -in person or in the pages of a book, -who will leave a legacy, who craft stories that will once in a while, remind us of what it was to be a child.For looking beyond your limited self and leaving us this enduring story, may immortality always be your share.Faithfully, Reader in crisis, etc.
—Moses Kilolo
"I cut a tree and carved it into a paddle, then I gave it to my wife and I told her to enter the river with me; when we entered the river, I commanded one juju which was given me by a kind spirit who was a friend of mine and at once the juju changed me to a big canoe. Then my wife went inside the canoe with the paddle and paddling it, she used the canoe as 'ferry' to carry passengers across the river, the fare for adults was 3d (three pence) and half fare for children.""When we traveled for two and half days, we reached the Deads' road from which dead babies drove us, and when we reached there, we could not travel on it because of fearful dead babies, etc. which were still on it."Amos Tutuola begins the transcription of African oral literature with a sprawling and entirely unpredictable account of the Father of All Gods traveling for more than a decade--mostly in the company of a wife that he picks up along the way--in search of his prodigiously skillful (and lamentably deceased) palm-wine tapster. The passages above should give some idea of the strange, confident and somehow abridged use of grammar, along with the narrator's focused refusal to provide ancillary details or supporting facts while describing outlandish events that seem to beg for more attention. How do you devote just three sentences out of 130 pages to the time that you transformed yourself into a canoe in order for your wife to make lunch money by using you as a passenger vehicle?"The Palm-Wine Drinkard" reads like a compendium of folklore. It is unified by the mission of the protagonist; but many of the episodes are so symbolically and moralistically complete that they seem borrowed from oral traditions where they might normally stand alone. Unless you regularly consume fairy tales or ancient folklore, Tutuola's effort should prove a refreshing and memorable experience.Do not expect great attention to structure or particularly satisfying resolution; come along for the ride.
—Nathaniel
