Review: Palm-Wine Drinkard

Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

   I'm going to be honest.  I knew that the Palm-Wine Drinkard was the first of the two Tutuola books I'd planned to read.  I don't read forewords or introductions before reading a story because they are usually full of spoilers.  Therefore I did not know while reading this that the rough nature of the writing was part of the point.

As a result I felt embarrassed for Tutuola that his editors left him hanging like this because they allowed this work to be published in English when it is so hard to get through.  Without knowing anything about Nigeria or the Yoruba people this story comes off as the ravings of a madman having a fever dream.

The Story

    A ten year old boy is allowed to drink wine all day and night to his heart's content.  His father even buys him a grove of palm trees and hires a guy who's whole job is to tap wine from the trees for this boy.  But when the taper dies the boy follows his ghost to "Deads Town" thus began his adventure.  

      I admit that there was some charm in the story.  I did enjoy bits like watching the gods of rhythm, song, and dance come down the street.  But a lot of set up plots just fizzel into nothing, or suddenly turn into something else.  It was very hard to keep up with where the boy was coming from or where he was going . . . . possibly because he was drunk.  

       It's easy to see why modern western readers struggle with this book. The pacing is weird, the vernacular is off putting. He's vague in places we'er not used to, and super specific in others. 

I nearly gave up reading it several times and was relieved when I was finally done and allowed to wake up from this book.  

The Point?

      Then I read the introduction to  "The Palm-Wine Drinkard" and learned that the editor had kinda set back and let the story be what it was.  He'd found Tutulos un-educated style to be deep and interesting.  Tutulos it's said was fifty years old before he read a book.  I'm not sure if I believe this - he did have six years of education at the Salvation Army school and went on to be a professor of Literature before his death in 1997.  However, it's obvious that he grew up feasting on traditional Yoruba stories his whole life told by word of mouth and shared the same way.  

         This book wasn't written by a writer nor a reader then. It was written by a traditional Nigerian storyteller using a pen instead of his voice. Imagine the man himself telling the story, while you and others sit around a campfire. Picture the way he would be acting out the birth of his son from his wife's thumb and you can see the humor in it. The simplistic language of the writing disguises the complexity of the story, while introducing us to a religion that believes in spirits, ghosts, and over a hundred gods.

Conclusion 

    So the book uses your imagination in a different way.   After learning this I went on to read "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts".  I enjoyed this story much more.  So for a more favorable review of Amos Tutulos please read on.  

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