The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola

This cover makes my poor
sleep deprived eyes twitch

I already had a Nigerian book in my to read pile (which will come next) but couldn't help picking this one up as well when I saw it was described by Dylan Thomas as 'brief, thronged, grisly and bewitching'. If it's good enough for Thomas, it's good enough for me (Under Milk Wood is in my opinion the best writing ever committed to paper).

Amos Tutuola was born in rural western Nigeria in 1920. Though his family were locally important (his grandfather was an Odafin, or law giver, and a patriarch of the Odegbami clan) they were poor. Amos became a servant to a richer man at the age of 7 and sent to the local Salvation Army School in lieu of payment. Later he attended the Anglican Central School, but his education was cut short when he was 12, and his father died. Up to this point Amos had not had a surname, but now took his father's name Tutuola for this purpose. He became a blacksmith for the Royal Airforce Force ( in Nigeria) during WWII, and had a variety of other low paid menial jobs afterwards.

Tutuola looks as joyous here as one would expect
having read The Palm-Wine Drinkard.

Despite his lack of education, Tutuola had written three books by 1956: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Simbi and the Satyr of the Dark Jungle, and, most famously, The Palm-Wine Drinkard. The books divided public opinion. Many western critics (and, like Mongo Beti pointed out, most readers were western at this time) derided them as barely literate, derivative of nursery tales, and infantile. Africans (and I imagine last post's Mongo Beti would have hated the book - rooted as it is in folklore) descried it as patronising to native culture.

But over time the works, and Drinkard in particular gained traction. Not only Dylan Thomas praised the novel, but TS Eliot also spoke highly of it, and the colloquial language used was compared to that of Joyce and Twain. It wasn't long before The Palm-Wine Drinkard was being hailed as a foundation stone of African literature: not just an African version of the western novel but a truly African work, taking the traditions or oral story-telling and bending them to this new art form, totally unlike anything that had come from Europe.

The original design for the flag (the winner of a
nationwide competition) had a rather handsome
red sun in the centre, but this was removed by a
committee prior to its adoption in 1960. That's
committees for you.

The Palm-Wine Drinkard follows a man so fond of palm wine that when the man that had been employed to make it for him dies, he goes to the underworld to retrieve him, having a series of grotesque adventures along the way. It is a picaresque story, told in a highly stylised way, obviously taking inspiration from oral story-telling, but employing several unusual written devices - such as continual use of brackets and newspaper style headlines dotted through out.

In truth, I would say, both the novel's champions and its detractors are partly right. There are parallels to be drawn with western works of literate. Journeys into the underworld are a staple of many cultures, and one can not help but think of Dante and Greek myths such as those of Odysseus and Heracles. The style brings to mind both Don Quixote and Gulliver's Travels.

But the delivery is African. Whether or not the use of English is authentic West African Pidgin or not is up for debate, but even if the language is Tutuola's own, it is not western. And the imagery is from an unchristian place.

I suspect the story is deeply allegorical, and if so, much of the meaning goes over my head. My knowledge of western Africa of the 1950s is not deep enough to understand all that Tutuola was trying to say. But it seems clear that this is a tale of the everyman. At the beginning of the work the protagonist is described as an ordinary chap, a layabout and a ne'er-do-well (he would have got along admirably with Dylan's Nogood Boyo). Though 'drunkard' is deliberately rendered 'drinkard' making the term less derogatory, focusing on the action of drinking, rather than moralising about being drunk. His father was rich, which is why he can afford to employ a man to make him palm-wine, but he is not special in his own right. And yet, after he has gone to the underworld he is described as a god, and is able to call on his juju to perform incredible feats. I read this as saying there is power within everyone, and it may need the right circumstances to bring it out (represented by ceremonies to bring forth the juju) but we have control. The strange creatures he meets can be likened to western or modern practices, especially the skull representing consumerism. Initially this creature appears as a dashing gentleman, but after he has seduced a woman into following him, he gives back all the parts of his body which he has merely hired, his flesh and limbs and organs, until he is nothing but a skull, and the woman is trapped.

Ultimately, the story doesn't really make any conclusions and ends unexpectedly. This happened in the book Mema (see a pervious post) and I think both are framing their stories as the type of tale which was told so that people would go away and think, and draw their own conclusions, therefore our own reactions form part of the work. That written by Tutuola is only the middle section of Drinkard, our own questions coming before, and answers (or confusion) afterwards.

I do not think I can go the whole hog and give this five stars, but it gets a hearty ★★★★☆