And now it is time to read the book.
October 30, 2015 11:43 PM   Subscribe

Many have heard of Brian Eno and David Byrne's album "My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts," but perhaps fewer have read the Book by Amos Tutuola, or its companion book "The Palm Wine Drinkard," described as "Aside from the transmogrified strangeness of folk and fairy tales ... unlike almost anything else in print."
posted by boilermonster (13 comments total) 32 users marked this as a favorite
 
They are both amongst the greatest novels of the 20th Century.
posted by fallingbadgers at 1:25 AM on October 31, 2015 [1 favorite]


Worth noting that there's a lot more Tutuola besides those two books – which I really love, especially The Palm Wine Drinkard. Been meaning to figure out why those two are the prominent ones – I feel like I've heard there's a tangled publication history, though I haven't really looked. Maybe they were just first & British/American publishers lost interest?
posted by with hidden noise at 2:12 AM on October 31, 2015 [1 favorite]


I haven't logged in in a long while here, but I came here to say that this stuff is grrrreat. Thank you.
posted by krilli at 3:43 AM on October 31, 2015 [1 favorite]


...and now it is time to dance.
posted by fairmettle at 4:53 AM on October 31, 2015


I loved the Palm Wine Drinkard. I picked it up at a rummage sale for 1€, based on the title alone, and then was like "Why have I never heard of this before???" Thank you for making this post.
posted by lollymccatburglar at 6:10 AM on October 31, 2015


Jolie Holland, Palm Wine Drunkard
http://youtube.com/watch?v=AN2enSwwiaA
posted by annathea at 6:12 AM on October 31, 2015


Wow, I listened to the album constantly when I was a teen... didn't even know about the books. Thanks!
posted by Huck500 at 8:15 AM on October 31, 2015 [1 favorite]


I tried to check out My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, it is not in my little town. I wil have to try the bigger town down the road.
posted by Oyéah at 8:48 AM on October 31, 2015


I see it as a African version of Grimms Fairy Tales ,with such characters as "The Flash Eyed Mother" and armies of dead babies with clubs. It is both amazing and disturbing, with more weird ghosts than you could imagine.
My personal fave is the "the complete gentleman" chapter in The Palm Wine Drinkard. You realize that there is a subtle sarcasm in this book if you read it a couple of times.

He wrote quite a few books, some of them with women as the lead character such as "The Brave African Huntress" but this book is somewhat different as the Huntress retaliates single handedly and kills pretty much everything and everyone in the neighboring forest to rescue her father who was told not to go there.

I am still waiting for someone to make a movie should provide plenty of work for the creature effect crowd in the film scene.
posted by boilermonster at 9:29 AM on October 31, 2015


that reads one hell of a lot like axe cop.
posted by andrewcooke at 11:15 AM on October 31, 2015


Excellent and really surprising novels. As mentioned in passing towards the end of the third essay above, Tutuola was a significant influence on one of my most deep favourite novels, Ben Okri's The Famished Road.
posted by ovvl at 3:42 PM on October 31, 2015


It was like being hit in the head with a cow.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 7:42 PM on October 31, 2015


OK, so I read The Palm Wine Drinkard. I couldn't quite make out whether it was naive, pastiche, or some subtle meta-text. I didn't know whether I was relishing the robust fabulation, appreciating the cleverness, or being a condescending European.

Actually, don't hate me, but none of the above, because a third of the way in I actually started to get bored, rather the way you would after listening to a charming, intelligent ten-year old deliver a half-hour monologue.
posted by Segundus at 1:00 AM on November 2, 2015


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