Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The Palm-Wine Drinkard

The Palm-Wine Drinkard and His Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Deads' Town

The subtitle provides an accurate glimpse into this strange book, which describes an epic quest with mythic elements drawn from Yoruba folk tales.

The hero's name is "Father of gods who could do anything in this world." One day he sets out "to find out whereabouts was my tapster who had died." Thus begins a surreal journey through an African underworld.

Some of his adventures:

He rescues a beautiful woman from a "complete gentleman" with rented body parts.

After he marries her, the woman gives birth to a fully grown child from her thumb.

He turns himself into a canoe, which his wife paddles across a river.

They sell their "death" and lend out their "fear."

They are captured by a giant who tosses them into a bag.

When they finally arrive at the Deads' Town, the tapster gives them a magical egg.  They return to the land of the living when the hero changes himself into a pebble and throws himself across a river. At home they put an end to a famine.

The journey is so phantasmagoric that the imperfect English becomes a key element. If the language were brushed up, the book would not be the same. Here's a typical passage:


His fingernails were long to about two feet, his head was bigger than his body ten times. He had a large mouth which was full of long teeth, these teeth were about one foot long and as thick as a cow's horns, his body was almost covered with black long hair like a horse's tail hair. He was very dirty.



Critical Analysis

Margaret Laurence notes that the book "has been compared to Orpheus in the underworld, to Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, to Dante, to the journey of Odyseus."

Gerald Moore says that all of the author's "heroes or heroines follow out one variant or another of the cycle of the heroic monomyth, Departure -- Initiation -- Return."

Chinua Achebe (in the first Equiano Memorial Lecture) calls Tutuola "the most moralistic of all Nigerian writers." The Palm-Wine Drinkard describes the consequences of inverting work and play, and though the events are grotesque and surreal, there are always boundaries to a monster's power. Thus:


...anarchy is held at bay and a traveller who who perseveres can progress from one completed task to the domain of another and in the end achieve the creative, moral purpose in the extra-ordinary but by no means arbitrary universe of Tutuola's story.



References

Margaret Laurence, "A Twofold Forest," in Long Drums and Cannons.

Gerald Moore, "Amos Tutuola: A Modern Visionary," in Seven African Writers.

Chinua Achebe, "Work and Play in Tutola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard," in Okike: An African Journal of New Writing, No. 14.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The Lyre of Orpheus

This is the concluding novel in the Cornish trilogy.

Leapfrogging the middle book are several characters from The Rebel Angels, the most important being Simon Darcourt, and Arthur and Maria Cornish.  The latter bankroll an unfinished opera by E.T.A. Hoffmann -- Arthur of Britain, or the Magnanimous Cuckold -- and soon find the Arthurian legend reflected in their own lives.

Darcourt is the narrative glue that unites two plot lines. He writes the opera's libretto, and solves certain mysteries surrounding Francis Cornish (Arthur's uncle and the central figure in the middle book, What's Bred in the Bone).

A pair of characters new to the trilogy are doctoral student Hulda Schnakenburg, who is completing the music, and the composer-in-residence, Gunilla Dahl-Soot. Once their work is done and Darcourt's libretto completed, the opera company is assembled and preparations made for opening night.

Throughout it all Davies' comic touch is as sure as ever, especially in portraying the foibles and peccadilloes of actors, students, and professors. However, the portrayal of Arthurian archetypes is not entirely convincing, and the book gets a bit windy in spots, though Davies' prose is never less than urbane, his erudition never forced or heavy-handed.

With no engaging villain (as with Parlabane in Angels), Dahl-Soot is a welcome eccentric, as are Maria's mother (she gives another Tarot reading) and uncle Yerko (he puts together a claque for opening night). There is an especially fine scene involving drunken academics, but the real treat of the novel is the exhilarating account of opening night.

Names

One of the things I admire about Davies is his wonderful use of names. In Lyre he has to populate an entire opera company, a formidable task in itself. Some favourites:

Ogden Whistlecraft - poet
Mervyn Gwilt - lawyer
Dulcy Ringgold - costume designer
Gwen Larking - stage manager
Nutcombe Puckler - "Sir Dagonet"
Clara Intrepidi - "Morgan Le Fay"
Oliver Twentyman - "Merlin"
Ulick Carman - herald
Eden Wigglesworth - attendant
Dicky Plaunt - head carpenter
Otto Klafsky - concert-master
Claude Applegarth - New York critic

A minor character named Wally Crottel makes a brief appearance. His name harkens back to a monologue on excrement in Angels -- "the crotels of a hare." As the name suggests, he's a bit of a shit.

Quotes

"Lies keep the teeth white."

"You don't smell bad, for a man."

"A horse is always a sure card in an opera."

"...we shall add a little salt to the dreary porridge of our lives."

"That's what I like about you Canadians," said the doctor; "you are so ready to admit fault."

"Is there something ambiguous about Knockers?" said Hollier. "I'm sorry. I'm not very well up on the latest indecencies."

NY Times review