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Amos Tutuola (1920-1997). Nigeria.Amos Tutuola was one of the more controversial figures in African literature. Called at times a "plagiarist" and a "primitive", Tutuola's fiction is notable for its deviation from traditional literary standards. Tutuola received only six years of schooling. He was employed as a metalworker for many years, and worked as a messenger. In the late 1940's , Tutuola sent a manuscript to a photographic publisher, informing him that it contained photographs of spirits from the bush in Nigeria. In fact, the photographs were of the authors drawings of these spirits. The publisher found the story about Wild Hunter's visits to heaven and hell interesting, in part because of its poor English. Because he was impressed by Tutuola's effort, the publisher paid him a nominal sum for the manuscript. It was later published in 1982 as Wild Hunter in the Bush of Ghosts. The story bears an uncanny resemblance to another book by D.O. Fagunwa in 1938. Strikingly similar incidents occur in each work, and the narrative format is also similar. His second book, The Palm Wine Drinkard (1952), was saved from obscurity by Dylan Thomas, who wrote a good review of it six weeks after its publication. He described the book as a "brief, thronged, grisly and bewildering story, or series of stories, written in young English, by a West African, about the journey of an expert and devoted palm wine drinkard through a nightmare of indescribable adventures, all simply and carefully described in the spirit-bristling bush." Unsurprisingly, his work has not been greeted entirely favorably by educated Nigerians, who dislike his crude writing style and poor English. Similarly, many feel that the material promotes Western stereotypes of African backwardness. These concerns are not unfounded: Anthony West has called Tutuola's work "a glimpse of the very beginning of literature" and Selden Rodman has described him as "a true primitive." Tutuola himself is undaunted by such criticism, and many of his admirers describe his novels in much more sophisticated terms. Harold Collins, for example, claims that Tutuola is "West Africa's first classic in world literature." Despite the criticism his work has received for its grammatical shortcomings and untraditional plot development, Tutuola is undoubtedly a vibrant and evocative storyteller. (KJ) The Palm Wine Drinkard. London: Faber and Faber, 1952. |
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