foley room (au revoir jean-pierre cassel)

after a few minutes our mother came, but she did not know me again and i myself did not her as well, and it was this day i believed that "feeling" sometimes proves the same blood if they have left each other for long time that they are the same family, because my brother did not show me to our mother when she came, because he was waiting for his friends to come befor he would tell her. so as she sat down behind me she was feeling perhaps i am her son. after a while my brother's friends came, they sat in the form of a circle and i was in the centre. then my brother told the whole of us to kneel down to pray. after the prayer he told our mother that i am her son who had been lost since i was seven years old. 

but when our mother with my brother's wives with his friends heard so, all shouted with gladness and held me, but when they looked at my body and saw the sore they burst into a cry that lasted for an hour before it stopped. and it was this day i believed that if "gladness is too much it sometimes becomes weeping". having stopped crying our mother started to treat the sore and within a week willy-nilly it has been healed. after the second day that my brother and mother knew me and i myself knew both of them as well, then he told me how he was captured. 

our mother also told me how she was captured when coming home to rescue us immediately she heard from the market that war broke into the town. she said that she was captured and taken to a town of which she did not understand their language until she left there when resold to a lame woman. she said that the work that she was doing for the lame woman was only to be carrying her whatever she was going to, but she spent only four years with her before she sold her again on the way carrying her to somewhere, because she was feeling the hunger and had no money to buy the food. so the lame woman gave mother to the food-seller and took food instead of paying her money. 

after she was exchanged to this food-seller, the food-seller was not feeding mother at all, so if she worked for her from early in the morning till eight o'clock in the night, then she would start to work from that night till dawn for her living, so by that she had no time at all to rest or sleep both day and night and she was doing so every day for years until she had a chance to escape at night, and again she was captured on the way by another man who was the most famous slave-buyer in his town. all his slaves were performing the same kind of work which only men could be performing, but however she was working as hard as a slave man. when her master noticed how she was working as a man, then he set her free after the 8th year that he captured her. but when she came back to the town she met none of us in the town and was in a sorrowful life until my brother came after he spent many years in various towns. 

when he came both of us were expecting you every day to come home but it is in vain and they did not know that it was in the bush of ghost you were. our mother told me as above. but one day when i remembered our dead cousin who i met in the 10th town of ghosts i told them about him that he had resettled down in a town in the bush of ghosts. i told them that i was educated from him because he had established schools and churches there. of course when they heard so they were very surprised. they asked me whether i feared him as he had died in our town here in my presence before i left the town, so i replied that if anybody enters the into the bush of ghosts he or her would not fear for anything within a week he or she had entered into it, because he or she will see "fear" personally who brought the palm wine drinker's fear before he entered inside the white-tree to the faithful mother. 

i told them further that it is in the bush of ghosts the fears, sorrows, difficulties all kinds of the punishments etc start and there they end. after that i hinted to them about the secret-society of ghosts which is celebrated once in every century. i told them that as it is near to be celebrated i like to be present there so that i may bring some of its news to them and other people. but when both of them heard so again from me, they said that i will not go to the bush of ghosts again in their presence. of course they said this of their own accord, because i dreamed a dream that i am present when this secret society of ghosts is performing and i believe so, because my dream always comes to the truth in future, however it may be. so you will hear about this news in due course. "this is what hatred did." 

/ by amos tutuola. 

//

1975 / The purpose of this book is to trace fluctuations in the literary reputation of Amos Tutuola and to provide a variety of critical perspectives on his work. Tutuola is one of the most controversial of African authors, and his six books have drawn reactions ranging from delirious enthusiasm to amused indifference to undisguised contempt. He is the kind of writer who attracts ardent fans and equally ardent foes, but his writing does not seem to be much affected by what critics say about him. There is a lot more continuity and consistency in his work than there is in the commentary on it. Despite fame and misfortune, Tutuola has remained basically the same simple storyteller, even while opinions about his literary abilities have changed. 

The history of Tutuola's critical reception may be divided into roughly three phases: (1) foreign enchantment and local embarrassment, (2) foreign disenchantment and local reappraisal, and (3) universal but qualified acceptance. The initial reaction to Tutuola's first two books, The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952) and My Life in the Bush of Ghost (1954), was extremely favorable abroad but decidedly unfavorable at home. Indeed, Nigerians disliked Tutuola for the same reasons that Europeans and Americans treasured him: his subject matter was exotic and his grammar atrocious. Educated Africans suspected that the bizarre narratives of this messenger-turned-author appealed to foreigners because they projected an image of Africa as uncouth, primitive and barbaric - an image which happened to coincide with foreign stereotypes of "The Dark Continent." 

As a consequence, many of Tutuola's countrymen were convinced he was only being patronized by condescending racists and was really unworthy of serious consideration as a creative writer. By the time Tutuola's fourth and fifth books (The Brave African Huntress, 1958; Feather Woman of the Jungle, 1962) appeared, however, his European and American readers were tired of his fantasies and fractured English. They expressed impatience with his inability to develop new themes and techniques and deplored his crippling limitations as a writer. Africans, on the other hand, were just beginning to appreciate his mythical imagination and extravagant sense of humor. In the mid-sixties a number of African literary critics wrote reappraisals of his work, probing his special strengths and weaknesses as a creative artist. 

By this time most sub-Saharan states had achieved political independence so African intellectuals were less self-conscious about their image abroad. Tutuola's books could therefore be evaluated more objectively than before, and many Africans discovered they liked them despite their oddities and obvious flaws. In the early nineteen-seventies Tutuola became the subject of several penetrating studies as critics in Africa and other parts of the world began to try out new critical approaches to his work. By now Tutuola was recognized as a significant albeit curious author who had earned a special niche in the history of African literature. He was a singular, solitary figure who had arrived from nowhere and stumbled into greatness by the sheer vigor of his imagination. His works might be crude and unkempt but they possessed an elemental vitality which the polished writings of more sophisticated authors too often lacked. Tutuola was the naive prodigy of African letters. 

The reviews and essays reprinted here are grouped chronologically so the reader may more easily follow the progress of Tutuola's literary career. Like his heroes and heroines, Tutuola has had many harrowing and happy adventures on his journey to respectability. He has been ambushed, assaulted and eaten alive by some critics and lionized and eulogized by others. But he has always survived these ordeals and proceeded on his way with confidence, determination and wit. African literature has been enriched immeasurably by the imaginative expeditions of this plucky pioneer. 

// Bernth Lindfors teaches English and African literature at the University of Texas at Austin, where he edits Research in African Literature. He has written Folklore in Nigerian Literature and has edited several books dealing with African oral and written literatures including books in this series Nigerian Literatures and (with C. L. Innes) Chinua Achebe.