The Palm-Wine Drinkard, Amos Tutuola, 1952 - Part 12
We and the mountain-creatures on the unknown-mountain to To see the mountain-creatures was not dangerous but to dance with them was the most dangerous
Welcome back to Seventy years of books, where I'm blogging my way through the seventy titles originally compiled for the Big Jubilee Read. This week I’m continuing with the first book, Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard.
We and the mountain-creatures on the unknown-mountain
The palm-wine drinkard and his wife climb a mountain where they meet a million “mountain-creatures” who love to dance.
This “Unknown-mountain” is as “flat as a football field” and this reference to sport reflects the feeling of energy created by the “mountain-creatures’” constant dancing.
To see the mountain-creatures was not dangerous but to dance with them was the most dangerous
The palm-wine drinkard’s wife becomes trapped dancing with the mountain-creatures so he once again turns her into a wooden doll to aid their escape. The mountain-creatures however chase him, forcing him to turn himself into a pebble and roll back to his hometown.
Yes, home at last! And he only has his egg to show for his years of travel, trials and trouble. But it is a magic egg that will give him everything he needs, so his disappointment over everything being for nothing, might be a little unwarranted…
There is however a catastrophic famine in the palm-wine drinkard’s hometown which is wreaking havoc. Even children are being killed by their own parents due to the lack of food.
The palm-wine drinkard delivers this tragic news in a flat, matter of fact, emotionless tone, which shows how much of an effect his experiences with the dead have had.
Perhaps the magical egg holds the key to solve all his and his community’s problems once and for all?
This week in 1952
Last time we looked at how the motorised treadmill revolutionised the diagnosis of cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses. In other cardio events, on 2 September Dr Floyd J Lewis performed the first successful open heart operation, closing an atrial septal defect in a 5-year-old girl. He and his colleagues would go on to operate on a further sixty patients with atrial septal defects, using hypothermia and inflow occlusion.
This year’s Paralympic Games in Paris ended yesterday. On 5 September 1952 Graham Salmon, a British blind runner who set the record for the fastest 100m by a blind man at the 1984 Paralympics, was born. Freddie Mercury was born on the same date in 1946 and Mercury’s sister, Kashmira, was born in 1952.
The Farnborough Airshow crash was on 6 September, tragically killing pilot, John Derry, onboard flight test observer Anthony Richards and 29 spectators. This led to stricter safety measures being put in place for British airshows and there were no further spectator deaths at these events until the Shoreham Airshow crash in 2015 where 11 people were killed.
On 7 September, Marion Gilchrist, suffragette and the first female graduate of the University of Glasgow, passed away. She was one of the first two women to qualify in medicine from a Scottish university and the Marion Gilchrist Prize has been awarded to the most distinguished woman graduate in Medicine at the University of Glasgow each year since her death.
1952 film of the week: Abbott and Costello: Jack and the Beanstalk
This comedy retelling of the fairy tale begins in a black and white modern day world where Jack (Lou Costello) is hired to babysit the delightfully precocious Donald (David Stollery). In an attempt to get Donald to behave, Jack persuades him to read Jack and the Beanstalk and we are transported to a colourful fairy tale land of magic beans, giants and golden egg-laying hens. This was in fact the first Abbott and Costello film to feature colour and, like The Wizard of Oz which also moves from a black and white contemporary world to a colourful fantasy one, the same actors appear in both stories.
The Palm-Wine Drinkard of course shares a few themes with Jack and the Beanstalk, and though this adaptation makes a few changes to the story, the key theme of someone venturing away from his home on an adventure and trying to recover something he has lost is there.
This version of the fairy tale has the Giant (Buddy Baer) known to the villagers from the start. He murdered Jack’s father, stole the family’s golden egg-laying hen, and is generally terrorising everyone and driving them all into a state of dire poverty. Even the local royal family haven’t escaped the Giant’s wrath and Princess Eloise (Shaye Cogan) is being forced to marry Prince Arthur (James Alexander) for money. However, she longs for normality and for someone to fall in love with her for who she really is.
Desperate for food, Jack’s mother (Barbara Brown) sends him off to sell their beloved cow to the local butcher, Mr Dinklepuss (Bud Abbott). Mr Dinklepuss cons Jack into accepting five magic beans, which Jack’s exasperated mother tells him to plant in the hope that they will produce something they can eat. Of course, unbeknownst to Mr Dinklepuss, the beans really are magic and grow into the beanstalk that will enable Jack to get to the Giant’s castle.
And it’s a good job as the Giant has abducted the Princess, the Prince and, worst of all, the family cow. Jack vows to retrieve both his stolen animals, rescue the Princess and avenge his father’s death by killing the Giant.
This is a sweet musical with a nice level of fairy tale peril and some sword fighting amongst the slapstick comedy. The Giant is a little smaller than you see in many portrayals, but this allows Jack to fight him and not just be squished like a teeny bug. Everyone gets the ending they deserve, and Dorothy Ford, who plays Polly, the Giant’s housekeeper, has beautiful Bettie Bangs. They almost made me want to cut mine back in. Almost…
1952 song of the week: Wish You Were Here, Eddie Fisher and Hugo Winterhalter
This is a romantic, orchestral song about missing someone, who the world is so much darker and duller without.
Originally written for the Broadway musical of the same name, it features a powerful, emotional vocal, enhanced by alternately high tempo and gentle strings.
It’s very pretty and brings a feeling of nostalgia for first heartbreaks.
1952 product of the week: Video tape recorder
Fun fact: Bing Crosby played a key role in the development of recording technology. Bing Crosby of White Christmases with David Bowie.
Before streaming, recording audio and video content was essential if you wanted to watch something off schedule or keep your favourite song to listen to in the car, and for Bing Crosby, it became essential to manage both his touring commitments and weekly radio show.
So he got involved in the development of recording technology to allow him to record shows to be broadcast while he was away on tour, and on 1 October 1947, his radio show was the first ever to be broadcasted from tape.
In 1951 his show moved from radio to TV and that old commitment problem resurfaced, so he once again invested in developing recording technology and the Crosby laboratory in association with Ampex invented the videotape recorder in early 1952.
It wasn’t perfect and it didn’t have a place in the average family’s living room (many people wouldn’t own a TV either until the early 1960s), but without Bing Crosby’s success and busy life as an artist, we might not ever have found a way to record TV, or even radio. Or at least, it might have taken longer.