Brent Legault's Reviews > The Palm-Wine Drinkard

I'm puzzled by the popularity of this novel. I own a small new and used book store and I cannot keep this book stocked. It simply won't linger on the shelf. I have people asking for it all the time. After reading it, I can't for the life of me figure out why.

For the first fifteen pages, I was agog at the odd use of language. I thought I had found an early predecessor to Gordon Lish and Gary Lutz. Not a father or grandfather. Maybe a queer uncle or family friend. But soon, I found myself frowning and sighing and "Oh, godding!" Not because of the strange English (in fact, that was the one saving grace of the novel) but because what I realized I was reading was a kind of a fable or folk tale that lacked, completely, any hint of subtext. I realized I was reading someone's dreams.

Have you ever had to sit through the telling of a dream? Dreams are not "adventures" and there is nothing "incredible" about them because you can do anything you want in a dream so nothing means anything. It's funny, maybe, for the first few seconds or half-minute. But then it's just deadening. Because dreams aren't stories. And the story of a dream, told in a Kerouac rat-at-tat-tat, without craft or craftiness, is just not worth listening to. Or reading. And when I think of it, if this book had been read to me, in short bursts, I might have appreciated it. Maybe. Probably not. I don't know.