SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: December 7, 2021] “The Complete Gentleman”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my seventh time reading the Calendar. The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.
As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.
Manguel has this to say about Amos Tutuola:
He was educated in an English school but never quite abandoned his native Yoruba. Instead, he began to write stories and novels drawn from the collective imagination of his people in an English that is certainly not that of English schoolbooks, but is enriched by strange turns of phrase and an idiosyncratic grammar and spelling that the reader can follow easily.
That’s pretty interesting.
As is this story which is, indeed, pretty unusual.
Each small section has a heading which outlines the action. First we meet the “complete” gentleman. He was perfect in every way. So much so that a woman decided to follow him. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 