My notes on re-reading Harold Scheub's work on oral narrative structures and performance. They have shaped the way I think of the fantastic in narrative and how it functions, and by extension, how those "electric moments" when the real and the fantastic are combined in narrative. Notes from Harold Scheub's Story: an evident […]
The Shaping of Story: Working Through Ideas Read More »
Balafon performance in the streets of Conakry, Guinea. ©1963 Emile Snyder Among the unique documents that have floated my way over the years was a manilla folder full of gorgeous black and white photographs my father took in the Ivory Coast, which was developed there, and some of them might have also been
Putting Together My Father’s Research With The Photos: West Africa 1963-64 Read More »
Proust may have had bouts of nostalgia remembering the taste of madeleines, but I woke today feeling nostalgic for my life in Africa, especially Tanzania. Out of the blue, and many years since I last heard it, I started singing the National Anthem of Tanzania. “Mungu Ibaraki Afrika”… There is much I miss about those
Remembrance of Things Past. Read More »
This is an odd moment. Three book ideas I have been working on lately have suddenly come into clarity as a single cloth — not as a trilogy mind you, for each is different enough from the other — but organically they seem to spring from the same desire to write about early, middle, and
Old Bones, New Tales Read More »
I am continuing with my notes on reading Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy, with some sidesteps to look at authors, whose work Ong references: Milman Parry and Albert Lord whose Singer of Tales is a fascinating study not only of the structure of Homer's Illiad and The Odyssey but also the important use of mnemonic devices in works
Orality and The Singer of Tales. Read More »
My father Emile Snyder was a professor of African Literature and Languages, specializing in contemporary African Literature written in French and English. He taught at a number of universities, including the University of Wisconsin – Madison, the University of Dar- es Salaam, Tanzania, and Indiana University. In 1964 when he was just embarking on a
Kora, Calabash, and Drum: West African Musicians, Photographs circa 1964 Read More »
