Tell me what you've read!
Next up: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (another book to follow the bouncing ball with).
Recorded Books Incorporated, read by George Guidall
One of RDC's favorite books, and I'm finally reading it. I confess I might not be so enthusiastic about it if Frank Muller weren't reading it. My preconception, which I've known for a while is false, is that Ishmael is mild-mannered (vs. Ahab's Stupendous Man). I've known this is wrong since I had an abridged version in high school. From that abridged version I learned two things: that Ishmael survives because he's both good and bad, and all one or the other is fatal; and that you're actually much more comfortable when one part of you is uncomfortable. And I think I've seen at least part of the Gregory Peck cinematization.
Anyway, this version is read by Frank Muller, who also read Blue Highways. The same reader means I will draw parallels between the two I otherwise wouldn't. Which got RDC and me discussing the books' similarities: journeys, Americana, misanthropy, the finding of community. Ishmael might go out into the wilderness, but he doesn't find a six-calendar diner.
Anyway, with Frank Muller's entrancing voice, melodic and warm and faintly ironic, I shall finally thoroughly be purged of my idea of Ishmael as a doormat.
And by the way, this novel is funny. Go on, try it. You'll like
it. Read an academic edition though, so you get the footnotes.
May 1997
Recorded Books Incorporated, read by Frank Muller
Color and mood, mood and color. Traces of autobiography, I do presume. I love this author.
28-30 May 1997
Blackstone Audio Books, read by Nadia May
This was the first of a collection of stories, read by George Guidall,
and though it was read by George Guidall, I stopped listening to
it. I got through "The Metamorphosis" and decided that was enough.
I would like to read "The Penal Colony," which was in this collection,
and "The Trial" and "The Castle," which weren't, but
I shall do so when I am blissfully happy and can take the major risk of
depression that they would engender.
May 1997
Recorded Books Incorporated, read by George Guidall.
Another problem with interpretation: do you read with the voice of the author or the voice of the protagonist, and does the person of the narrator affect that choice? Cry, the Beloved Country is written by a white English South African but its protagonist is a black Zulu South African.
(And of course those designations are problematic. A Zulu man is perhaps a Zulu wherever he is in the world; he was a Zulu before erratic Europeans defined a section of land as a country called South Africa; and can someone who is not black be Zulu? (I don't know; but some American Indian tribes can adopt genetic outsiders.) Is a man whose ancestors are English and who speaks English a South African or a Englishman? I try to be specific about race and culture and nationality, because one does not imply another. A person can be black without being African-American; an African-American can be very little genetically black but still (rightly or wrongly) look and be called African-American; a person can be born anywhere but be USAn, but that trait is peculiar to the U.S. I am a native U.S. citizen but not a native American. A person can be a native of the state of Hawaii without being a native Hawaiian. Et cetera.)
Anyway, this novel is read by a natively English-speaking South African. The reader assumes appropriate accents for speakers of Zulu and Afrikaans, but for the author narration (not consistently third person) the reader uses his regular voice, which is a problem: clearly some of the third person narrative is from a Zulu or Xosa (or other "native") point of view. Right now the library is in a state of some turmoil since the Summit of the Eight will be held there in less than a month, and also I don't really know how to go about researching this without greater knowledge of linguistics (and people ask me why I want to earn an MLS), but I want to know how the audio book companies decide how to produce such things.
Blackstone Audio Books, read by Frederick Davidson
16 May 1997
Not as good as I, Claudius, but still a decent lesson in Roman history. Or historiography. One problem is that the narrator is American, not British, and doesn't stutter as the one for I, Claudius did. CLH said, "And of course Claudius had a British accent?" No, but Robert Graves did. I am listening to this on the bus commute and have thought little enough of it at times to try to read printed text. That was a short-lived experiment. I'm glad to work downtown now; I think I had exhausted the possibilities at the Koelbel Library.
Books on Tape, read by Nelson Runger
April 1997
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