I speeka the Weirdtongue

[Nemonymous]

I think reading aloud subverts my whole Nemonymous philosophy. But it's there like a Hell of Intentionality tempting the audience in....

My philosophy however subsists with regard to the written word. That is why printed books are better than being read aloud to? That very question is the one posed by this thread.

With a book, you are given the leasehold by the freehold author, and you can re-decorate the 'flat' and furnish it to your taste.

With readinga aloud by the author, he or she's there next to your ear, during the 'day and night' of you inhabiting the sounds of his or her voice weaving the story with their 'meaning' around you.

Two different experiences?

Thanks for allowing me to brainstorm....

[Nemonymous]

Thanks to the illuminating (even to me!) thesis on this thread about the Hawler Reading, I have placed Chapter One on TLO here:
http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=3483
from where there is also a link to a reading aloud of the whole novel .... and more!

	TLO THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE

[alogos]

Quote Originally Posted by Julian Karswell

Cripes, alogos, that isn't so much a reply as a thesis.

LOL. Yeah, brevity is not my storng point, I usually do hold a minority opinion and therefore realize I have to give a lot of reasons for what I beleive, but I appreciate that his board permits me to take my time and much internet real estate to explain myself.

So thank you for your patience.

Quote Originally Posted by Julian Karswell

A rare example of a professional broadcaster turned ghost story writer can be found in 'A J Alan'. I like Alan's work immensely - there is an urbane, deprecating, slyly comic style to his short stories - and feel sure that he would, like his contemporary Algernon Blackwood have been a consumate reader with a suave, actor's radio voice. I have hunted high and low for an audio snippet of his voice but alas,

I've never heard of this author but I was able to find this link

Podcast - The Sound of 78s - record list

It's a podcast that features different broadcast performances, including - in episode 23, "Percy the Prawn"written and read by A. J. Alan, and recorded in 1933.

The story begins about half way in an is introduced with some personal background on A J Alan and some notes on his work ethic. Not sure how the story measures up with the rest of his canon but if you have been wondering what he sounded like when reading, be sure and knock yourself out.

Quote Originally Posted by gveranon

I much prefer looking at the "ranks of dead insects," even though printed words can only suggest intonations to the mind's ear. There is a certain aesthetic to words-on-the-page, and (for reasons I can't explain) I'd rather experience this visual aesthetic than the aural richness of a well-done reading.

Nabokov was a synesthete. He litterally saw certain letters as colors. I've often wondered why no one has ever tried to recreate any of Nabokov's work in a colored typeface that recreates the effect that the words themselves would have had on the author.

I wonder sometimes if Nabokov wasn't litterally painting with letter's sometimes.

Other than that for me personally any aesthetic appeal of words-on-the-page is limited to manuscripts, illuminated manuscripts and those off the wall post-modern works like Danielewski's "House of Leaves" which I admit could never work as an audiobook. (Conversely, and interestingly enough his follow up, "Only Revolutions" which much more strictly regarded the pagination and formatting, is flat when read on the page, but considerably more interesting when read aloud - by none other than the author himself.)

Quote Originally Posted by Nemonymous

I think reading aloud subverts my whole Nemonymous philosophy. But it's there like a Hell of Intentionality tempting the audience in....

Quote Originally Posted by Nemonymous

Two different experiences?

I think they are two different experiences, but not in the same way you do.

In fact I think precisely because they are two different experiences that your fears that reading your own work works contrary to your nemonymous philosophy are unfounded. I see reading a text as interpreting a text only in as much as a translator interprets a text in one language in order to recreate it in another.

Yes decisons on tone and intonations and other auditory "interpretations" have to be made - and indeed the way one person chooses to read a text may vary from the how a potential reader might choose to read it.

But I think it is best to think of it as a seperate text.

For example, recall Edward Fitzgerald' Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, or catullus 51 (ille mi pars esse deo videtur) Both are fine works of poetry that are translations of previous works, but neither is known for it's fidelity to the original text. The Fitzgerald Rubaiyat includes quatrains that are wholly original, or are not attributed to Omar Khayyam. One of the stanzas in Catullus 51 re-contextualizes the entire meaning of the otherwise faithful translation to make it a part of his Lesbia cycle and completely changes the meaning of the poem as to be only superficially the Sappho poem in words only, but utterly Catulline in meaning.

But would you fault either of these works for their variation or in fact deviation from their original text or would you judge the work on its own merit as a literary work. If you do fault the text isn't this contrary to your nemonymous philosophy since in fact you are in fact bringing something outside of the text into the text? Forgive me I am not a literary critic and therefore have maybe at best a conversational understanding of the "intentional fallacy" but wouldn't it be more appropripate to consider Catullus 51 and the Rubaiyat disparate text, distinct from the original texts that they are translations of and to consider them on their own merits?

And if we can have that leniency with written interpretations, why can't we have that leniency with oral interpretations.

On the surface I see the discomfort. Because it is audibly easier to recognize one voice from the next. But suppose you didn't include the fact that it was "read by the Author" in your recordings, would issues of nemonymity arise. Why is the distinctiveness of the author's physical voice, to be a greater concern than the distinctiveness of the author written voice?

In the end however, I think your stories do benefit from being read by you because there is a rhythm to you work that does become more apparent when it is read aloud.

Quote Originally Posted by Nemonymous

My philosophy however subsists with regard to the written word. That is why printed books are better than being read aloud to? That very question is the one posed by this thread. With a book, you are given the leasehold by the freehold author, and you can re-decorate the 'flat' and furnish it to your taste. With readinga aloud by the author, he or she's there next to your ear, during the 'day and night' of you inhabiting the sounds of his or her voice weaving the story with their 'meaning' around you.

Two men can witness the very same events and have entirely different memories of what happened.

It doesn't matter if it is something we heard or something we read on a page, a story once it is share is automatically "leased" out and regardless of whether or not the author wants it to be or not it is "re-decorated." But that's wht so great about stories, and words in general.

They can be comunal and shared and yet extremely private and personal.

[Nemonymous]

I'll follow up that A J Alan link. Thanks, alogos.


And I agree with your description of the "two experiences" etc. Leading me to speculate that each 'performance' of a text is one of many possible experiences, i.e. silently read (skimmed or pored over), heard read aloud by the author or by an actor ...and illustrated, different typesets, mangled into a 'new ready-made, absorbed osmotically (?)??
Each 'performance' is a new work for forensic objectification leading to subjective absorption.
It's just that when I read aloud my own work I admittedly hear myself plosively articulating the sound rhythms towards a 'meaning'. Perhaps that process would be diferent for each of my readings of the same text ... making even a text's head-lease or freehold author just another actor with moods, good days, bad days, encroaching memory-loss, self-conscious (sub-conscious, unconscious) embellishment of pretentiousness...??

[Nemonymous]

"Magic will take possession of your tongue."

-- Elizabeth Bowen in 1962

(a quote I discovered for the first time today)

[Nemonymous]

I received this post today in my PM inbox from TLO:

"This is an automatic message to inform you that your post on I speeka the Weirdtongue is amongst the winners of this cycle time topic nomination contest."

I am very honoured to receive this, but I feel it is 'alogos' who deserves the main credit for giving this thread its threadibility.

File Factory where I have uploaded many of my readings-aloud is even quicker now and linked from here: http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/sum...l_readings.htm

But this thread does not seem to have ecouraged many to download them...

	TLO THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE