Great Readings Aloud

[sundog]

Robert M. Price did a damn fine job with this one, imo:

The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft (part 1) - YouTube

The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft (part 2) - YouTube

The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft (part 3) - YouTube

The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft (part 4) - YouTube

[Gray House]

Paul Bowles - Next to Nothing - YouTube

[Gray House]

Celebrant01 preamble - YouTube

Celebrant02 Part1 11 21 - YouTube

Celebrant03 Part2 11 21 - YouTube

Celebrant05 Part4 11 21 - YouTube

[teguififthzeal]

Flannery O (1959) - YouTube

[Mark Cooper]

Paul Bowles' reading of Next To Nothing posted by Gray House below is my all-time favorite author reading. Bowles had a dry, deadpan, and patrician way of speaking that suits his profoundly horrifying writing beautifully. His reading of his great story Baptism of Solitude -- at

Baptism Of Solitude: A Tribute To Paul Bowles - YouTube

-- is also incredible.

After Bowles, my favorite reading of a work of literature is the famous recording of Paul Celan reciting his poem Todesfuge:

Todesfuge - Paul Celan - YouTube

[Waffiesnaq]

In this age of celebrity worship and aggressive self-promotion, of Twitter and vlogs and TV interviews, it really is an odd feeling being intimately familiar with a person strictly through his or her thoughts on the page, and only after years of this getting to listen to their voice, imagining the person and personality behind, with all that textual ammunition inside you... sometimes I wonder how Ligotti must have felt reading Cioran and Bernhard for years and then seeing them resurrected before him in the form of archival footage uploaded on the internet. The brain makes a very mysterious response to this kind of phenomenon... anyway, I'm glad I finally got to hear Flannery O'Connor's reading, I was enraptured from start to finish. Who knew she'd have such a thick Southern accent! (Kidding, of course.)

Around 08:00 in the clip below there's the unusual moment where famed scholar and curmudgeon Harold Bloom hears what is claimed to be Walt Whitman's voice for the first time after a lifetime of teaching him and writing about him and reading him religiously.

He discovered the poet when he was 12; he's 81 in the video.

From The Anxiety to The Anatomy of Influence: A Conversation with Harold Bloom

I am eternally indebted to teguififthzeal for helping me discover the deathly radiant poetry of Georg Trakl, and I'd love to get in a machine and travel back to attend the only public reading he ever gave. He was described by one listener as speaking "with the convincing strength of an odd spiritual personality," whose "kind of reading is better suited for an intimate gathering than a large hall and occasionally he spoke so soft that his voice became barely audible."

[Waffiesnaq]

Hysterical Literature: Session One: Stoya (Official)

Someone needs to arrange this with a Ligotti book.

[teguififthzeal]

Though this is only a sound byte from a movie--Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope"--it sums up how I feel about Nietzsche all the superior I'm Better Than Thou By This Right Libertarians.

Alfred Hitchcock (Kinetic Typography) - YouTube

[teguififthzeal]

No, no, I do oppose the death penalty. Though seeing how they did in prison, one has to wonder.

[teguififthzeal]

I'll give it you, Darrow had a few good lines *here* and *there*. Like when he talked about the spider and the fly in that one speech? Which was it?

He wasn't dull as Bertrand Russell, either.