I speeka the Weirdtongue

[Nemonymous]

Do others feel there is any mileage in reading their fiction aloud for the Internet...better than e-books? Better even than real books??
des

My readings aloud so far: http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/sum...l_readings.htm


Weirdtongue (read aloud)

[Mr. D.]

The only drawback in my case is that I am very busy at work and I can read a work a lot faster than if I have to listen to it. I'm in law enforcement so I don't have a desk job with regular access to telephones, computers, etc. I'm with Customs in the US so most of my visits to TLO are during precious breaks between flights or during lunch breaks. I love to hear the spoken word but I don't have a lot of time.

	TLO THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE

[Nemonymous]

I think personally I can make my own 'vexed texture of text' work better when spoken aloud with 'meaning' than when just allowing it to reside flabbily and lazily on the page ... or like ranks of dead insects.

[Julian Karswell]

Quote Originally Posted by Nemonymous

Do others feel there is any mileage in reading their fiction aloud for the Internet...better than e-books? Better even than real books?? des My readings aloud so far: http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/sum...l_readings.htm Weirdtongue (read aloud)

Definitely not. I detest authorial readings. Few agonies can compare with having to sit through an author's own reading of one of his stories at a convention or similar. You're pinned to your chair, fake grin plastered on your face, forced to applaud politely at the end.

Actors make the best readers. For example, Michael Hordern reading M R James. Undoubtedly it would be fascinating to hear MRJ reading his own tales aloud but I suspect it might also be something of a disappointment.

Let the writers write, the directors direct and the actors speak. There's a reason why things work best this way.

JK

[alogos]

Speaking not as a writer but as a fan of fiction I have to say that there is some truth to what Julian Karswell, is saying. I commute a lot and I work in front of the computer most of the day, it is easy for me to put on an ipod and listen to a story as I do my mostly brain numbing work, so I have not only a predilection for audio books, but a vast experience with them. For example, to use a popular author and a popular reader, I have listened to most of Stephen King's oeuvre on CD or MP3, and quite frankly the novelty of hearing him read his own work wore of pretty quickly when compared to hearing Frank Muller’s lively read his work.

Maybe not a lot of people on this forum enjoy Stephen King, I know there has been a general backlash against his work by some of the horror intelligentsia, but I enjoy his works for the way his characters seem to breathe and live, even when on paper they would seem the worst clichés. I am a particular fan of his dark tower series, and have read all of them in print, have heard the author read one, and have heard the incredible Frank Muller read three. The three Frank Muller productions have by far been my favorite iteration of the story, a rather long story whose plots and beats I am fairly familiar with and yet when I listen to the frank Muller readings, I almost see a fantastical Serio Leone film, huge and operatic but with a pop sci-fi sensibility - that engages me personally more than the printed words or the authors reading. So I can totally relate with what Julian Karswell is saying, such a reading is true collaborate effort and like the best collaborative efforts, always greater than the sum of the whole, or what any one individual contributes.

Then again a few years back the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, put out a CD of Juan Rulfo reading excerpts of Pedro Paramo and few other short works. Now I've read Pedro Paramo in translation, and then Spanish, but I can honestly say that as lovely as both of the experiences were I never entered the world of Juan Rulfo until I heard him read this excerpt, and it has been a great remorse on my part that I can't find the whole book out of the author's mouth. For those who have read Pedro Peramo there is a definite haunting world weary magic in the book that just haunts you all the more because the sentiment is not feigned by the author, and is audible in every syllable. There is a poetry in the old man's voice that compliments the poetry of the man's words.

Then of course there is Chuck Palahniuk's short story "Guts," obscene on paper, stilted on the official audiobook production, but a blast on the bootleg recording of the authorial readings. Because there is a puckish mischievousness in Palahniuk's voice, that makes the story something of dare, something of a challenge to the listener to "hold your breath" and listen till the end.

All that said I am currently listening to the D. F. Lewis' the Hawler, and have some thoughts on it already that I have been sitting on till I finished the story proper, and had hope to post my impressions in something like an informal review on the post in which I found out about it.

I for one, applaud Mr. Lewis' readings, especially on the Hawler. To be quite frank I have something of a prejudice for dead authors over living ones, so until I started reading and listening to his stories on this webs site I did not have the pleasure of familiarity with his work, so on that most practical of points, I thank him for making his stories available because otherwise I would not have read him. That said based on the works I have read/listened to I feel it is fair that D. F. Lewis' work is closer to poetry than to prose. There is love of words, not just of plot or clever ideas but of the words themselves, the way they sound themselves or together in a conjunction with carefully chosen complimentary phonemes and the meanings they hold, or the meanings that can’t hold them.

I remember taking a roman epistelography class in college, and reading a contemporary of St. Augustine, remark at how shocked he was watching Augustine of hippo, walk around reading a book, but reading it silently. It struck me then in a way that I've never forgotten that classical poetry was meant to be read aloud, not silently, not to yourself as you sit quietly and comfortably in an overstuffed chair in some smoky study, which is I'm afraid, how most of us readers that are left choose (or hope) to read. I remember so much time wasted with a lexicon, and paper, translating word by word in an uninspired way the works of antiquity, but then finding a teacher who focused us on hearing the meter and not just working out the scansion, that the poetry of the ancients is in the ear and not on the page. Though I am still very much a neophyte in classical language, read it aloud to me, especially in meter and I can follow along.

The meaning emerges from the sound of the words and not just from the words themselves. Read the Iliad in Greek and in meter and you will hear the hoof beats of horses, the trembling bass of a quaking ground under the marching of armies, and the clang of sword on shields, and spear on teeth. Even if you don't understand the all of words the story emerges.

Something like an auditory "magic eye" or a Chuck Close painting, focus too much or too narrowly on the details you miss the larger picture. The words become the sounds of the world being created, and those sounds then become that world for those lucky enough to be listening. This is what good poetry does, it is hypnotic and powerful.

Quite frankly, the Hawler is difficult book to "read" as the author himself notes in a deviation of the "audiobook version" from the text, when he notes that Hawler's are a confused bunch - much like the readers of this book. The story is not linear, per-se. From what I’ve listen to so far the best way to describe the story is to use the image that the author himself chooses to open the book with – it is a carpet. But in deference to my appreciation of the man’s work let call this carpet a tapestry or if it is a carpet is one of those Moorish textiles. But it is living and dynamic carpet and we as the reader are mites stuck on a single thread wisped along by it weaving in and out of the main the narrative. There is a plot, discernable through the myriad and minutiae of thoughts and sketches, ideas and wordplay that are woven into the text. If you were to exclude these things from the story there is a story it is a little tedious, but easy enough to follow, at least so far, by why on earth would you want to do that? Why deny your self the best part of the story.

The story is something of a null cipher, a story hidden within the story. It is a story of words as well as of people. Words like Weirdmonger, nemonymous, Hawler, brainwright, are thrown around, and the meaning of these words especially what a Hawler is, or more precisely which definitions fail to capture the essence of a hawler - is another story being told.

On top of that there is another story being told in absentia, that is to say that there is great secret something beneath and behind every word and every action it is something terrible about the world, about the Hawlers, perhaps about nothing at all but it seethes in every observation and behind every thought, but it never spoken, it hides in the spaces between the words, and is made manifest by its absence.

And in true form to the author’s nemonymous beliefs it really is all in the text, its just that its not really what you would call apparent or manifest, or easily dramatized.

It is a very fascinating experience and very enjoyable so far from what I've read, I cannot say, without knowing how it ends whether or not it a satisfying one. But I am hooked, and am trusting myself fully to this author, including his vocal reading of the thing.

An actor can infuse a line with emotion, but a poet can draw it out of the words themselves. The actor animates like a puppet, but the poet creates life from the words. I think this is the difference. I think this is why a novelist (and I don’t at all mean to use the term in a derogatory manner) can benefit from an actor’s interpretation, but a poet, a poet has composed something like a piece of sheet music, that when read properly has a life of his own but which is something that only the poet himself or another with at least somewhat a poetic soul can read. I can imagine an actor reading the Hawler and trying to make it dramatic and emoting and, creating characters with different tics, but ignoring the real magic of the work.

There is workman like efficiency to what Julian Karswell suggests, but it something that lacks the charm and the magic of the poet in his own voice, conveying his words in a way only he can.

And I stress Mr. D. F. Lewis is definitely in this latter category, writing something closer to poetry than prose. I am sure that he himself does not fully appreciate the import of his writing, I’m sure a lot of it is a mystery to himself, but his words are pregnant with a magic, and I for one can think of no one else who would make a better wet nurse to bring them out an into fruition.

An actor would create a character or tell a narrative, and if that is all that your story is, a narrative or a character study, then let an actor do it, they will do a better job than you. But poetry, in the words of Edgar Allan Poe, well “a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul…[for] An immortal instinct, deep within the spirit of man, is…[]… a sense of the Beautiful. This it is which administers to his delight in the manifold forms, and sounds, and odors, and sentiments amid which he exists. And just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or the eyes of Amaryllis in the mirror, so is the mere oral or written repetition of these forms, and sounds, and colors, and odors, and sentiments, a duplicate source of delight…[and so there is] a certain, petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and for ever, those divine and rapturous joys, of which through the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses… Contenting myself with the certainty that Music, in its various modes of metre, rhythm, and rhyme, is of so vast a moment in Poetry as never to be wisely rejected — is so vitally important an adjunct, that he is simply silly who declines its assistance, I will not now pause to maintain its absolute essentiality. It is in Music, perhaps, that the soul most nearly attains the great end for which, when inspired by the Poetic Sentiment, it struggles — the creation of supernal Beauty. It may be, indeed, that here this sublime end is, now and then, attained in fact… I make Beauty the province of the poem, simply because it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to spring as directly as possible from their causes.... It by no means follows, however, that the incitements of Passion, or the precepts of Duty, or even the lessons of Truth, may not be introduced into a poem, and with advantage; for they may subserve, incidentally, in various ways, the general purposes of the work: — but the true artist will always contrive to tone them down in proper subjection to that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the real essence of the poem.” (The Poetic Principle – posthumously published)

These are lofty ideas, and Poe has a lofty way of putting it but he is true for all his pomp and elegance. There is a rhythm to a story, a care to the word choices that I am not entirely sure a professional production would have their ear tuned to. I can’t even recall the last time I’ve seen a production of Shakespere read metrically rather than dramatically- but then again I don’t get out much.

That said I do warn anyone reading such a long “review” to not read into the story what I have read into it. I think I see what the story is trying to do, and I for one appreciate it and am, for one, excited by it. But I am also convinced that no two men have ever read (or listened) to the same book. Listen to it or read it, it’s free what do you have to loose? Make your own opinion.

My apologies to nemonymous, I started off addressing your question and ended up reviewing your book (so far). I felt it was all relevant though so I plead your indulgence.

[Nemonymous]

Quote Originally Posted by alogos

My apologies to nemonymous, I started off addressing your question and ended up reviewing your book (so far). I felt it was all relevant though so I plead your indulgence.

Thanks so much, alogos. I'm really thrilled with your 'in media res' assessment of the reading aloud of 'The Hawler'.

[Dark Deceiver]

Just yesterday evening, me and my girlfriend attended a function at the Ilkley Playhouse where the co-League of Gentlemen scribe Jeremy Dyson , after first announcing the various winners of a short story competition, went onto read out a story from his new short story collection 'The Cranes That Build The Cranes' called 'Out of Bounds'. And for what its worth, he did so excellently ( while I'm on the subject I'd heartily recommend the book too; the story 'Michael' in particular is a creepily ambiguous gem ).

[Julian Karswell]

Quote Originally Posted by alogos

Much clippage by the scissor-happy Karswell. My apologies to nemonymous, I started off addressing your question and ended up reviewing your book (so far). I felt it was all relevant though so I plead your indulgence.

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



An interesting and well-argued thesis, it has to be said.

There will always be exceptions to prove the rule. In most cases authors would be well-advised not to inflict their readings on an often imprisoned public, but I do accept that some things are best heard read aloud by the writer him/herself, and that in other cases, it is fascinating to put a voice to a work of fiction.

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, apart from there being a reference to one of the large American libraries owning a copy, have been unable to find one (the library just ignore requests from the public).

JK




A

[Evans]

I see no particular points against author readings in themselfs. To put it bluntly it all depends on wheather they read the story well or not.

[gveranon]

Quote Originally Posted by Nemonymous

I think personally I can make my own 'vexed texture of text' work better when spoken aloud with 'meaning' than when just allowing it to reside flabbily and lazily on the page ... or like ranks of dead insects.

I seldom listen to readings, and when I do it is mainly because I'm curious to hear an author's voice (a curiosity which is quickly satisfied). 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. I also have a better mental grasp of things I read as opposed to things I listen to. But if I have heard an author's voice and found it to be memorable, I tend to hear that voice at least intermittently in my head whenever I'm reading his or her writing.

Some authors are good at reading their works, others aren't. Mr. Lewis is very good at it, and I can see (or rather hear) why he feels that he can put more meaning into the spoken versions. Harlan Ellison has released several albums of excellent readings of his own stories. Ellison's virtuoso performance of "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" is truly amazing. Some of William S. Burroughs's "cut-up" passages that look dubious to me on the page are quite compelling when enunciated in Burroughs's unforgettable voice.

On the other hand, I find Philip Larkin's readings to be tedious, despite the fact that they are admired by many Larkinophiles. Wallace Stevens's readings are so slow, ponderous, and dull that I'm surprised audiences ever managed to sit through them without killing themselves or the poet. These are two of my favorite poets, but I don't think their readings even begin to do justice to their poems.