“The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Lui is a short story told from the point of view of a young, Chinese American man as he recalls his relationships with his American father and his Chinese immigrant mother, who was trafficked from China to marry an American man. Being the child of immigrants, the story is profoundly moving to me and I was curious if the audio version would have the same emotional impact of reading the text.

The official Simon & Schuster audiobook is available on audible.com. It is narrated by a single, male voice. The reading is straightforward with no special effects or music in the background. The quality is very good and the narrator sounds like a professional voice actor. However, I did notice some odd choices in this audiobook version. In the story, the mother does not speak English well. In the text, when she speaks Chinese, the phrase is in quotes with the English translation presented in the next sentence (“Laohu.” Look, a tiger.). In parts of the audiobook version, the English translations have been omitted. Perhaps, the publisher or narrator felt providing the English was cumbersome or not necessary? I disagree with this decision, it would have been helpful for the listener to hear the English. Although it doesn’t take away the meaning of the story, it’s a small detail that did not need to be removed. Not being a Chinese speaker, I can’t comment on the pronunciation of these sentences in the audiobook. However, they blended seamlessly with the rest of the audio.

The narrator does change his voice for different characters. It was particularly noticeable when the mother is trying to speak English – at times, the narrator subtly attempts what appears to be a Chinese accent which I found slightly distracting and maybe even inappropriate. To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about this – we already know the mother is Chinese and does not speak English, is the audiobook enforcing a stereotype by having the narrator raise his pitch and speak with a (seemingly) Chinese accent? The narrator also changes his pitch (higher) when speaking as a child and lower when speaking as the father.

I also came across another audio version of the story in the “LeVar Burton Reads” podcast where Burton reads a short fiction in each episode. It was interesting to compare the two audio versions of the same story. Curiously, this version also omits some English translations. I’m a fan of this podcast so I expected a high production value. This version has ambient music playing in the background and each time a character speaks, it sounds like an echo coming from the right or left speaker. These details add texture and dimension to the story. And, although there is also a single, male narrator, Burton carries the story much better in my opinion. He characterizes his voice for effect but doesn’t attempt the Chinese accent, instead focusing on the emotion of the character, like speaking in a hoarse voice when the mother is sick or a loud voice when the young man is angry. Lastly, Burton’s version is almost twice as long as Simon & Schuster’s. His pace of reading must have been much slower but it was not noticeable. In fact, I appreciated his pauses and clear enunciation.

In some ways, the audiobook versions forced me to slow down and pay attention as opposed to speed reading a book. But overall, I still prefer the printed text version of this story. It’s hard to ignore the interpretive nature of someone reading out loud.

Of many things that the internet can do, the facilitating the formation of communities is—for better or worse—one of its most consistently preserved features. As ‘the internet’ becomes less of a worldwide web and more of a series of loosely interconnected pockets, these communities have become more insular. But by that same token, they’ve become more self-sustaining. The language, cultural canon, and tone of the communities are actively preserved by community members in the same way archivists and educators preserve the precedent of a field.

The text I’ve chosen for this blog post is a poorly written (not a read, just a fact) piece of Harry Potter fanfiction entitled ‘My Immortal.’ As a text, it ignores nearly every rule of the medium, eschewing grammar, spelling, punctuation, characterization, rules and tropes of the subject universe—the list goes on. Despite its many (many) flaws, it stands as a beloved piece of internet literature. So beloved, in fact that when the original iteration on fanfiction.net was deleted, a community site was erected dedicated to the preservation of its text form. As a text, My Immortal has a consistent pattern of spelling and diction that both adds to its inherent charm, and makes it nigh on undecipherable to the uninitiated. Because if this and its place in the hearts of many, as an icon of a specific counterculture, as specific time period, many audio renditions choose actively to celebrate these linguistic foibles as an integral part of the experience.

I’ve included two versions of this ‘audiobook,’ one done in earnest as a single cohesive (and solely aural) piece, and one recorded as a series of several videos with the text overlain on the screen, and occasional edited graphics to tie in the visual aspects of the experience. I include both because I find the first to be, shall we say, a connoisseur’s version. Or perhaps, a more purely verbal experience to be enjoyed by those delving further, or maybe delving for the first time. The second version is one for the community surrounding the piece. Whether you’ve read the piece in its entirety or are coming across it from another pocket of the internet, the immersive and edited rendition invites you to consume the piece outside of the vacuum of your own experience. The narrator stumbles over words and chokes with laughter, and shares inside jokes in the form of visual editing. The tone differential between these two versions is substantial, but they both offer a version of the text as it could’ve been experienced in its original form, on fanfiction.net. Whether that means listening to the narrator eloquently articulate each misspelling with care, as you would reading the text, or cracking up alongside the narrator like you’re reading alongside friends and sharing in the absurdity.

The two works also share the commonality of being created as a labor of love. And ultimately, with this piece, that’s what keeps it alive. It’s bad writing. Its content is deeply a product of its time. But because of its place in the annals of the internet, it refuses to die. And in that way, it has become, not my immortal, but our immortal.

Earnest Rendition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Ke71U3MXY

Community-Immersive Rendition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdv6Q68EutU&list=PLB68C79C86B664E01

Preserved Text: https://myimmortalrehost.webs.com

When the subject of audiobooks arrived for this weeks topic, I thought instantly of surveying random recordings of the “General Prologue” of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Although selected prior to reading Rubery’s The Untold Story of the Talking Book, the benefits of talking books listed as “dialects, foreign languages, and song lyrics” retrofit into the motivation of selecting Chaucer’s text (Rubery 9). My selection likely reflects the sentimentality attached to my reading of this particular text. Taking a course on the Canterbury Tales at Hunter College in Spring 2019 paradoxically lead me to both pursuing a masters degree and, counterintuitively on first blush, digital humanities.

(Except from The General Prologue of Chaucer’s “the Canterbury Tales”

read by J.B Bessinger Jr.)

The most persuasive version I found in my brief survey was digital rip from a cassette tape recording of J.B Bessinger Jr., excerpted above from the Internet Archive. Bessinger, an NYU professor, known for his thorough pedagogical schemas for teaching Beowulf, outshines competing recordings by criteria that’s meaningful to me as a listener of an audio performance in Middle English. One distinguishing factor that makes this audio version better than the others found online is the omission of line break pauses. Rhyming in oral traditions offer the memorial ergonomics to the performer, but weren’t intended to modulate the sentence pacing in a given stanza. For example, line five through half of line seven should be spoke all in one breath even though there are two line breaks.

Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes,

Should be read as “Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth inspired hath in every holt and heeth the tendre croppes.”

Pausing for the line break is rampant in all the readings in of the prologue I could find online.

Bessinger’s intonation accounts for the flow of sentences, and he voices each character’s description in some semblance to the station and gender of the character described. The reading is extremely fluent, and the pronunciation matches how I was taught Middle English. It’s worth wondering to what degree I feel a heretofore surreptitious sense of authenticity when I hear the gentle pops of static build up created during playback and recorded to this digital version of the General Prologue.

Other audio recordings of the General Prologue sounded less convincing to my ear. Though the breath of the Ancient Literature Dude‘s Youtube Channel is impressive, his reading of the General Prologue has several unsatisfactory elements. First, his voice is impressively deep and gravelly, but doesn’t vary vocal characterization throughout the General Prologue. In fact, you’ll find that his tone appears to be flat regardless of ancient language or text read (e.g. a rune poem read in Old Norse ). The music in this rendition, a welcome addition given the audiobook medium, apes the general mood of medievalism, incorporating as much variation as the vocal intonation. This instruction video] prepared by the University School of Nashville offers a major assistance, albeit in visual aides. Still, flashing the image of a bird when speaking of the “smale fowles maken melodye” can help contemporary readers understand some of the meaning behind the Middle English they will recite at the end of the semester, even if it’s not strictly a property of an audiobook.

I am not well-versed in audiobooks, but part of what occurs to me while seeking out recordings of Chaucer is the surprising conservatism in this small subset of this format. I’d be interested to hear if anyone in the case can point me to audiobooks that use more sound effects or audio cues to help enhance a reading of an audiobook when compared to sight reading. Then again, maybe I’m confusing an audiobook for a radio play.

Here’s [a link to the General Prologue] on Gutenberg if anyone wants to read along with the audiobooks presented here. The first two stanzas are included below to give a reader of this blog a flavor of Middle English in written form.

Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth                        
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open yë,                        
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages):
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
(And palmers for to seken straunge strondes)
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende                         
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.

Bifel that, in that seson on a day, 
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay 
Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage 
To Caunterbury with ful devout corage, 
At night was come in-to that hostelrye 
Wel nyne and twenty in a companye, 
Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle 
In felawshipe, and pilgrims were they alle, 
That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde; 
The chambres and the stables weren wyde, 
And wel we weren esed atte beste. 
And shortly, whan the sonne was to reste,
So hadde I spoken with hem everichon, 
That I was of hir felawshipe anon, 
And made forward erly for to ryse,
To take our wey, ther as I yow devyse.

In April of 1959, American novelist Flannery O’Connor read her celebrated short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, to a crowd at Vanderbilt University as part of a panel with fellow Southern authors Robert Penn Warren and Jesse Stuart. Presumably produced using the recently commercialized and affordable reel-to-reel magnetic tape recorders of the time, the muddled audio recording detailing the tale of The Grandmother and The Misfit exists as a rare glimpse into the reclusive and pious nature of O’Connor and the tonality with which she intended her stories to be told. The narrative is appropriately drenched in O’Connor’s thick Georgian accent and is delivered with an ease exclusive to an author reciting their own work, drawing forth laughter (and audio clipping) from the crowd as the Southern author delivers flares of wit and the grotesque to a crowd whose vocal engagement only amplifies the potency of O’Connor’s performance. Despite the mediocre quality of the recording, which includes incessant white noise buzzing beneath the “boxy” register of Flannery’s voice, the aged nature of the audio might be said to add an aura of authenticity to the piece, grounding it in the temporal context in which O’Connor was operating. Little information exists regarding the production process of the recording and from briefly engaging with it, one can surmise that this is likely due to there being little to report. Beyond a button being pressed on a machine akin to a Philips Single Speed High Fidelity Model Tape Recorder and a neighboring button being pressed to stop the recording, it is evident that no editing was involved prior to the recording being published.

Though Flannery O’Connor doesn’t dabble in distinct voice characterization, during the climax of the story she effectively oscillates between the panicked delivery of The Grandmother and the cool, murderous intonation of The Misfit. O’Connor’s elocution quickens until the point of The Grandmother’s death, her speech then slowing to match the reflective state of The Misfit in the wake of his act of violence before concluding the work with the murderer’s oft-debated statement (“It’s no real pleasure in life.”) to the sound of muddy applause. O’Connor’s zeal in communicating her moral fictions, undoubtedly laced with a clear theological intention that presumably drives her impassioned delivery, effectively renders this audio a captivating piece of literary history and an invaluable introduction to the Southern Gothic genre.

Having read A Good Man is Hard to Find multiple times, listening to the story as expressed by the author provided a novel experience and worked to emphasize elements of the narrative that had previously eluded me. Components of the aural experience of the story, such as O’Connor’s vocal urgency amidst the story’s conclusion and her playful diction exhibiting the subtle humor throughout the piece, worked to amplify both the grotesque realism and the absurd hilarity of her work in such a way that breathed new life into a story with which I’m wildly familiar. As an ex-Audible subscriber who has grown somewhat disillusioned with audiobooks for reasons primarily related to my own attention span and capacity for retaining information, my experience with this recording provided a pleasant reminder of what it is to simply be told a story.

Here’s a link to a PDF copy of A Good Man is Hard to Find, for anyone that wants to read along.

Resources

Cash, J. W. (1987). Flannery O’Connor as Lecturer: “… a secret desire to rival Charles Dickens”. The Flannery O’Connor Bulletin, 16, 1–15.

Fitzgerald, S. (Ed.). (1979). The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor. Vintage Books.

O’Connor, F. (1971). The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

For this blog post I chose a famous short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The Cask of Amotillado. It is a fascinating short story that has captivated me since the High School, and it speaks about the changes in the American society with the arrival of Italian immigrants during the life of Edgar Allan Poe, especially in the Northeast region of the US. For some reason when I always reread this short story from time to time I have this New York Italian accent in my head especially when pronouncing the names of the characters such Fortunato.

About this version which I find to be the better of others is the quality of pronunciation of names which can be hard. The training of the presenter is great and his rhythm is well appreciated especially nearing the climax of the story. There are multiple voices heard throughout the story and the presenter adds personal flavor especially when concerning the comedic moments throughout the story. The presenter does not deviate from the story but does add personal flavor with intonations and exclamations. Some stories such as Cask of Amotillado definitely fit the audiobook format. For me especially short stories really go well in the audio format.

There were multiple researches (they are available when googled) done that shows peoples attention span is about 20 minutues and that is why for example TED series which is popular on youtube and elsewhere are no longer than 20 minutes. Psychologically it is easer to grab and reach the logical end of the story if it is short. I guess that is why Edgar Allan Poe succeeds so well. His short stories are well written and obviously he could not have foreseen the usage of audiobooks but his shortness and brevity is what makes his stories perfect candidates for such a medium as audio books.

Before I get into my analysis, I want to discuss my own experience recording texts. At LaGuardia, when I teach Voice and Diction, I have my students do short weekly recordings. I would theme them, so one week would be, say, Robert Frost week. I’d put several of his poems up on blackboard, along with my sample recordings. 

About a year and half ago, I moved most of the sample recordings to Manifold. I also marked up the poems or speeches, with pronunciation hints, definitions, and context.

One of the speeches I always teach is Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. In Voice and Diction, the students have to recite it. One of my colleagues was teaching communication for the non-native speaker, and asked if I could find a few other short Lincoln speeches, so students could have a selection. 

I found quite a few of them, and then decided to put together a Lincoln speech database. 

Heck, I’ve even done a recording of The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. The past few years, rather than give my students a midterm, they would recite part of this. I think it works.

So, while I’ve never actually recorded an audiobook, I’ve been on the periphery.

For my book, I chose Katherine Kurtz’s King Kelson’s Bride, a book in the Fantasy genre. It’s a book I’ve read a few times, so I know it well. I downloaded the audible version, since I could sync up the recording with my Kindle. As the narration went on, the text of the recording would be highlighted, so following along was easy. 

Also, if you highlighted a word or phrase, the narration paused while I either looked up the word or phrase. This was a nice function. 

The narrator’s enunciation was clear, precise and easy to follow. The narrator did different voices for the dialog, so conversations between characters, even conversations with four or five different characters, were easy to follow. There was a wedding scene in Latin, which the narrator did in chant, an unexpected but nice touch. The narration is extremely faithful to the book: if there are any differences between the narration and the text, I have not noticed it. 

The narration included no audio effects. For instance, several scenes have music, but no music was played. There were no other sound effects either. For instance, when the characters were on board a ship, the narration did include any sounds like the wind in the sails, or the clanging of chains when the boat came into court. I don’t know if this is a good or a bad thing. The sound effects could very easily become a distraction, and I know from personal experience that adding a layer of music onto a recording can be difficult. You need to get the volume right: too loud is obviously going to be a distraction, but too soft is as well, because the music is in the background but the person hearing it can’t really identify it.  

My biggest issues:

1. I can read the text faster than the narration. I don’t know if this is because I am a fast reader or because I know the book. It’s likely a combination. It wasn’t a huge difference, and I probably wouldn’t have noticed it so much if I didn’t have the text in front of me. 
2. In my head, I pronounce many of the character names differently, partially because I’ve studied Irish and Welsh, and the names that look like they are derived from those languages aren’t pronounced as I would expect.  
3. Also, the voices in the dialog didn’t always march up with how I imagined them. This isn’t a bad thing though. The dialect work was consistent. The different character voices stayed the same, and if characters were from the same country or region, their accents were similar. In this regard, the audiobook added a depth to the novel for me, 
4. While not doing dialog, the narrator sometimes was a little robotic, especially when describing places. Normally, the narration is good: it’s almost like the narration for a documentary, but sometimes, it’s a little uneven for me. 
5. One of the chapters has a scene where there is an attempted assassination. I would have liked to hear the narrator describe the scene with excitement or anger or surprise in his voice, but he didn’t. It was the same voice he used in the rest of the narration. I mean, it wasn’t as robotic as when the narration described a dinner scene, but I expected more vocal variety. 

Overall, I enjoyed the experience. I felt that the narration usually worked, and even when it was less than optimal, it was never awful. I should do this with a book I’ve never read, and with one that I don’t have sitting in front of me, to see if it would work under those circumstances. 

About the poem

The Monólogo do Orfeu (Orpheus monologue) poem is part of the Orfeu da Conceição musical show, written by the Brazilian poet and playwright Vinicius de Moraes in 1954. It is an interpretation of the Greek mythological story of Orpheus and Eurydice that references the reality of the favelas Cariocas.  

In Greek mythology, the son of the god Apollo and the nymph Calliope, Orpheus, was the most talented of all poets and musicians. His poetry enchanted everything and everyone. Eurydice was a beautiful nymph. Orpheus and Eurydice’s passion ends in a tragedy caused by Eurydice’s beauty and the excessive jealousy of Aristeus. A serpent mortally wounded Eurydice. Desperate, Orpheus tried to get his beloved back, only to meet death after he cried out for lost love and rejected all women.

In Orfeu da Conceição, Vinicius de Morais reinterprets this story by presenting the story of Orfeu, a samba player who lives in the slums and falls in love with Eurídice during the Carnival. Besides being a version of the original play, this is also a tribute to the Brazilian black man, a recognition of his value in Brazilian culture and the precarious conditions of his existence.

About the video/audio production

As Vinicius wrote this piece for a theater play, I don’t believe it requires any adaptation. In this video, the author reads the poem naturally without special effects or editing. However, Vinicius declaims it with intensity, representing Orfeu’s emotions very well. In the poem, Orfeu presents his feeling of loneliness as he remembers the joyful moments he had with Eurídice, who is no longer alive.

The nicest thing about this piece is the musical component that goes along with the speech. In one aspect, it references the lyre, a stringed musical instrument that dates back to ancient Greece (another reference to the Greek piece). In another aspect, it uses the Fado melody background, ​​a Portuguese musical style characterized by mournful tunes and lyrics, often about the life of the poor and infused with a sentiment of resignation, fate, and melancholy. 

From my perspective, this last component is perfect. Instead of choosing the Samba music, which is present in other parts of the musical show, I believe Vinicius chose Fado because what Orfeu feels is best expressed by the Portuguese word Saudade. This word means the feeling of permanent and irreparable loss and its consequent lifelong damage, with no perfect translation in any other language.

Other versions of this poem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcARp8p5Bpw (very spontaneous, Catarina Marques declaims the poem by a beach. It is a bit noisy, but the presence of the sea is also a reference to Fado lyrics since it is a common theme in this musical style).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98x3qQbxFnM  (In this version, Maria Bethânia declaims the poem after singing Lamento do Morro, a very lively song. She decided not to use any musical background, and I think it works well because it creates a good contrast with the tune, making it more dramatic).

Interesting piece on the 1980s Choose Your Own Adventure series of children’s books that touches on some of the overlap between print and screen-based media we discussed last night, insofar as the CYOI series anticipates some of the 1990s giddy fascination with “hypertext media” and the contemporary proximity between cinema, video games, and the novel.

BTW if it isn’t obvious, this is your space too: feel free to post anything course-relevant on the blog as we move through the course.

For our next meeting on 9/19, I want you to write a blog post and report on it with a very brief (max 5 min) presentation on any audiobook version of a fiction text that you can get your hands on. Sources might include:

• free/open texts read by amateurs on librivox.org or similiar public domain repositories
• texts you download/check out from your local library or the GC’s library
• texts you buy from iTunes or Google Play or audible.com
• texts you own or discover at flea markets/secondhand stores

I’d like you to think about and comment on some of the following:

• production values: how much went into the recording, in terms of vocal training, editing, recording technology, etc.?
• style: is there a single voice or multiple voices? Does the narrator (or do the narrators) do “voice characterization,” modulating the voice for different characters, or not?
• fidelity: is the recording abridged or unabridged? Does it stick rigorously to the text or deviate from it?
• affect: what does it feel like to “read” this text? How does it differ from reading a printed work of fiction?

In the year 2014, my mother purchased me a nook from Barnes and Noble. It was a birthday present (I think) and an attempt to subdue the impending ecological disaster, which the amount of books in my bedroom was likely to cause. I had bookshelves full, stacks upon stacks on the floor, on the dresser, on the bedside table and desk. My nook and I spent a solid year fused as one entity. I started and finished multiple series on that thing. And then, nothing. In almost the exact same trajectory outlined by Price (pg. 3-4) I fell into and out of eBook reading.

For me, a person with ADHD (hooray), engagement with a material is predicated upon more than just my interest in its content. I rely on convenience and a quality, intuitive user interface to even get my foot in the proverbial door. When that foot is in, it’s a slippery slope into stimulus binging, and gorging myself on content for the cheap dopamine. TikTok is the bane of my productivity. To date, the farce of print reading that is the eBook ‘page turn’ has halted my reading progress in its tracks on numerous occasions. Most notably, in recent events, with a novel by Terry Pratchett, made difficult to read in eBook form by its own humor (witty asides in the form of footnotes; simple in print, clunky and disengaging in the Libby app).

Fast forward to 2018 and I am staying up late, reading tens of thousands of words in fanfiction in a single night on my iPhone. This is something I can still do, while reading novels in electronic form is still a challenge for reasons—I cannot stress enough—that have nothing to do with the content matter. It has to do with one thing and one thing alone: continuous scroll. It is important to note that the human brain has no one dedicated process for absorbing and processing text. Rather, written text is processed visually first, the visual input is translated into verbal input by your brain, and then the verbal input is processed by the same systems that process spoken language.

The physical novel holds its place for being a solely text-based form of storytelling. But the digital space, though not unfriendly to text alone, demands exploitation of all its features to shine as a medium. I would argue that the eBook declined as a medium because it tried to imitate, rather than leaning into its own potential to play with form. As discussed in Pressman, digital narrative that actively employs its digital nature to serve a literary purpose stands out as groundbreaking. The most compelling digital interactions with literature that I’ve had in recent years have been so because they could not be reproduced to the same effect in print. Dracula Daily, for example: the SubStack repackaging of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, delivered via email following the timeline of the original novel, using time as an active part of the narrative. Additionally, traditional prose is not the only form of text prevalent in the digital literature space. Author’s notes and tagging systems on Ao3 become acts of creative work in and of themselves. Visual novels and indie video games fold written story and illustration together into narrative experiences marked by ambient music, lovingly drawn art, and a lot of reading. In another universe, House of Leaves could very well have replaced Homestuck. In adopting these unconventional traits to convey a narrative, certain forms of storytelling become more accessible, not just for those who benefit from accommodations, but for everyone. Though nothing will replace prose as an art form, as a narrative tool, or as a way of conveying information, it is not necessarily the pinnacle of text we hold it to be culturally, and opening the form of the ‘novel’ to include media in the gray area of the digital realm would better studies of text as a whole.