Audiobooks

[jenks]

I don’t really like that rather theatrical English voice. The audiobook I heard had an Irish actor. I think, whilst being so obvious to be almost redundant, it’s pretty essential for Beckett to have an Irish voice reading him.

 

[GhostofKinski]

Thanks @sus and @version i asked because I’m not sure and do vacillate between those two poles. When an audiobook is at its best I do think it brings the text to life and gives it something I don’t get from reading on the page. The best example I can think of is the Murphy/Malone /Molloy trilogy. I had tried half a dozen times to get on with those books but the audio opened them out for me - the rhythm of the prose, the voice came through. I think someone like Beckett is a performative writer - he wants the ear as well as the eye. I think Dickens is the same - there are definite cadences in there. Melville wrote wrote huge chunks of Moby Dick in iambic pentameter - he wasn’t doing that just for the eye. However, there are other books I’ve listened to where I have felt it would be a more intimate experience with just the words on the page.

Way back “in the day” I taught myself to read absorb Shakespeare by going to the library and reading the text while listening to the audio plays on cassette tapes, lol.
I read ‘Finnegans Wake’ a year or two ago while listening to a really well read version of audiobook. It was magic! Going to do the same (thanks for the reminder) for the Beckett titles I own but haven’t gotten through.