Audiobooks
- Thread starter jenks
- Start date
GhostofKinski
Member
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.
sus
Moderator
Yes audio-text pairings for the Wake is the only way I think.
It's always been read, too; even back in the 60s recordpressings circulated as freely as the papertext. Robert Ashley was a huge fan. Ginsberg is rumored to have taken one of the discs with him to listen to during his first acid trip, administered by undercover CIA agents in a Stanford lab.
jenks
thread death
I think as a kind of follow up question is what happens to writing if most of it is no longer consumed off the page. I'm thinking about the fact that we are now have the most literate generation ever in Gen Z - they have read more words and written more than any previous generation but not within a traditional format - it's all on screen rather than ink and paper. How does that change our relationship with texts? I'm thinking about how difficult Literature courses are finding it to recruit staff and how numbers of students taking Literature is falling, libraries are closing and stock being sold off for peanuts. I'm not necessarily suggesting that audiobooks are responsible but more about how the privileged place of the book is under threat and what happens next.
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
The fact that a several hour long conversations multiple times a week are in is a nice development
GhostofKinski
Member
Y’know, I wanted to mention the experience of listening and reading that text as being almost hallucinogenic, but I didn’t want to sound like some shroom addled neo-Druid.
The only way I can describe the experience is like hearing a bird song and suddenly understanding (or at least having that sensation) what it was saying. The cadence, meter,…when read/recited well it made all the difference.
version
Well-known member
On the lit. courses point, that's got to be at least partly down to the marketisation of higher education and dismissal of the humanities in terms of career prospects. It seems to have been drummed into people's heads that these subjects are a waste of time and everyone should be an engineer or scientist or run their own business instead.
jenks
thread death
I think the triumph of STEM propaganda cannot be overlooked- along with increases in uni costs (fees and loans etc) The irony being that AI will probably wipe out lots of tech jobs.
shakahislop
Well-known member
STEM propaganda for sure but also the slow year by year dissipation of the idea that it's alright to go to university and spend a load of time on abstract things for fun, rather than as a form of training. the world is a bit harsher these days if you're not being given a load of money by your parents, it's a bigger risk to spend years doing something coz it's interesting. i was on that literature route and turned away at the last minute to study something more practical, partly for that reason. i guess even then which is a while ago, it felt like an indulgence (for me, in my particular circumstances).
but also just in the culture in general. the arts have lost so much ground. symbolic ground and libidinal ground. i carry around in my head an idea that that is where coolness lies. but it's outdated and it's not reinforced in the day to day now. there's this whole set of ideas about authenticity and self-expression which feel like aging relics of a slightly older world. that bohemian lineage which surely peaked from the 70s to the 90s. the idea of being enriched and worldly. a sexy man carrying around kafka in his pocket. it's been battered by material conditions and it couldn't survive the screens. it arguably couldn't stand up to the pithy and cynical scrutiny of the internet - there's something earnest about it and that has taken a beating.
the replacement of actors, directors, grunge musicians and the people who work for them with billionaires, weird trolls, influencers and podcasters as the zeitgeist mirrors exactly where money lies and what forms of culture are profitable. rory stewart vs massive attack. steve jobs vs kubrick. literature as a field of study has taken a beating alongside all of that.
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
I bet you that earnestness will come back around. Calling it now. Just needs to be done right
shakahislop
Well-known member
even someone like brian molko or eddie vedder seems preferable in my eyes to james o brian or the diary of a CEO guy or emma stone, as something to be inspired by and to emulate.
but that way of being i think can't last when everyone is living with the internet. the constituent parts have been picked apart slowly by whatever this weird internet-affect that we're all in has been doing.
but that way of being i think can't last when everyone is living with the internet. the constituent parts have been picked apart slowly by whatever this weird internet-affect that we're all in has been doing.