The Opinions of Authors on Reading Literature Aloud So…
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The Opinions of Authors on Reading Literature Aloud
So reading poetry aloud is a fine, venerable and even ancient tradition. Many major poets read their own and others' works aloud.
But a guy I was talking to about I guess what you could call the aesthetics of audiobooks provided me this quote from JD Salinger. I don't think before now I ever read the opinion of an author on reading *prose* aloud.
>Here is something that has stuck in my mind for over twenty-five years. In class, one evening, Mr. Burnett felt himself in the mood to read Faulkner's "That Evening Sun Go Down" out loud, and he went right ahead and did it. A rapid reading, among other things, most singularly and undescribably low-key. In effect, he was much less reading the story aloud than running through with it, verbatim, and very thoughtfully, with about twenty-five percent of his voice open. Almost anybody picked at random from a crowded subway car would have given a more dramatic or "better" performance. But that was just the point. Mr. Burnett very deliberately forbore to perform. He abstained from reading beautifully. It was as if he had turned himself into a reading lamp, and his voice into paper and print. By and large, he left you on your own to know how the characters were saying what they were saying. You got your Faulkner story straight, without any middlemen between. Not before or since have I heard a reader make such instinctive and wholehearted concessions to a born printed-page writer's needs and, aye, rights. Regretfully, I never got to meet Faulkner, but I often had it in my head to shoot him a letter telling him about that unique reading of Mr. Burnett's. In this nutty, exploitive era, people who read short stories beautifully are all over the place-recording, taping, podiumizing, televising-and I wanted to tell Faulkner, who must have heard countless moving interpretations of his work, that not once, throughout the reading, did Burnett come between the author and his beloved silent reader. Whether he has ever done it again, I don't know, but with somebody who as brought the thing off even once, the written short-story form must be very much at home, intact, unfinagled with, suitably content.
I certainly understand his viewpoint - the "medium" of speech ought to impact or distort the text as little as possible.
But I'm curious if anyone here has quotes and perspectives from other authors on this matter? If they agree, disagree, anything at all be welcome.
#entertainment
source
So reading poetry aloud is a fine, venerable and even ancient tradition. Many major poets read their own and others' works aloud.
But a guy I was talking to about I guess what you could call the aesthetics of audiobooks provided me this quote from JD Salinger. I don't think before now I ever read the opinion of an author on reading *prose* aloud.
>Here is something that has stuck in my mind for over twenty-five years. In class, one evening, Mr. Burnett felt himself in the mood to read Faulkner's "That Evening Sun Go Down" out loud, and he went right ahead and did it. A rapid reading, among other things, most singularly and undescribably low-key. In effect, he was much less reading the story aloud than running through with it, verbatim, and very thoughtfully, with about twenty-five percent of his voice open. Almost anybody picked at random from a crowded subway car would have given a more dramatic or "better" performance. But that was just the point. Mr. Burnett very deliberately forbore to perform. He abstained from reading beautifully. It was as if he had turned himself into a reading lamp, and his voice into paper and print. By and large, he left you on your own to know how the characters were saying what they were saying. You got your Faulkner story straight, without any middlemen between. Not before or since have I heard a reader make such instinctive and wholehearted concessions to a born printed-page writer's needs and, aye, rights. Regretfully, I never got to meet Faulkner, but I often had it in my head to shoot him a letter telling him about that unique reading of Mr. Burnett's. In this nutty, exploitive era, people who read short stories beautifully are all over the place-recording, taping, podiumizing, televising-and I wanted to tell Faulkner, who must have heard countless moving interpretations of his work, that not once, throughout the reading, did Burnett come between the author and his beloved silent reader. Whether he has ever done it again, I don't know, but with somebody who as brought the thing off even once, the written short-story form must be very much at home, intact, unfinagled with, suitably content.
I certainly understand his viewpoint - the "medium" of speech ought to impact or distort the text as little as possible.
But I'm curious if anyone here has quotes and perspectives from other authors on this matter? If they agree, disagree, anything at all be welcome.
#entertainment
source
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