Mr. Blah Blah Blah Visits Down Under

My cell phone rang last Friday evening. I didn't recognize the number and I almost didn't answer, thinking it was a robocall or something equally obnoxious. But curiosity got the better of me and I picked up. It was the Australian Broadcasting Company, of all things. They wanted to do a live interview with me the next day. One of their hosts, Tony Peacock, had decided to give audiobooks a try, and his first purchase was The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer, which I narrated earlier this year for Blackstone.

We arranged to talk the following day at 4 p.m. PST, which is 11 a.m. Canberra time. Of course, Saturday I was dithering around and almost missed the call, but we managed to connect and I did the interview, which lasted about 10 minutes. They sent me an audio copy, which I've posted so you can hear me blabbing away. The sound quality is poor, unfortunately, but if you listen carefully you can occasionally hear me say something interesting.

The Captured

I was doing a vanity search on Audible tonight, typing in my own name to see how I'm doin' and what's sellin' or not sellin' (yes, I do this often; I'm not ashamed of it). I was surprised to see The Captured by Scott Zesch up there in the top ten. I recorded this back in 2005 for Blackstone and absolutely loved it. Booklist summed it up this way:

On New Year's Day, 1870, Adolph Korn, the author's ancestor and son of German immigrants, was captured by three Apaches near his family's cabin in central Texas. Adolph was traded to a band of Quahada Comanches, with whom he lived until November 1872, when the Comanches traded their captives for those held by the U.S. Army. Adolph was irrevocably changed. Considering himself Indian, he lived in a cave, and died alone in 1900. The author's search into Korn's sad life led him to the similar stories of eight other children captured in Texas between 1865 and 1871. Drawing on his tenacious research and interviews with the captives' descendants, Zesch compiles a gripping account of the lives of these children as they lived and traveled with their Indian captors. He delves into the reasons for their "Indianization," which for most of them lasted the rest of their lives, and discusses why they couldn't adjust to white society. A fascinating, meticulously documented chronicle of the often-painful confrontations between whites and Indians during the final years of Indian Territory.

If that sounds interesting, it is, and I was so fond of this book that I tracked it for some time following its release and was disappointed that it didn't get more attention. Now it seems to have re-emerged, I'm not sure why--perhaps a movie or TV series has sparked interest in the topic. Anyway I highly recommend it. The narrator is adequate but the book tells a fascinating story, and tells it very well.

UPDATE: It was part of a big half-price sale on Audible. Well, good, I'm glad it's getting a new audience.

There Never Was Such a Frantic Guy...

At the end of October, Blackstone Audio wrapped recording sessions for its audio adaptation of Hamlet, as originally presented by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

For years now, Blackstone narrator and OSF star Tony Heald has been encouraging a collaboration between the two companies, and his efforts have finally born fruit. Hamlet is the first of what will be an ongoing series of audio adaptations of OSF's distinctive, American-flavored Shakespeare. The current production incorporates some fascinating visual and interpretive touches. Stylistically speaking, the defining sequence is the "Players' scene," in which Hamlet engineers an entertainment designed to reveal his uncle's complicity in the murder of his father. In the OSF production, the hired troupe improvises a "hip-hop" version of the play-within-a-play, complete with wireless mics, electronic instruments and a scratch track, while the tonily-dressed members of the court look on in growing apprehension. The famous "nunnery" scene similarly references modern technology, Ophelia being fitted with a listening device, the better to capture Hamlet's presumed insanity; Hamlet discovers the "wire" mid-scene, adding fuel to his suspicious rage. The ghost of Hamlet's father is played by deaf actor Howie Seago, who signs his lines while the actor playing Hamlet (Dan Donahue) voices them for the benefit of the audience.

As you can guess, not all of these interpolations will translate effectively to audio. Working with OSF's artistic director, Bill Rauch, we've come up with alternative ideas that both reinforce and enhance the up-to-date concept.

Once in the studio, the actors adapted quickly and creatively to the challenges of working in a more intimate medium. It was fascinating to watch them adjust to their environment and discover things that were exciting and effective in the imagined world of audio.

The production is now in the mixing stage, which can take three weeks or more of intensive work to embed the voices in a convincing "soundscape." Blackstone plans to release the final product early next year. It's going to be a very exciting, uniquely American take on this most famous of Shakespeare's plays.

The title of this post comes from a Frank Loesser song written for the 1949 movie, Red, Hot and Blue featuring the inimitable Betty Hutton. Unfortunately, whenever I think of Hamlet I can't get the lyrics out of my head:

Hamlet,

Was the prince of a spot called Denmark (mark my words!)

There never was such a frantic guy either before or since (he was a dreamboy)

And like a hole in the head, Denmark needed that prince!

'Cause he bumped off his uncle,

And he Mickey Finned his mother,

And he drove his gal to suicide,

And stabbed her big brother,

'Cause he didn't want nobody else but himself should live--

He was whatcha might call...uncooperative!

You can watch a video of it here. My apologies to purists.

What the...

Well, looky here. Harper Audio seems to have purchased another one of my ancient recordings from Books On Tape. Years ago they bought my performance of John Irving's The Cider House Rules, which is still doing service on Audible and seems to be quite popular. I still get emails about it. Now they've hijacked one of my Elmore Leonard recordings. I think I did all of Leonard's books for BOT, and they were all a blast (though my favorite is still Maximum Bob, but that is long o.o.p.). Looks like Harper did some picking and choosing between various publishers' versions of these warhorses. George Guidall's wonderful renderings were done for Recorded Books, for instance, while I was doing the same titles for BOT. Those were the days of non-exclusive rights and you actually had a choice of narrators for some of the more popular authors. And if you're wondering who "Alexander Adams" is, well, the fact is that a lot of us freelancers used to change our names to avoid trouble with competing publishers, who thought we ought to be working exclusively for them--without the benefit of a lucrative contract, of course. Those days are gone, happily. Not that we cared much. I mean, who would have thought you'd get famous doing audiobooks? Seems like Harper might have put my real name on it, it certainly has more cache these days than "Alexander Adams," for what it's worth.

Books On Tape has retired about 90 percent of the titles I did for them throughout the 1980's and 1990's. Not that I blame them, they were old things recorded on tape, most of them, and fashions have changed since then, when it was a point of pride to tally how many pages you could read without stopping. And to be sure the audio rights have expired and economics argues against renewing them. Still. Some of the top-tier stuff has been re-recorded, most of it by Ed Herrmann. People used to tell me I looked like Ed Herrmann, back when I wore wire-rim glasses. "You look like that guy that played FDR!" Ed and I don't look much alike these days, but he's doing all my old books now, and doing them beautifully--the David McCulloughs, the Scott Turows, the list goes on and on. But most of the others have disappeared into the ether. I particularly regret the John Gardners: October Light and The Sunlight Dialogues. I was awfully proud of those. Boy could that guy write. And Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb, one of the best books I've ever read about anything.

I certainly talked at a good clip back then! I don't think I could do that now. I see from the cover there's a new series on TV featuring the main character. I hope it's better than that Maximum Bob series with Beau Bridges from a few years back. Eek.

Here's a sample I saved from Maximum Bob all those years ago. I still think it's funny, but then I'm biased.

Halloween in Ashland

Halloween in Ashland is a trip. Everybody--and I mean everybody--shows up in costume to parade down Main Street. The crowd starts to form around 2 p.m. in front of the public library. At 3 p.m. a drum corp thunders and the marching begins! It's more like strolling, actually, because it's so darn crowded, and everybody stops to chat with bystanders and admire everyone else's costumes. I find it wonderfully cheering and relaxing and could have sauntered along like this all the way to Portland.

We brought along our Vampire Queen (Alicia) who met up with her friends the Vampire Cheetah (Macy) and a Dragon (Owen).

Guess who I went as? (No, I'm not the mummy.)

Afterwards we had martinis and pot luck with some friends (guess who made the martinis?) and then took the kids trick-or-treating.

If you guessed from the big pumpkin that our friends own a fly-fishing shop, you guessed right.

Autobiography of Mark Twain

Well, it's done--proofed, edited, "in the can" and out in the world. I refer to Blackstone Audio's production of the first volume of the University of California Press's magnificent new edition of Mark Twain's complete, unexpurgated autobiographical dictations.

Twain struggled for years to find a suitable method of laying down a record of his life and thoughts. After numerous written attempts, none of which proved satisfactory, he hit upon the idea of dictation. In 1906 he began a series of oral reminiscences that continued on and off for the next three years and resulted in a full file drawer of typed manuscript. Apart from a few excerpts he prepared for magazine publication, Twain placed an embargo on this enormous project, to be observed until 100 years after his death. The knowledge that he--and anyone else concerned--would be safely in the grave by that time liberated Twain to speak frankly about any person or topic that struck his fancy.

Despite the prohibition, in the decades following his death various editions of the "autobiography" appeared in heavily edited form. The current venture represents the first complete release of this material in what is believed to be the form Twain actually wished it to take.

This first volume includes an introduction, various early materials that he contemplated including in the final manuscript, and the first series of dictations from 1906. Two subsequent volumes will be released over the next couple of years. The entire text can be viewed at www.marktwainproject.org, and additional material can be found at www.thisismarktwain.com. The explanatory notes, appendixes and other supporting materials are very interesting and worth a look. There's a fascinating explanation of how they decrypted the four different typescripts and managed to decipher Twain's actual intentions. It's a forensic tour de force and goes far to explain why the project was 20 years in the making.

Things get off to something of a slow start as the editors explain the scope and logic of the project, and we wend our way through the various abortive attempts and peripheral material. (Don't get me wrong, it'll all very interesting.) But when the actual dictations kick in, we are off and running. A coherent pattern begins to emerge, and it's illuminating.

Those familiar with Twain will know that by the end of his life he was a disheartened and embittered man. A misplaced trust in others led to a series of disastrous financial endeavors that left him debt-ridden and cynical, and robbed him of any chance of a secure retirement. He was similarly robbed by Death, who took his wife and two of his daughters before their time. War and politics disgusted him, and the rising tide of American imperialism and religious sanctimony prompted responses that are, even to modern ears, startling in their savagery. Even passages that begin in a light-hearted manner are likely to conclude with a gloomy, "What's it all for?"

But by and large we are treated to exactly the sort of warmth, wit and insight we would expect from this great humorist and lion of American letters. His dazzling, fluid style and impeccable timing are on full display. When he approaches matters of the heart, he speaks with a direct simplicity that is extraordinarily moving.

I have narrated several of Twain's books for Blackstone--among them The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (the latter as "Tom Parker')--and am in the process of recording or re-recording the rest of the canonical works for them. Life on the Mississippi will be released in in December and A Tramp Abroad in January, with Innocents Abroad, Roughing It and others to follow through the year. I feel a strong affinity for Twain's style, and listeners, for the most part, seem to agree. That said, I was not a shoo-in for this project. The publishers wanted approval over the narrator, and I bit my nails for three weeks waiting to hear if they would allow me to do it. Good taste triumphed and I was selected.

Discussions ensued about what to include in the audio version and what to leave out. Notes and references were rightly considered too cumbersome, and the appended speeches and other material, while interesting, are a bit anti-climactic. We settled on the editorial introduction and the main body of Twain's writings and dictations. One significant piece had to be bypassed, which is unfortunate because it is published for the first time. It is an introduction Twain wrote to a translation of the transcripts of Joan of Arc's trial. An exuberant editor took it upon himself to brutally blue-line Twain's prose, regularizing the punctuation and smoothing out the syntax. Twain composed a savagely funny response (which he never mailed). This part is well-known and is included in the recording, but the edited introduction itself (which the clever UC Press typesetters have meticulously reconstructed) is full of strike-throughs, inserts and comments that would have been impossible to read with any fluency or coherence. As noted in the audio version, it can be viewed at www.marktwainproject.org.

Finally, I was confronted with the question of how to voice Twain himself. As far as anyone knows, no recordings of Mark Twain have survived. In 1891, he attempted to dictate An American Claimant onto a series of wax cylinders, filling four dozen of them before giving up in frustration. These have never been found, though they reportedly contained a great deal of swearing at the machine itself. Thomas Edison made some recordings of Twain in 1909, but these were lost in a fire in 1914. The American actor William Gillette knew Twain well and mimicked him as part of a touring show he put together in the latter part of the 19th century. In 1934 he performed his imitation for a group of Harvard students, and a recording of the event can be heard at http://www.salwenpr.com/mtspeaks.html. It's a fascinating document, but I have little doubt that 20 hours of this sort of delivery would drive even the most patient modern listener around the bend.

Hal Holbrook's impersonation is justly famous, and unlikely to be bettered in ours or any future generation. It's also sui generis and I, for one, wouldn't presume to improve upon its daft brilliance. After experimenting with different approaches, I decided to do what I've done before in Twain's works--speak more or less in my own voice, avoid any hint of caricature, and devote my energy to connecting with Twain's heart and mind. It was rewarding from my standpoint; I can only hope listeners agree.

Here's a sample from the first set of dictations, a little story that exemplifies the sort of self-deprecating charm that permeates the whole work:

I Get Mail...

This is the kind of mail that keeps you going on rough days:

Dear Sr. A few year's ago I heared a book and the voice has got to be yours. I've been to your web directory but just can't find it. I even went to my Indianapolis Library where I had gotten it. They can;t even find it. Your my last hope of ever finding my all time book. The book had on it's cover a young slim very tanned pilot of ww2 that flew off an aircraft carrier then lost his route then rain out of fuel. The pilot and 2 other planes that went down with him they servived apx 15 to 20 days on a life raft. My dad lost both legs on Iwo Jima, I've got photo's of him with Ira Hayes so a true story like this means a lot. Me and my wife are team truck drivers 30 books a month. I'm purchase several then put them on my ipod. I If you can please send me the name of that book.

Best regards David...

He's referring to The Raft by Robert Trumbull, one of my all-time favorite books, too--a beautifully written story of heroism and survival during WWII. It's always wonderful to hear that the stories we tell mean so much to people...