Audiobooks, Literature, and Sound Studies

266 Pages·2011·3.14 MB·English

by  Matthew Rubery

Audiobooks, Literature,
and Sound Studies
http://avaxho.me/blogs/ChrisRedfield
Routledge Research in
Cultural and Media Studies
1. Video, War and the Diasporic 10. Political Communication
Imagination in a New Era
Dona Kolar-Panov Edited by Gadi Wolfsfeld and
Philippe Maarek
2. Reporting the Israeli-Arab Confl ict
How Hegemony Works 11. Writers’ Houses and the
Tamar Liebes Making of Memory
Edited by Harald Hendrix
3. Karaoke Around the World
Global Technology, Local Singing 12. Autism and Representation
Edited by Toru Mitsui and Edited by Mark Osteen
Shuhei Hosokawa
13. American Icons
4. News of the World The Genesis of a National
World Cultures Look at Television News Visual Language
Edited by Klaus Bruhn Jensen Benedikt Feldges
5. From Satellite to Single Market 14. The Practice of Public Art
New Communication Technology and Edited by Cameron Cartiere and
European Public Service Television Shelly Willis
Richard Collins
15. Film and Television After DVD
6. The Nationwide Television Studies Edited by James Bennett and
David Morley and Charlotte Bronsdon Tom Brown
7. The New Communications 16. The Places and Spaces of
Landscape Fashion, 1800–2007
Demystifying Media Globalization Edited by John Potvin
Edited by Georgette Wang, Jan Servaes,
and Anura Goonasekera 17. Communicating in the
Third Space
8. Media and Migration Edited by Karin Ikas and
Constructions of Mobility and Difference Gerhard Wagner
Edited by Russel King and Nancy Wood
18. Deconstruction After 9/11
9. Media Reform Martin McQuillan
Democratizing the Media,
Democratizing the State 19. The Contemporary Comic
Edited by Monroe E. Price, Beata Book Superhero
Rozumilowicz, and Stefaan G. Verhulst Edited by Angela Ndalianis
20. Mobile Technologies 29. Landscapes of Holocaust
From Telecommunications to Media Postmemory
Edited by Gerard Goggin and Brett Ashley Kaplan
Larissa Hjorth
30. Emotion, Genre, and Justice in
21. Dynamics and Performativity Film and Television
of Imagination E. Deidre Pribram
The Image between the Visible
and the Invisible 31. Audiobooks, Literature,
Edited by Bernd Huppauf and and Sound Studies
Christoph Wulf Edited by Matthew Rubery
22. Cities, Citizens, and
Technologies
Urban Life and Postmodernity
Paula Geyh
23. Trauma and Media
Theories, Histories, and Images
Allen Meek
24. Letters, Postcards, Email
Technologies of Presence
Esther Milne
25. International Journalism and
Democracy
Civic Engagement Models from
Around the World
Edited by Angela Romano
26. Aesthetic Practices and Politics
in Media, Music, and Art
Performing Migration
Edited by Rocío G. Davis, Dorothea
Fischer-Hornung, and Johanna C.
Kardux
27. Violence, Visual Culture, and the
Black Male Body
Cassandra Jackson
28. Cognitive Poetics and Cultural
Memory
Russian Literary Mnemonics
Mikhail Gronas

Audiobooks, Literature,
and Sound Studies
Edited by Matthew Rubery
New York London
First published 2011
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
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by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Audiobooks, literature, and sound studies / edited by Matthew Rubery.
p. cm. — (Routledge research in cultural and media studies ; 31)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Literature and technology—History. 2. Mass media and literature—History.
3. Audiobooks. 4. Sound in literature. 5. Literature—Appreciation. 6. Books and
reading—History—20th century. I. Rubery, Matthew.
PN56.T37A83 2011
302.23—dc22
2011006330
ISBN 0-203-81803-2 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN13: 978-0-415-88352-8 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-81803-9 (ebk)
Contents
List of Figures ix
Acknowledgments xi
Foreword xiii
CHARLES BERNSTEIN
Introduction: Talking Books 1
MATTHEW RUBERY
PART I
Sound Experiments
1 The Three-Minute Victorian Novel:
Remediating Dickens into Sound 25
JASON CAMLOT
2 A Library on the Air: Literary Dramatization and Orson
Welles’s Mercury Theatre 44
JAMES JESSON
3 The Audiographic Impulse: Doing Literature
with the Tape Recorder 61
JESPER OLSSON
4 Poetry by Phone and Phonograph: Tracing the Infl uence of
Giorno Poetry Systems 76
MICHAEL S. HENNESSEY
5 Soundtracking the Novel: Willy Vlautin’s Northline
as Filmic Audiobook 92
JUSTIN ST. CLAIR
viii Contents
PART II
Close Listenings
6 Novelist as “Sound-Thief”: The Audiobooks of John le Carré 109
GARRETT STEWART
7 Hearing Hardy, Talking Tolstoy: The Audiobook Narrator’s
Voice and Reader Experience 127
SARA KNOX
8 Talking Books, Toni Morrison, and the Transformation of
Narrative Authority: Two Frameworks 143
K. C. HARRISON
9 Obama’s Voices: Performance and Politics on the Dreams from
My Father Audiobook 159
JEFFREY SEVERS
10 Bedtime Storytelling Revisited: Le Père Castor
and Children’s Audiobooks 178
BRIGITTE OUVRY-VIAL
11 Learning from LibriVox 199
MICHAEL HANCHER
12 A Preliminary Phenomenology of the Audiobook 216
D. E. WITTKOWER
Contributors 233
Index 237
Figures
I.1 The Phonographic Book: “The phonograph at
home reading out a novel.” From “The Papa of the
Phonograph,” Daily Graphic (New York), April 2,
1878, 1 (The Western Reserve Historical Society,
Cleveland, Ohio). 4
I.2 The Talking Book: “Blinded Airman Listening
to Talking Book” (1944). Offi cial First Air Force
photograph, Base Photo Lab, Bradley Field,
Connecticut (Courtesy of the Library of Congress,
LC-USZ62–107565). 7
I.3 The Audiobook. Woman listening to an audiobook
on a portable listening device with earbuds (2010)
(©iStockphoto.com/CandyBox Photography). 9
1.1 Image of William Sterling Battis from The Platform:
The Lyceum and Chautauqua Magazine (1913)
(Library and Archives Canada, Harold D. Smith
fonds, MUS 113, volume 1, folder 11). 31
1.2 Image from Victor Record Co. pamphlet The Victrola
in the Schools (1918) (Library and Archives Canada,
Harold D. Smith fonds, MUS 113, volume 3, folder 17). 36
1.3 Pages from catalogue Victor Records Suitable for Use
in the Teaching of English Literature (Camden, N.J.:
Victor Talking Machine Company, 1916) (Library and
Archives Canada, Harold D. Smith fonds, MUS 113,
volume 9, fi le 253). 37
10.1a-e Sample audiobook covers from the series Albums-
disques, Les classiques du Père Castor (Paris:
Flammarion, 1976–2002) (Courtesy of Editions Père
Castor-Flammarion). 180-82