If you enjoy listening to words through ear-speakers, might you do me a favor and critique my first attempt?
More than half of Americans read through their ears. The young, as ever, lead the way, the oldsters following. I took to audiobooks to enjoy Shakespeare while I drove. Jane became a more avid ear-reader after two broken arms complicated page-turning. Younger my exercise was too vigorous to permit listening while I sweated. Listening to a creamy narrator while ambling alleviates tedium.
I have a smart younger relation who doesn’t own a printed book. He considers them clutter.
Heard and viewed words differ in kind. Spoken words must keep pace with an audience’s attention. Written words can be reread or skipped. Concision that thrills on the page may frustrate a listener straining to keep up. The writing I cherish can be both read and heard enjoyably, though the experiences differ. Shakespeare made verse exciting to an audience who’d never heard it, and to later readers, studying familiar lines for hours. I often wonder how first hearers responded to Macbeth’s soliloquy, weighing regicide. Old King Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.
Such crammed, high-octane language giddies, demanding a hearer’s most intense attention, yet its density is not too dense for initial comprehension: words that can be heard, read, and reread. How on earth!
I resent the lazy flaccidity of casual conversation when I encounter it on a page; listening I’m more forgiving. Recently, Jane and I finished listening to David McCullough’s mammoth Truman. A compelling storyteller, McCullough tends to garrulity. Turning its pages I’d have quit the tome in frustration; cordially narrated, no worries (and what a story!).
The increasing popularity of recorded words is a mixed blessing for word-makers. It forces us to speak as if to a live audience. Turgidity and obscurity repel hearers, who have better uses for their time. I used to encourage rookie reporters to read their stories aloud before filing them. Sound words sound right.
What listeners lose is the opportunity to reflect. Spoken words spill inexorably, like the brook out my window. (We’ve been having rain.) Snooze and you lose. In theory one can replay, but that seldom happens. The books I love are scarred with underscores, carats, comments, queries, exclamations, as littered as a parade route before the sweepers tidy. Heard words vanish like water into sand.
Recording my words is a weird experience. I sometimes read aloud to Jane, if proud of my product; but such sessions are intimate. My recorded voice is disembodied, mine and not. How, I wonder, do I come across? Amiable? Ponderous? Pompous? Is my tempo too fast or slow? My first response to my recorded voice was to shudder, as when glimpsing a mirror. Is that old guy really me?
The unexpected blessing of this exercise has been self-approval. I feared my old words would make me cringe. Some I’m sorry to have published. But on balance, I’ve enjoyed renewing our acquaintance. “Not half bad,” I find myself nodding, “well-said.”
If you chance to listen to these samples, please share your true thoughts with me privately at [email protected]. I sense who I am on the page but not through the ears. Is recording myself a useful use of hours?