Monday, June 30, 2014

On Hearing Someone Else Read It




Almost all of us here at MIE have had our stories published as audio books.  I am bringing up this topic in the hopes of starting a discussion on how we and other writers feel about the experience of listening to our own work coming out of someone elses mouth.  And how readers of this blog feel about reading with their ears.



The only MIE author I ever heard from on this subject was Leighton Gage, who advised me about this, as he did about so many other things that a published author needs to know.  He told me that mid-list authors like me almost never have any input whatsoever on who and how the books are recorded.  He complained that the man who read his stories screwed up the pronunciations of the Brazilian namespeoples and places.  But all in all he thought it was better to have the book recorded than not.  As in almost all things, I agree with his assessment.





I am a book addict.  I take them any way I can, and that includes listening.  I prefer to sit and read, but like most New Yorkers I walk as a means of transportation.  Getting from one place to another gives me time to tune in to great stories on my phone, increasing the number of books I can read.  I particularly like doing this with books I have already read, as I did recently with the brilliant John Fowless The French Lieutenants Woman.  I could not have taken the time to reread it while sitting in a chair, but I was mightily glad to experience the work again while plowing my way through the throngs of tourists in midtown or strolling back and forth to the grocery store.







When I was reading Lisa Brackmanns brilliant Rock, Paper, Tiger, I was in a particularly difficult and busy period of my life.  The book was a wonderful escape for me, and once I got into the story it made me want to stay in it, but I just couldnt put together enough time to satisfy the intensity of my curiosity about how it would turn out.  So I downloaded it from Audible and read part of it and listened to part.  I really liked it in both formats.  Now her Hour of the Rat has been nominated for an Anthony for Best Audio Book.  I have read it sitting down but now am in the process of listening to it too.  My take: the narrator does a wonderful job of portraying the edginess of the story and of communicating Lisas riveting combination of wonder, wry commentary, and anxiety.  I hope Lisa will weigh in on her reactions to this.  Ditto for my other blogmates.





I was not able to find audio versions of Caros stories.  That might be a blessing for her as a writer.  Because there is that chance, as Leighton warned me, that ones story will be mangled.  The first two Audible versions of mineInvisible Country and Blood Tangowere less than successful from my point of view.  With Invisible Country, the first of my recorded books, I did not expect to find the Guarani names pronounced correctly.  I tried to keep my expectations low.  They were not low enough.

The voice-over artist is a man, an understandable choice since it is an anti-war novel and is certainly as much a mans story as a womans.  My difficulty was in the voices the reader gave to my characters.  The Paraguayan townswomen all speak in breathy whispers.  Even the ultra-religiously devout Maria Claudia sounds like a bad imitation of Marilyn Monroe.  The lector gives a foreign-language accent to only one character: Tomas Pereira da Graça, an aristocratic Brazilian.  The text says he has an accent.  He speaks Spanish with an upper class Portuguese accent.  In the audio version, he speaks in English, of course, but with a cheesy, comical Spanish accent.  Think “My name Jose Jimenez.” UGHHH!

The reader of Blood Tango is a woman with a Spanish accent.  She does a good job, except for the fact that she almost invariably puts the greatest emphasis on prepositions.  (In my mind, I was saying, “TROUBLE was closing in on Buenos Aires.”  She read: “Trouble was closing in ON Buenos Aires.”)  I am not sure a non-Spanish speaking listener would even understand that she is saying “Buenos Aires.”  She speaks the names of the places and people in the story very quickly in Spanish.  An American person experiencing the story only audibly will not have the advantage of the seeing, for instance “Campo de Mayo” spelled out.  If she had pronounced it distinctly—Cahm-po day Maio, it would not have been a problem, but she slurs it.  Imagine the FedEx commercial guy trying to say this: cmodmyo.  I imagine that the sense of place pretty much disappears from the audio version of that book since there would be no way for people not intimately familiar with the landscape to get what I am talking about.  Can people listening in English even identify the characters’ names clearly enough to distinguish them from one another?  Hard to tell.  Ah well.



BUT NOW: the audio version of Strange Gods came out last week along with the book.  I am delighted to say that the voice-over artist does a wonderful job. He’s a South African named Dennis Kleinman.  I looked him up.  He was easy to find.



He speaks the narration with a more or less neutral British accent, in which I picked up a tiny note of the South Africa here and there.  He absolutely aces the dialog, doing upper class English, Scots, and tribes people.  Sometimes the cadence of the narrative is not exactly how it sounds in my own head, but all in all his reading is quite wonderful.  My characters sound so real in his voice.  One of them is a bombastic District Commissioner, whom the narrator makes every bit as authoritarian, patronizing, and obnoxious as I imagined him to be.  My story was safe with Dennis Kleinman.

So what about you?  Do you listen to books?  Do you listen to your own work?  If so, what’s your take on hearing your words read aloud by a stranger?  If you listen to audio books, how do you feel about the skill of the people who read them?  Let’s talk.

Annamaria - Monday



13 comments:

  1. I have never heard an audio book. I don't travel or drive so I don't have time on transportation in which to listen.

    And I love to read so that's what I do.

    I am so glad to see that Dennis Kleinman did a good job on your book, Strange Gods. You certainly deserve that after the first experience and a somewhat improved second book.

    That would really annoy me, that women's voices are spoken in a breathy way. Huh? And the cheesy Spanish accent? And then the emphasis on prepositions in the next book? Oy is my comment.

    How are people recommended to do this job? Obviously, you found the answer in Kleinman. That is good.

    I, too, found Lisa's book to be a lot of fun and a distraction from today's news.

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    1. Kathy, Thanks for your al always thoughtful and interesting comment. Here's how it works for most writers, I think: a company buys the rights to the audio book. These days that is almost invariably Audible, an Amazon subsidiary. They seem to be buying almost everything coming from well-established publishers. They then take it from there--in many cases using the advanced review copy as their text, so there may be a few errors that slip in. Then, they choose the voice-over artist to do the recording. I imagine that powerful authors like Stephen King or Mary Higgins Clark would be able to call the shots on who read their books. Mid-list authors like me are not consulted in any way.

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  2. The same actor tends to do all the Scots audiobooks;James McPherson. You might know him as Taggart's second sidekick in the Mark McManus years. Blond chap. He's good. I once asked Ian Rankin about James' interpretation of Siobhan Clarke ( I feel that James makes Costello too polite !) and Ian made the point that it's the job of the actor to interpret what they read - almost as a script. And that made me think...is it only my voice as the author which makes Costello sound that way (rude!) - after all - she was born and lives in my head. Maybe everybody else 'hears' her the way James does, more polite and concerned than I ever intended her to be. I might argue that writing the novel is only part of it, the listening to or reading of it - puts the readers own spin on it.

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    1. Caro, You raise such an interesting point. Readers, of course, "hear" what they are reading. The music of language speaks them in their own way, and they may be whistling very tunes than we are. (Perhaps all those men who told me how much they enjoyed "Invisible Country" really were hearing the voice of Marilyn Monroe.) I wonder if there are any song writers listening in here. They would certainly have something to say on this subject. Singers, and their arrangers, can change a song from jazzy to plaintive or anything in between. I have always known that. It took you to tell me that in the silence of writing I am hearing one rhythm for my words, but every reader, in the silence of reading, is likely to provide a different one.

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  3. Although I've attempted a few 'snatches' of books audibly, I've never made it more than about 10 minutes, and haven't tried too hard to do so. Reading, for me, is intensely mental and visual (mentally visual?), and I sink almost completely into the world created by the text. The text disappears along with my surroundings, and I'm transported. For me, listening to someone read a book is always distracting, it keeps pulling me out of that deep immersion.

    Plus, I'm incredibly busy, and I tend to FOCUS on one thing at a time. So trying to multitask "ristening to a book" while doing something else... my life might be in jeopardy!

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    1. EvKa, I too read that way. That's why my favorite books to hear are ones I already know. Even then, I am afraid to listen and drive. I can make it from here to the subway or grocery without paying much attention, but I do sometimes have to back up the narration if I have to dodge a cyclist going the wrong way on a one-way street.

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  4. Caro, I love Taggart's side kick! Annamaria, I never listen to my audio books because first of all, I didn't know they existed until recently. Then I didn't want to hear the 'voice' of my character that I hear in my head when I write. Just yesterday a man told me the woman who read one of my books wasn't to his taste and all I could do was shrug. Not my call - I had nothing to do with it. But as Leighton advised it's better to be out there than not at all. Cheers and congrats with the new book!

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    1. Cara, I find it troubling that they made the audio books without even telling you. didn't you have to sign a contract giving them the rights? Or, i guess your publisher could have had them and sold them. They would then have put an entry to effect on your royalty statement. I have been published in fiction and nonfiction in twenty different editions by thirteen different publishers, and I have yet to receive a comprehensible royalty statement. I listened to a sample of Murder in the Marais. I thought the reader was fine, but I prefer to "inhabit" your Paris with nothing and no one between my imagination and your words.

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  5. The reader of our two books - Simon Prebble - did an excellent job, other than using what sounded like an Indian accent for one of the Batswana characters. Our reaction was 'Who cares?' I think we decided very early on that having an audio book was such a positive development that we shouldn't worry too much if it didn't sound like the voices in my head - or the probably different voices that were in Michael's.

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    1. Stan, your attitude is much saner than mine. I was insulted on behalf of my characters when that reader made them sound ridiculous. Not a very grown-up reaction I admit. Now that Kleinman has done such a good job, I just hope Audible sticks with him for the ensuing books.

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  6. I've been blessed, Annamaria, by having all but the first of my books read by Stefan Rudniki for Blackstone Audiobooks, one of the best narrators around. As for whether he reads it precisely as I hear it in my head, my attitude is "so what?" It's like a playwright who doesn't like the way an actor interprets the work. Once you've written it, it's now out there for actors and directors to interpret as they see fit. At least that's how I see it. As for the non-Rudniki version, it came out through my English publisher and I've frankly never listened to it. My attitude has been why aggravate myself in case it's all wrong:).

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  7. Howdy! Well, since you asked -- I love Tracy Sallows, who has read both Ellie books. On this one I got to work with her on the Chinese pronunciation. She had no background in the language and I think she did a really admirable job. Also, she got the humor in the books. That was my big complaint about my other book's audio rendition -- the reader just didn't seem to get the humor of it. Very obvious in her readings of the male characters. So overall, I feel really lucky. Am hoping that an audio deal for a third Ellie book is forthcoming and that Tracy will be the reader again.

    It is an odd experience, hearing your work read by someone else!

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  8. FYI: Strange Gods is listed in the Mysterious Bookstore's recent newsletter. There is a blurb about it.

    Received it today in email.

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