storytelling

TRX
February 12, 2012
8:
> Stories were performed once upon a
> time, and you can see your work
> plainly, nakedly, fully only if you
> speak it aloud. You will also figure
> out what Your Voice really is

Having been a Roger Zelazny fan for a long time, I snapped up "A Night in Lonesome October" when it first came out. I wavered between bitter disappointment and disgust... what was this, something from the spiderwebbed box of old crap in the back of his closet? I traded it off as soon as it was over.

A couple of years ago I was in a truck stop looking at the swap rack. (subculture information: truckers are probably the #1 demographic for audiobooks, and truck stops not only sell them, they have racks for "take one - leave one" trades) and there was nothing much I wanted to listen to. There was a set of "A Night In Lonesome October" that looked like the best of a bad lot, so I swapped the Follett or whatever it was I'd brought in for it, and listened to "October" while driving all night.

Interesting. I'd thought the book and bland and dull. The audiobook was read by Zelazny. "The experts" opine that having an author read his own work is a Bad Thing. I don't know why, this one worked out okay. Checking the dates, he was on the downhill side of a long fight with cancer and kidney failure when he read it, which probably accounts for some of the odd noises and pauses here and there. But a whole lot of the characters' internal dialogue that my inner voice rendered as a bored monotone came alive as Zelazny's honking Yankee twang gave inflection. It changed the whole context of the story.

I dunno. Maybe he was distracted when he wrote "October", or in another of his experimental phases. Or maybe he dictated the story instead of typing it, and was deaf to the lack of affect it gave the printed word. There was a big fad for dictating for a while.

TRX
February 13, 2012
34:
> John Norman - the BDSM SF series Gor.

In spite of all his detractors, it's not everyone who can singlehandedly create a recognized subculture...