On Librivox (a shout-out):

 My plan with this blog is to post about once a week.  The main things I will be exploring will be issues and topics that connect to my fiction, my creative writing.    But I plan to digress as the impulse moves me.  This is a luxury I cannot afford in my fiction.  Digressions are fatuous and self-indulgent.   This is true regardless of the era.  I’m obliged to note, however, that the entire enterprise of creative writing is self-indulgent.   More germane is the fact that modern readers are impatient.  As they read, modern readers are looking for a reason to stop, to move on to the next agenda item.  Digressions are likely to give the reader the excuse he or she needs to put a book down. 

Here I am, Michael the reader, reading along and following the story of a plucky teen mom’s struggle with the medical establishment in behalf of infant twins who have been diagnosed with cancer.  If the writer is skilled, I am hooked into the story and have a stake of some sort in the outcome.  What if this happens - I am reading along and notice that I am deep into a description of the arcane system that a particular hospital uses to keep patient records?  Unless there is a very direct route back to the plucky mom and her sick babies, I will be tempted to put the book down. 

As a writer, I do not want to provide my readers with reasons to stop reading.  So I avoid digressions.  As a modern reader I suspect that writers enjoy and have always enjoyed digressions much more than readers enjoy them.  I may be wrong in this.  I do know that the public has at times showed more tolerance for digression than is the case at present.   But this is irrelevant to anyone writing at this time and I’ve learned that I must ‘stick to the story,’ ‘get to the point,’ and ‘write lean.’

This is so much a matter of course,that I find it difficult to do otherwise in terms of style.  As regards content, however, I should have an easier time.  In this post, for example, I want to give a shout out to Librivox.  I note that the rationale for doing to is pretty tenuous.

Librivox is a website devoted to making audiobooks of public domain works.  The books, already thousands of them are available in several audio formats to download from the website.  Audiobooks, with some exceptions (ie those that are abbreviated versions of the full text of the original work) are wonderful.  Audible is the best known web example of a successful business that provides commercial audiobooks to the market.  I have listened to commercial audiobooks for years and have found  great delights in having someone read to me as I drive long distances, sit in uncomfortable chairs in airports or on airplanes, wait for my turn to struggle with clerks at the MVD, etc.

During the decade of the eighties, I was a long distance runner.  I trained 50 weeks a year and averaged 50 training miles a week.  In the summer I trained on the La Luz trail doing the ascent (I took the tram back down) at least once a week.  This spiraled down starting in 1990 or so with injuries; increased responsibilities; weight gain (and injuries related to weight gain); taking up a more agrarian lifestyle involving animal care and training, dealing with hay, etc.; and more of a hiking, wilderness focus. 

Gradually, I accepted the fact that if I wanted to be free of injuries, I needed to give up the running.  I started doing more walking.  I was living in Socorro at the time and found that I most enjoyed walking at night.  At night it was quiet, peaceful, and cool – even in the hot months of the year.  And I could take our dog or dogs along and not have to worry about encountering horses, other dogs etc.  This was not a cinch, however, because the dogs did find skunks and porcupines more often than was convenient.  Sometimes I listened to music on these walks. When we moved to Albuquerque in 2008 (to be helpful to my old and declining parents).   The night walks became essential to me and one of our dogs – who is so hysterical that he cannot cope with daytime walks.  It was around that time that I began listening to audiobooks on the walks.  Since then, I have taken walks on most nights and listened to audiobooks on most walks

But Librivox audiobooks have delights that transcend the experience of listening to skilled actors or the author himself/herself read good books.  Since 2008, I have probably listened to 500 Librivox audiobooks.   Librivox audiobooks are free and the people that read and produce them are volunteers.  Some of books have one dedicated reader who reads the entire book.  These are exactly like commercial audiobooks except that the readers are unpaid amateurs.

But for me, the deeper delights of Librivox emerge from the books that have multiple readers, each of whom read a chapter or a number of chapters of particular works.  At first this was distracting and seemed to disrupt the unity of the book.  But as I listened to more and more books of this sort, I began to really enjoy them.  One of the amazing aspects of this experience is that it is like the ultimate postmodern (how I shudder at this word) experience.  Take War and Peace, for example.  Tolstoy wrote it between 1861 and 1869. It is set in Russia (mostly) the time of the Napoleonic  wars (1805-1813).

Leo Tolstoy

TheLibrivox audiobook is based on the Louise and Alymar Maude translation into English (1923).  The various readers read in the dialect of English most familiar to them.  So as you listen to the audiobook you hear readers from New Zealand, England, South Carolina, Mombai, Ireland,  Scotland, Pakistan, Holland, New England, California, Texas, Belieze, South Africa, Wales, Jamaica, Quebec, Australia, etc. collaborating in 2007-2011 to read the 1200+ pages of one of the greatest literary works of all time (even Tolstoy hesitated to call it a novel). The Librivox effort involved 134 individual readers , most of whom read multiple chapters (not necessarily in serial order).  These readers mostly did not know one another and never met face to face either with one another or any of the Librivox coordinators or proof-listeners.  The Librivox reading of War and Peace is 77 hours and 6 minutes in length.  In my view, the end product is wonderful, absolutely astonishing.  Admittedly there are gaffes, a couple of the readers did a poor job and in a couple of cases the recordings were less than optimal.  But these were small annoyances in what was for me, a superb literary experience that I plan to repeat.

As I got familiar with Librivox, I started to develop favorite readers, readers I really liked. I then began to do Librivox searches to find the works they had read or participated in. I listened to many of those works and ended up finding and appreciating books that were unfamiliar.  Some of those readers are:  Gesine, Barry Eads, Nicholas Clifford, Lucy Burgoyne, Lee Ann Howlett, Simon Evers, Chip, Debra Lynn, Mil Nicholson, Fr. Richard Ziele, and Jersey City Frankie.  I know that I am missing some of my favorites, but I have not kept records.  Some books are more amenable to production as audiobooks than others.  I have found Librivox a great way to read classics, books I have always meant to read but seemed too formidable or something I just never got to.  I have made some great discoveries through Librivox.  I think the greatest, for me, has been Anthony Trollope, whom I’d never read.  His appeal, for me has been both aesthetic and anthropological – through Trollope, I’ve come to understand some very bizarre English customs (like fox hunting) and the workings of politics in all realms of English life.  I will doubtless refer to Trollope several times as my blog unfolds.

I have been tempted but do not think highly enough of my reading voice, to volunteer.  One spin-off from Librivox for me has been that I learned that several people from Librivox were involved in a company Iambik that produces commercial audiobooks.  I contacted Gesine, one of the Librivox readers involved in the endeavor and the issue is that Iambik is producing the audiobook of my novel Ostrich which should be released around the time (June 1, 2013) that I release the e-book version on Amazon. More on that later, but listen here to the sample first chapter, read by Victoria Scott.