I recently purchased The Stand on audio tape. I am waiting for the company I paid to put it to CD and digital formats to send it to me. I can't wait! I have been mentally preparing myself to read The Stand again. This reading is of the original 1978 version, and was narrated by Grover Gardner.
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Now part of preparing to listen to the 1978 version of The Stand has to do with the reader, Grover Gardner. I first listened to a recording my Gardner of a theology book, and decided the reading was dry. So when I later listened to the Stand, I went in with the opinion that Grover is a dry reader. But then I read the theology book I had been listening to... and guess what -- it was still dry! I realized: It was not Gardner's reading that made it boring, it was the writer! Perhaps the material was too basic for what I was expecting; in any case, I came to the conclusion that maybe I hadn't given Gardner's reading a fair shot.
.So here I am again. Planning to read The Stand with Gardner as my guide. I went to his blog and really, really enjoyed it! He has a wonderful article on authors reading their own books. this is funny: "I am familiar with at least one instance of a famous politician who required literally thousands of edits because he couldn't read a whole sentence (no, it wasn't "W") and another case in which a celebrity author didn't make it through her ghost-written autobiography because she couldn't pronounce most of the vocabulary and wasn't familiar with the events and people as related in the book!"
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Check out Gardner's blog here: http://grovergardner.blogspot.com/
I've got this version on audio, too; it's from Recorded Books, if I recall correctly. I spent WAY too much money buying it about a decade ago, but I've never regretted it.
ReplyDeleteGardner IS a dry reader, but he's also a very effective reader, and he doesn't distract from King's style the way some readers can. For example, I'm currently listening to the audio of "Full Dark, No Stars," and I don't care at all for the way Craig Wasson reads "1922." He doesn't do a bad job; it just doesn't, in my opinion, match with the style in which King wrote that novella. (On the other hand, I loved Wasson's reading of "Blockade Billy," and enjoyed THAT novella more on audio than I did when I read it on the page.)
I've got my own King blog, Ramblings of a Honk Mahfah, and one of the essays I want to write and post soon is all about the audio editions I've recently purchased and enjoyed: "Ur," "Blockade Billy"/"Morality," and "Full Dark, No Stars." I've long had thoughts about the differences between reading and listening, and the time seems to have come to put them out there.
Interesting. I had not considered that "dry" might be "effective."
ReplyDeleteJust started listening to this (the uncut version, also by Gardner). Never heard him before, but he's good so far.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite stephen king audio book/story was Matthew Broderick's reading of "The End of the Whole Mess" which is from Nightmares & Dreamscapes.
Perfect in every way and he really does do a fantastic job particularly as the story progresses and the narrator becomes ... compromised, shall we say.
I encourage everyone to track that down!