Two cases of culpable homicide (1)
Kenneth Roy
Two cases of culpable homicide (2)
Bob Cant
It’s a pleasure to listen to Jim Norton
Slack-jawed in the Tesco self-checkout queue. Unable to scan a pair of bananas, so shuffle into the main drag. Gawp when man says ‘any cash back?’. He gives up waiting for an answer. Lights go green twice at the pedestrian crossing. In the park, the dogs bark ‘you should be on the lead’.
Am I on my mobile? Glued to Facebook? Twittering on Twitter? Na. I’m in Dublin, with Leopold Bloom. Or in Paris with Charles Ephrussi. Or on the road with Humbert Humbert. Or dancing with Prince Turveydrop. Or even playing darts with Keith Talent. In short, I’m so violently attached to the audio-books spilling out of my tiny iPod that I might be anywhere, at any time, with anybody, doing anything.
This, dear readers, is the answer to the sly balls 2013 will undoubtedly bowl. Stick in those little white earphone snails and move swiftly to another world. Molly Bloom got me through my accounts. Hope my computer finger didn’t slip. On my next train ride, I intend to rival Wayne and Waynetta’s throbbing music with a full length version of ‘Cakes and Ale’. Turn it down? No I won’t.
The audio-book is an under-rated form of entertainment. I suppose adults think being read to smacks of childishness. There’s nothing childish about listening to ‘Ulysses’, unabridged. I’ve not skipped one of the approximately 265,000 words, not even the bits I don’t understand – at least six out of the 20 hours. The ‘Cyclops’ section was immeasurably jollied up by Jim Norton’s splendid Irish lilt. I felt quite drunk by the end. If I listen hard, I can still hear it, though my snails are not currently plugged in.
That’s the thing with audio – it remains with you. Long after the book is finished, the voices echo, sometimes a little muddled – Esther Summerson meets Thomas Cromwell meets Stephen Dedalus – but none the worse for that. And of course you can’t spell anything: Dedlock or Deadlock? Roundswell or Rouncewell? Who cares? The story’s the thing, and nothing hooks you into the story so much as superb narration.
And you find gems: ‘Ragtime’, read by Edgar Doctorow himself, saw me to work and back, to the shops and back, and to Edinburgh and back over a period of a week or so. I hardly noticed the rain or the mannerlessness of others. So bound up was I in the fate of Coalhouse Walker, Evelyn Nesbit, Harry Houdini and ‘Mother’s Younger Brother’ (never named), I may have been a bit mannerless myself.
The audio-book is the sane man or woman’s way of turning chores into pleasures. What wouldn’t Chaucer have given? Or Shakespeare? There are dangers, of course. Shopping becomes random. Hard to remember what kind of light bulbs when Jo is dying or Nazis are storming up the stairs. Sudden spurts of laughter make handling breakables dangerous. Also, stopping short, breathless with admiration, means you often cause small pile-ups amid the onions. I apologise if you’ve been inconvenienced by one of mine.
It strikes me that we’re too keen to give reluctant bibliophiles eReaders, thinking to charm them with technology. Yet technology offers something much more immediate than a screen. Everybody loves hearing a story. Just look at people earwigging on the bus when a stranger begins to unravel their life to a friend. Audiobooks are earwigging with class. A monthly subscription to a download site would be a highly alluring book-hook. It wouldn’t even be embarrassing to teenagers (bit pathetic to be embarrassed by reading, but I suppose in our soft-as-butter world we have to think of such things) since nobody would know what was pouring from iPod to brain.
But there’s another, much more crucial benefit. Words have their own music. Listening to the way a great writer uses language sharpens the ear. It’s not only people who don’t read who can’t write: it’s people who don’t listen. I mean, I’ve always disliked Dickens and it turns out the man’s a bloody genius – I’d not been listening. I listen now. Can’t stop.
If, like me and somebody whose name I forget, you feel that life is over-rated and reading is the thing, go at once to an electrical shop. Buy an iPod nano. Clip it to your belt. Poke a pair of snails into your ears, do a bit of downloading and before you know it, you’ll have lived many lives and – hurrah – 2013 will have passed you by completely.
Katie Grant is an author, a freelance journalist, a part-time lecturer and a broadcaster
