My latest solo work is finished. I post-processed Mathilda, by Mary Shelley, for Project Gutenberg (that is, smoothed the proofread pages into a single document, both plaintext and HTML) so was very familiar with it (and with Mary’s quirky spelling which I tried to keep intact in the final work.) I actually started reading this about a year ago, and recorded the second half of it last month — but I really wasn’t happy with the shift in quality, since I’d upgraded my microphone in the intervening time, and learnt to be a bit more patient in reading speed. So, here we go … a mournful tragedy:
Two things to note — although this story is about an incestuous relationship, it’s not salacious. If it were a musical, it’d be seriously Emo. Or, my grandmother could have listened to it without her hair curling. Second, anytime Mary writes “I will be brief”, you can be sure she’s about to be anything BUT brief. The runtime is somehow only 4hrs, though.
LibriVox Volumes 1 and 2 are now available to the public, ten stories in each … and now we’re busy filling up the third. I’ve contributed one story to each so far, and I’ll need to stock up with more readings, since these things tend to go quickly!
The strangest thing about my contribution to Vol 1 is that it’s the only text I’ve knowingly recorded by a still living author (not counting various recordings of forum posts and FAQs and stuff.) US copyright law is plain odd: where a story by (alive) Harry Harrison published in 1962 can fall into the public domain — but where Kafka, who died in 1924 (more than 70 years ago which is the current US copyright term) still retains a US copyright on The Trial and The Castle (in original German and thus subsequent translations) until at least 2021. Note, I am not a lawyer in any country. Even the limited calculation I do with these laws makes my head hurt. But this is my working understanding of the state of play.
Still, it’s not like there’s any shortage of books to record, and since my legal understanding includes the “rule of shorter term” which in dangerously-abridged form I think means “if it’s by a USan author, and Public Domain in the US, the UK will just go along with that copyright status, thankyewverymuch,” I can be kept very happy reading Sci Fi shorts amongst everything else.
Sometimes, things just get a bit out of hand. When a little sci-fi story by Fritz Leiber wasn’t renewed as per US copyright requirements, who knew that 49 years later, people around the world would leap upon it to record for audio posterity.
My version is first into the catalogue, thanks to the editing of Mandarine. (Here, 17MB, 35mins)
Kaffen has recorded it too, and submitted it to a newly created sci-fi short story collection. Thistlechick has ALSO recorded it, and once she’s edited, I guess perhaps she’ll pop it into a Short story collection.
It *is* a good story. I’m not sure if it warranted three recordings, but then, who knows why LibriVox has a full-cast dramatic reading of Richard II completed, but not Macbeth, Hamlet or Midsummer Night’s Dream. These texts seem to have a will of their own, sometimes.
My reading of the short story A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka, translated by Ian Johnston, has just been catalogued. Hunger artists are, of course, people who starve publically — in a performance sense, not a documentary-on-countries-with-famine sense. Linking getting thinner with getting the public’s attention has media-anorexia overtones, though masochism and traditional views of Starving Artists come into play too. Before recording, I read around the web a bit, and found this particularly good study guide. If you have a spare hour, the interest and some brain energy available, I’d recommend it. I ended up being particularly struck by the sadism of the voyeurs/audience who encourage the starving artist, but there are a lot of other ways to interpret the story, depending on your own world view.
One other thing, this is where people adding to the public domain are doing such an amazing service. The translator here has produced various other Kafka stories too (mostly also in the LibriVox catalogue) and they’re recent translations which makes them very readable and accessible. Without him, I’d know nothing about this story, and I certainly wouldn’t have been able to read it into the public domain myself. Many thanks, Ian.
From a Nineteenth C. book on the life and times of Shakespeare …
“The diminutive oaths, mentioned at the close of [a previous quote], were, unfortunately, considered as ornaments of conversation, and adopted by both sexes, in order to give spirit and vivacity to their language; a shocking practice, which seems to have been rendered fashionable by the very reprehensible habit of the Queen [Elizabeth I], whose oaths were neither diminutive nor rare; for it is said, that she never spared an oath in public speech or private conversation when she thought it added energy to either. After this example in the highest classes, we need not be surprised when Stubbes tells us, speaking of the great body of the people, that, ‘if they speake but three or four words, yet they must be interlaced with a bloudie oath or two.’”
But who comes here? What is the meaning of these roars of laughter that greet the last mask who runs into the market-place? Why do all the women and children hurry together, calling up one another, and shouting with delight? What is this thing? Is it some new species of bird, thus covered with feathers and down? In a few minutes the little figure is surrounded by a crowd of boys and women, who begin to pluck him of his borrowed plumes, while he chatters to them like a magpie, whistles like a song-bird, croaks like a raven, or in his natural character showers a mass of funny nonsense on them, till their laughter makes their sides ache. The little wretch is literally covered with small feathers from head to foot, and even his face is not to be recognized. The women pluck him behind and before; he dances round and tries to evade their fingers. This is impossible; he breaks away, runs down the market pursued by a shouting crowd, is again surrounded, and again subjected to a plucking process. The bird must be stripped; he must be discovered. Little by little his back is bared, and little by little is seen a black jerkin, black stockings, and, wonder upon wonder! the bands of a canon. Now they have cleared his face of its plumage, and a cry of disgust and shame hails the disclosure. Yes, this curious masker is no other than a reverend abbé, a young canon of the cathedral of Mans! ‘This is too much–it is scandalous–it is disgraceful. The church must be respected, the sacred order must not descend to such frivolities.’ The people, lately laughing, are now furious at the shameless abbé and not his liveliest wit can save him; they threaten and cry shame on him, and in terror of his life, he beats his way through the crowd, and takes to his heels. The mob follows, hooting and savage. The little man is nimble; those well-shaped legs–qui ont si bien dansé–stand him in good stead. Down the streets, and out of the the town go hare and hounds. The pursuers gain on him–a bridge, a stream filled with tall reeds, and delightfully miry, are all the hope of refuge he sees before him. He leaps gallantly from the bridge in among the oziers, and has the joy of listening to the disappointed curses of the mob, when reaching the stream, their quarry is nowhere to be seen. The reeds conceal him, and there he lingers till nightfall, when he can issue from his lurking-place, and escape from the town.Such was the mad freak which deprived the Abbé Scarron of the use of his limbs for life. His health was already ruined when he indulged this caprice; the damp of the river brought on a violent attack, which closed with palsy, and the gay young abbé had to pay dearly for the pleasure of astonishing the citizens of Mans. The disguise was easily accounted for–he had smeared himself with honey, ripped open a feather-bed, and rolled himself in it.
The Wits and Beaux of Society, by Grace And Philip Wharton (1890).
We don’t have as much fun as they did in 1635, I reckon. Just on the offchance, though, do try donating a jar of honey to your local clergyperson. Let me know how they get on …
My main feeling at the Durbar while I watched those splendid beasts–the crowds of camels, the crowds of elephants–all being driven along by the little, faint, dreamy, sleepy-looking people was, “Why don’t their elephants turn around on them and chase them?”I kept thinking at first that they would, almost any minute.
Our elephants chase us–most of us. Who has not seen locomotives coming quietly out of their roundhouses in New York and begin chasing people, chasing whole towns, tearing along with them, making everybody hurry whether or no, speeding up and ordering around by the clock great cities, everybody alike, the rich and the poor, the just and the unjust, for hundreds of miles around? In the same way I have seen, hundreds of times, motor cars turning around on their owners and chasing them–chasing them fairly out of their lives. And hundreds of thousands of little wood-and-rubber Things with nickel bells whirring, may be seen ordering around people–who pay them for it–in any city of our modern world.
Now and then one comes on a man who keeps a telephone, who is a gentleman with it, and who keeps it in its place, but not often.
On one of these occasions, when Johnny [Gillat] was engaged in making peace between two little girls—little girls were his specialty—the rector met him and it was then it occurred to him that Mr. Gillat might help in the school. It was not much of an honour, the school was in rather a bad way just now, and boasted no other teachers than the rector and a raspy-tempered girl of sixteen, but Johnny was much flattered. He thought he ought to refuse; he was quite sure he could not teach; the idea of his doing so was certainly new and strange; he was also sure he was not virtuous enough. But in the end he was persuaded to try; Julia told him that he might hear the catechism with an open book, choose the Bible tales he was surest of, to read and explain, and have his class of little girls to tea very often.
The Charivaria section of the Punch magazine is always good for a little amusement, as it pops out pithy comments and witty one-liners each week, based on news of the week previous (here, 3rd Nov, 1920). If t’were written now, it would be one of those emails people forward round the office on a Monday afternoon, even though it’s not all that funny.
Found under a bed in a strange house at Grimsby, a man told the police who arrested him that he was looking for work. It was pointed out to him that the usual place for men looking for work is in bed, not under it.
A small boy, born in a Turkish harem, is said to have forty-eight step-mothers living. Our office-boy, however, is still undefeated in the matter of recently defunct grandmothers.
From an account of Sir J. FORBES-ROBERTSON’S début:–
“It was interesting to remember that in the audience on that occasion were Dante, Gabriel, Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne.”–Provincial Paper.
Colonel Bellairs looked at him with the suspicion which appears to be the one light shadow that lies across the sunny life of the bore.
“I said so half an hour ago,” he remarked severely, “when we were inspecting my new manure tanks, and you said you did not notice it.”
“You were right all the same,” said the younger man.
What an interest would be added to life if it were possible to ascertain how many thousands of times people like Colonel Bellairs are limply assured that they are in the right! The mistake of statistics is that they are always compiled on such dull subjects. Who cares to know how many infants are born, and how many deaf mutes exist? But we should devour statistics, we should read nothing else if only they dealt with matters of real interest: if they recorded how often Mr. Simpson, the decadent poet, had said he was “a child of nature,” how often, if ever, the Duchess of Inveraven and Mr. Brown, the junior curate at Salvage-on-Sea, had owned they had been in the wrong; whether it was true that an Archbishop had ever really said “I am sorry” without an “if” after it, and, if so, on what occasion; and whether any novelist exists who has not affirmed at least five hundred times that criticism is a lost art.
Prisoners, fast bound in misery and iron, Mary Cholmondeley (1906)