Sweet Nothings
“The primacy of airborne person-to-person transmission,” as Derek Thompson put it on Monday at The Atlantic brings together for me an intriguing parallel between the COVID-19 pathogen, our experience of it, and literature.
Contrary to trends found in studies showing people have less time for audiobooks during the pandemic – because many are at home more and not alone on commutes or gym trips – I’ve been listening to more books. Masked breaks from the desk for me are more frequent, not less, and more necessary because of a heavier workload.
And something about the nearness of a voice in your ear, the digital equivalent of someone’s breath on your shoulder, can intensify the psychological proximity of reading–the author in your head, the voice against your face, dangerous in terms of a contagion, luxurious in terms of literature.
Thompson is right that the scientists’ shift from a focus on surface transmission to an aerosolized threat hasn’t been followed well by the public. But neither was the shift to an understanding of masks’ importance, either. As the medicos’ grasp has deepened, the population’s attention has waned (or has been politically diverted), and yet both cleaning! and masks! are part of the same evolving insight, even as so many folks are breathing heavily from their labors with sponges and soaps, “funneling our anxieties into empty cleaning rituals,” as Thompson writes.
Don’t stop washing your hands, by the way. Keep things clean. You can still move virus to your face with your hands.
But the understanding now is that the novel coronavirus COVID-19 is moving through the population on one of our most intimately shared features: breath. Talking. Whispering. Chatting someone up. Shouting someone down. At bars, outbreaks occur not because everyone is drinking after each other or pawing the same table top or bar surfaces but mainly because they sit close to each other to be heard over music, they raise their voices, they share breath. And they may be fully asymptomatic, too – the final terror.
Ironically, of course, the more isolated we become in order to keep from sharing each other’s breath, the more literature’s intimacy may mean to us.
A book is a thing of safe breath.
It’s better if it’s digital than print because other hands (and breaths) won’t have impacted its surfaces.
But it may be even better if rendered in audio, not only freeing you from the safety issues of surfaces but bringing the format into alignment with the communicative mechanism we need to avoid: speech.
Hearing Voices
My provocation for you today is not a test of your mask-wearing diligence, although I hope that you, too, have a growing collection of sturdy face coverings – we’re a long way from being done with this crisis.
Instead, I’d like to know if you find your writing to be responsive at this point to some concept of intimacy.
I find that I favor an almost conspiratorial tone in a narrator, reliable or otherwise. I want a voice that wants me. I want a story that arrives with eloquent urgency. I think there’s such a thing as narrative pressure and it feels good, like a breath on the ear.
I think I’ve mentioned in the past Laurie Anderson’s mesmerizing reading of Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist. And Campbell Scott’s mastery of Henry Miller in his narration of Tropic of Capricorn. At the moment, I’m listening to Anne Applebaum’s Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism, read by the author herself as the perfect dinner companion for a quiet little place in Athens or Naples or Geneva. We would not want this exchange overheard by the “closet authoritarians” at the next table.
I’d like to think that I’m learning from this to write (and I mean this in a non-COVID way) a more fevered narrative. Something more propulsive and needy, something that fits in the ear with wireless cunning, a murmur of intelligence: a breath.
Do you hear this in your protagonist? Can you “test” your characters’ viability in terms of how they might sound in headphones – or feel in a close, hushed breath? And isn’t it interesting, that the very key to this deadly contagion’s spread can be something as seductive as a shared breath, an inside joke, a private whisper of courage?
About Porter Anderson
@Porter_Anderson is a recipient of London Book Fair's International Excellence Award for Trade Press Journalist of the Year. He is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives, the international news medium of Frankfurt Book Fair New York. He co-founded The Hot Sheet, a newsletter for trade and indie authors, which now is owned and operated by Jane Friedman. Priors: The Bookseller's The FutureBook in London, CNN, CNN.com and CNN International–as well as the Village Voice, Dallas Times Herald, and the United Nations' WFP in Rome. PorterAndersonMedia.com
Great topic, Porter!
Back when I had a daily commute, I used to listen to audiobooks a lot. But I made the shift to working from home fulltime about a decade ago, after which my listening dropped off sharply. In the past couple years, I’ve been listening more: I find audiobooks are excellent accompanists for long walks in my neighborhood.
As you pointed out, the voice of the narrator makes a BIG difference. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes a seemingly odd choice can be surprisingly effective. I found Brad Pitt’s extremely flat reading of Cormac McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses” jarring at first, but quickly came to love it, as it really fit the arid setting (and language) of the book, as well as the laconic aspect of the main character.
One new thing I’ve tried is comparing different narrators reading the same book. This isn’t common for most current books, but some older books have been released multiple times with different narrators. I have a couple different versions of the Tao Te Ching that I enjoy listening to, and I recently held “auditions” (listening to preview samples) to choose which narrator I preferred for Moby Dick (the winner was Anthony Heald, by the way, who does an absolutely wonderful job with this mammoth work).
I also started listening specifically to books I have already read, to reinforce what I learned from them. Most recently I did that with Chuck Palahniuk’s new how-to, which I raved about in my most recent WU post. What’s interesting to me is that I usually pick up things while listening that I either missed or glossed over while reading.
For years I avoided audiobooks, considering them a “dumbed-down” alternative to reading. But when I embraced them as a way to keep my brain active and engaged while doing some other task where actual reading would be impossible, I really came to love them.
And as a writer, I quickly learned that nothing makes BAD writing stand out as much as hearing it read aloud!
Thanks for raising this topic, and stay safe.
Hey, Keith!
Good to hear from you, thanks for getting back and I’m glad it’s not just me doing more listening, lol.
You know, I’ve done that, too, “auditioning” narrators when there’s more than one rendition of a book. Have you found a good narrator on Ayn Rand’s books? This Christopher Hurt guy — I’m sure he’s a great fellow, but he gives me the creeps. Every line is so pat, it sounds like he’s reading a recipe book. I’ve always wished for better work on some of Rand’s canon but so far can’t find it.
And Pitt on the McCarthy taping sounds like exactly what I like about Campbell Scott on Miller’s work. Scott is quiet, not uncaring but also not hyping anything. Cool and laid back (which I’m sure Miller would love).
In general, this is the direction I appreciate the most. I can’t stand this cast-of-thousands thing they do with a lot of big books now, or even actors who do 14 funny voices. I really prefer someone capable just really read it to me. (This may be the bias of a former Equity actor, mind you — we get a snootful of overacting from our theater friends.) The BBC did a “dramatization” edition of Fowles’ “The Magus,” a book I love https://amzn.to/3gcwiUu — radio theater, basically, and it’s pretty awful, lol. The Naxos basic read by Nicholas Boulton is $40.99 at 26 hours, so I may have to join Audible, to get it for $14.99. Crazy.
How long before technology will let us choose an actor’s voice to render a book in real time? How hard can it be? Sample their voice and have it machine-read the text. :)
It’s funny you mention the idea of audio being a “dumbed-down” alternative. I’ve had a version of this concern, myself, but my worry is that listening is going to take us even farther from long-form immersive reading. But on the other hand, I simply don’t have the time to read all the work I want to read, and I’ll break my neck if I go everywhere trying to read visually.
I’m all Kindle, too, if not listening. Books that glow in the dark are the best. Speaking of which, I can’t wait to see this new film “Radioactive” about Marie Curie from Studio Canal (Amazon is distributing, Marjane Satrapi directed) — Laren Redniss wrote the book and Jack Thorne did the screenplay.
Thanks again, good comparing notes with you. Holler if you discover listenable Rand.
And do stay safe, this thing is not done with us yet.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
“A book is a thing of safe breath.”
Oof, that is good, and true, and it reminded me that I need to choose my next audiobook.
You said, “I’d like to know if you find your writing to be responsive at this point to some concept of intimacy.“
Yes. Writing with pencil and paper. Granted, this is adjacent to the direction of your piece, but it’s unquestionably true; it’s been a more effective way for me to engage with my wip than sitting at a keyboard for all of 2020. Maybe I can hear my characters’ voices more cleanly when a visit to Twitter, Wapo, etc is just a click away. Maybe it’s that the sound of pencil moving across paper draws me, makes me remember myself, says writer, writer, writer.
Thanks for this post; it spoke to me.
Wow, Therese, THAT is interesting — and yes, intimate.
I think that writing by hand (I could never read mine, of course, lol) is definitely something about intimacy, and with your own work, which is quite cool.
It aligns with what I’m saying about intaking stories and nonfiction, too, that feeling of closeness.
One way or another, I think we’re all looking for ways to get at something instead of having to feel so removed.
Better removed than the alternative, of course, but it does do strange things to you and I’d say that urge to write in such an elemental way is the same impulse.
How cool, thanks for speaking up. Maybe I’ll start a grand listing: “The Intimacies During a Pandemic,” lol.
Cheers!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Wow, Porter, you made lightbulbs go off for me this morning. The word inspiration is derived from the Latin for breath. Breath equated with life, with spirit, even divinity (when one can’t breathe, these things becomes pretty clear). But now, as you so eloquently point out, breath has taken on a more nefarious meaning. Maybe there’s a balance in her somewhere? Kiss of love. kiss of death? My MC hears a ‘voice’ in here head. It’s not there all the time but can show up when she’s being particularly obtuse. She has also learned in invoke it, although sometimes it ignores her. Either way, the voice has become a part of who she is and how she navigates the story-wokld. It also sets her apart form other people. So there’s that duality again. Does the voice make her special or separate? Are we all both? I think the past long months of seclusion may have allowed people to confront such questions, something they might not have done otherwise. Always two sides to a coin. Rather than po rocking, today you have inspired me! Thanks and hope you’re well.
I meant ‘provoking’, not po rocking, whatever that might be. No edit function today!!
Thanks for the heads up on this one, Susan! It should be working again now. We had some tech issues, and we’re still digging out.
Edit’s wroking great for me now, Therese (and boy, do I need that function). Thanks!
No worries, I understood “po rocking” and I kind of like it … like saying you’re “woke.”
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hey, thanks, Susan,
So glad the column resonates for you, sounds like you’re right on the wavelength here.
And the question of hearing voices I think is definitely pertinent. I’ve found that one of the pleasures of being masked in public is that you can mutter something just loud enough for someone to think they heard it, but they can’t see your mouth move, so they’re not sure it was you. I’m enjoying making people on my grocery runs think they’re hearing voices in the produce section.
And seriously, there’s an almost seashell aspect to the thing of listening to literature because your ears are filled with such close sound. It is quite often like hearing voices. Lovely and at times disconcerting in the extreme, especially if I’m listening while walking around the bay.
Take care and keep watching for more dualities. I have to think there’s a lot to be learned from what we’re going through and some more nuanced understanding of what we’re hearing, internally and externally, should be part of it … before the post-vaccination roar picks up.
I’m well, thanks and hope you are, too,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I’m finding mask-making to be very soothing and, yes, ever growing. As my kids will be returning to in-building school in a couple of weeks, I am making a gazillion. Hopefully the school board approves the schools system’s plan of mandated masks!
I realized the other night my protagonist has an approachable, but firm grasp of herself and what to do in her world. Now that you mention it, it may well be that this is what I need in my post-Covid emergence world, where nothing is certain and a lot of it isn’t approachable. :)
Your mask-making sounds great, Lara! What a nice way to contribute to the situation, especially for the school situation. You should open a lemonade stand for masks right where the parents drop off their kids every morning for school, might do a good business when all the kids forget their masks.
And we could all use a firm grasp of ourselves and a hint or two as to what to do in o9ur world, she sounds like a popular protagonist in the making. :)
Hope the writing is going well, and thanks again,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
In the middle of a pandemic, we are moving, for a few weeks, living in the temperatures of Nevada where one dare not go outside. So I read. I write. I whisper my longing for the pandemic and this interlude to end. I miss my home in California and my office. I yearn to duplicate quiet days of writing when we are settled back in Chicago, where I was born, where I hope to find home again. Reading saves me. Words on the page. A voice might also, though audio books are what I do while driving. I was a 5 hour drive from my mother when she was fading from this life–audio books helped me make the journey. Thus there was that time, driving over the Mississippi, hearing Marilynne Robinson’s HOME and the words brought realization and tears. Writing and reading in my life will always have power, whether it is eyes or ears. Words are breath, good breath, and they keep in alive. Words don’t need a mask and in this time, truth must, absolutely must, win.
Beth, I cannot tell you how much I sympathize with the moving experience. It’s probably the fact of life I dislike the most, having had to move many, many times, both domestically and among other countries. Wrenching, exhausting, and always terrifying in one way or another.
Hope the ordeal will go as smoothly as possible for you and that the words will keep helping, whether read or listened to.
All the best, and thanks again for the heartfelt note,
Sending good energy,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter, this might be your best essay yet because it resonates on so many levels. I prefer reading to listening for all the obvious reasons, like being able to read a particularly beautiful passage, but there are some books, with musical themes that are especially beautiful when read aloud because the producer has added the music. I have the Gospels read by actors along with sound effects and they bring it to life. I’m grateful our little Latin schola is allowed to sing from the loft at Mass–I’d be bereft without it. Was.
From the very beginning I’ve read my work aloud because the words have to sing. Perhaps this is because I’m a children’s writer and the stories are meant to be read aloud. You can hear where there’s a bump better than seeing it on the page.
I have a small drawer of masks–my kids work at Publix and have to wear them for hours and hours so I encourage them to change them when they come home for lunch. How I want this all this to be over but something tells me this is just the beginning. Good think our hope and refuge is the Lord. Be well and in His grace.
Conspiratorial tone. Eloquent urgency. Narrative pressure.
I’ve been wondering lately how those qualities become infused in narrative voice. In novels as different as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and To Kill a Mockingbird there are an intimacy and urgency that are hard to define yet utterly palpable.
It is as if the narrator knows from word one that we are hooked and settles into the telling with the assurance that everything set down, no matter how diversionary, will ultimately contribute to the tale.
Perhaps it comes down to this: The narrator knows where the story is going and we do not. The narrator, therefore, is free to tell the tale with relish, delight and suspense. We will hang on, breathless, because the narrator has us in thrall.
Great audiobook narrators bring those qualities to the vocal performance, but they are already present in great novel narration. A good provocation today, Porter. Thanks.
I hear you Porter. Good piece.
I write three people, close third person, from right behind the eyeballs.
There is no narrator – any bits that sound like a narrator get caught, strangled, and revived in the close third person whose pov it is.
It can take me two days to switch and be able to write the next scene in the very different voice of another character. I can’t describe anything, create dialogue, see until I’ve made the transition, and allowed myself to channel the other character. I have to adjust to the new breathing rate, the pitch in my head, the new way of using English, the new intensity, even a different height.
I never expected it when I started, but I’ve been doing it now for twenty years. And the acting training? It gets used. An actor, an actress (yes, I know – but it’s 2005), and a writer who is very good at hiding her true feelings.
If I could switch actual bodies, by now I could play all three in a movie.