Since I read for a living, it is often the case that I seek other activities for relaxation. I feel some regret about this, because there are so many good books that I want to read for pleasure. I get to a few every year, but slowly.
I also get a great deal of pleasure from working with my hands--gardening, picture framing, cooking. That prevents me from holding a book. The only way to read and do manual work is to listen to audio books. I don't listen to audio books often, but last summer I discovered a treasure-- the audio book of Ellison's Invisible Man, read by actor Joe Morton. 18 hours. I listened to the first half driving from Gainesville FL to Nashville, a 9 hour trip, and I listened to the second half driving back south.
Not long into the trip, I felt like Joe Morton's Invisible Man was my best friend. Morton reads the novel as if it were a stage play, with a different voice for each character Invisible Man meets in his journey, and a wide variety of moods for Invisible Man himself. Since I know that Ellison recorded himself reading his manuscript and then played back the tapes as he revised, I believe he was as interested in the sound of the narrative as the way it reads on the page. The narrative includes song lyrics, preaching, and oral storytelling, more evidence that it has a life out loud.
How many novelists, I wonder, write with the idea that their work will be read out loud?
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