I noticed that Rupert Murdoch's publisher only released Fahrenheit 451 in an illiterate audio "book" format. Is this their not too subtle way of showing contempt for books and promoting more lucrative gimmicks for mobile phone aficionados? As pusillanimous a deception as �continuing� the Narnia tales of C.S. Lewis by Murdoch�s hired hacks for the sole purpose of cash flow. The Kirkus review of One for the Road trivializes the book with a condescending trendiness reminiscent of a chemist at Revlon injecting pigment into a lab rats eyes. And whose chalkboard voice is that in the interview section? Another of Rupert�s nasty, smirking, business suited women?

With bad grammar it might be added. "A precautionary tale"??? Gee I thought 1984 and Brave New World were Cautionary Tales.

If one has a simplistic gel capsule for a brain anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by dieyuppiescum:
I noticed that Rupert Murdoch's publisher only released Fahrenheit 451 in an illiterate audio "book" format. Is this their not too subtle way of showing contempt for books and promoting more lucrative gimmicks for mobile phone aficionados?

You might make the same critical comments about Bradbury's own "Book People", in the novel. After they memorize, or "become", the book, the actual paper version goes away (and thus, they can't be arrested for keeping books). The ideas of the book remain, however, and are not subject to burning.

How is an audiotape any different than one of the Book People giving an oral recitation of a book? Ray himself is a big fan of Old Time (dramatic) Radio, by the way.

For anyone who routinely drives many miles throughout the course of a week, audio tapes also serve to get to those titles that would otherwise go unread. It beats (by a long shot) listening to a.m. pop music, repetitious hot topics in the media, and talk show hosts who all have "the answer".

A well-read book-tape is not like sitting down and turning the pages, but it does offer quality listening time - something that was missing in F451. The "book people" were much like that. Their importance was to chronicle the texts that otherwise would have been burned or long forgotten. (The short story "The Exiles" also comes to mind as a warning from the author.)

In previous decades, listening to radio or records required members of families to be imaginative and in the long run produced generations of readers. Rather than listening, it's "watching" that is the battle today. TV, videos, e-games, and computer homework downloads - talk about "lucrative gimmicks"! How much will be made on Star Wars action figures alone? And how many kids have actually read the books?

Granted, nothing comes close to opening the cover and starting from page one. However, quality audio tapes serve a purpose in keeping some people interested (and supplied) with literary topics when time does not allow for their feet to stop long enough to get the chair.

I have tapes that have been heard countless times, and not because I have forgotten the story. I just enjoy listening to the story being read aloud (Martian Chronicles, Poe's works, A.C. Doyle, London, Cussler, Clancy, etc...and many of those old scratchy episodes of programs "when radio was king"!

I once sent some "tapes" of a Western recording group called "Sons of the Pioneers" to Mr. Bradbury. He responded with delight in referring to the music and narrations. Ironically, he used to sit in the radio station in LA as a youth watching these guys perform in front of a live audience on Saturday afternoons.

[This message has been edited by fjpalumbo (edited 05-22-2002).]

Agreed, audiotape is the only way I'd be reading Thomas Wolfe's "Look Homeward, Angel." The difference with audiotape and book people is audiotape is read directly from the original. The book people depended solely on memory--a notoriously unreliable source--not to mention there being only one copy each, subject to accident! Where books are concerned, there is truly "safety in numbers"! (One of the authors burning in "The Exiles" is an unforgettable image.)

There is a human connection in a voice, in the past the storyteller sitting around a fire could always transfix his audience with his delivery, and enthusiastic description.
I checked out some early recordings that Mr.Bradbury had read himself of the
Fog Horn, The Lake, Fever Dream, and other stories. Ray took great joy in fleshing out the characters with voice inflection, and exitement. Often when I can't get my 12, and 9 year old daughters to catch fire, and read a RB story. I will read to them on vacation trips cross country. I read them A Sound of Thunder going across Ohio last Summer. Oddly enough we read The Finnegan outside the mall parking lot waiting to see the new release of ET. Sometimes they get bedtime stories from memory from Ray their favorite is Kaliedascope, and Chrysalis.
I am a Drama teachers son, I grew up listening to rehearsals, so I grew up literally sleeping in an aisle. I listened to the old Disney records, and when the animated Hobbit came out my Dad bought that for me on 331/2 LP. The BookPeople should be alive and well in each of us. Sometimes I truly wish I could spray paint the tube, but then I could'nt watch the Twilight Zone or the Ray Bradbury Theater on the SciFi Channel.

Ironically, I just (3 days ago) received a few RB tapes c. 1965, '77 & 91. Full cast dramatizations. Along with the "19 Short Stories" I've had for quite a while, some great avenues of auditory escape are just a button push away.

Listening to "Fox and the Forrest" and "Dark They Were and Golden Eyed" as I type. Gems!

How many times have I played "The Sound of Thunder"?! The image of the T-rex hunter having to reach into that stinking and still very warm carcass of the downed monster to retrieve the lead bullets.... and to hear it read by Mr. Bradbury himself!!

"Fleshing them out" is a very accurate observation, Uncle.

uncle: "There is a human connection in a voice, in the past the storyteller sitting around a fire could always transfix his audience with his delivery, and enthusiastic description."

dandelion: "The book people depended solely on memory--a notoriously unreliable source--not to mention there being only one copy each, subject to accident!"

Good points, and ones that Bradbury does not bother to address in F451. One wonders, for example, about the myriad iterations told and retold that eventually were set down in text by Homer (if indeed, he is not a legend or a composite of several individuals himself) which became known, to us, as The Illiad and The Odyssey. How much was the myth changed from the original tellers by the time Homer received it? How much did Homer choose to embellish himself?

[This message has been edited by positronic (edited 05-31-2002).]