And Another Thing …… Words in Your Ear: a Techno- Assisted Revival of an Ancient Art

LOGOS 9(4) 2nd/JH 31/10/06 7:35 pm Page 222

LOGOS And another thing …… Words in your ear: A techno- assisted revival of an ancient art

Hazel Bell There is a bookshop in Wigmore Street in London, a block north of Oxford Street. Like any bookshop, its shelves are divided by subject: biography, travel, fiction, classics, short stories, history/documentary, poetry, science fiction, children’s, business and motivation, etc. Like any bookshop, it is patronized by a mixture of browsers and customers who know exactly what they want. Like any bookshop, it will A freelance indexer with more order up any title not in stock. There is just one than 500 indexes published thing missing: printed books. It’s the Talking Book (including that of LOGOS), Shop. Its wares are discs and tapes. Some of its good sellers, eg, Tom Lehrer, The Goon Show, or The Hazel Bell was Editor of The Compact Coward (ie, Noël), did not originate as Indexer, the professional journal print. Some are dramatizations of classics, eg, Can- of the Societies of Indexers in the terbury Tales (which, as Chaucer related them, were UK, the US, Australia and originally oral), David Copperfield or Hamlet. Whether the Talking Book Shop is ahead Canada, from 1978 to 1995. She of its time or is catering for a passing phase, it has is author of a guide to children’s latched onto a substantial market. The annual books based on her experience as turnover of talking books in the UK is £60m. In the a teacher and mother. Bell was US, there are twelve million households which buy also the Editor of Learned or rent “audiobooks” – the preferred US description of the genre. Publishing, the journal of the A talking or audiobook is basically a UK’s Association of Learned and recorded edition of a printed text, read aloud onto Professional Society Publishers, a cassette or CD – a verbal version of the multi- from 1987 to 1996. Her most billion-dollar recorded music market. In terms of the mechanics of distribution, audiobooks may recent publication is a booklet on therefore be said to ride on the coattails of recorded Indexing biographies and other music. In terms of human history, however, audio- stories of human lives. books are, it could be argued, a techno-assisted revival of the ancient art of oral literature which long pre-dated writing, let alone printing. The most significant difference between the tribal lore mem- orized and recited by patriarchs and matriarchs to their younger generations, and today’s tapes and discs is that the voice of the narrator is disembod- ied. The listener-controlled pause button has to substitute for the pacing that a watchful storyteller

would practice by closely regarding his or her audi- Pleasure” series a twenty-title series of narrated ence. As for nuances of gesture or facial expression books under the rubric “Listen for Pleasure”. Origi- on the part of the narrator or the audience, the nal packaging was devised, and marketing expertise electronic transmitter is powerless. devoted to the launch. The EMI series was not sold Neither of these defects overrides the fact in bookshops, but in department stores and super- that, in the history of knowledge transmission, lis- markets. There was no competition. Sales soared. tening preceded reading. Its widespread acceptance Over 100,000 tapes of David Niven reading his The today in a busy-busy world can in part be attributed Moon’s a Balloon were sold. to the elemental pleasure of sitting back with your Next on the UK talking book scene came eyes closed, or at least at rest, and enjoying the spo- the BBC, with its hugely valuable archived material ken word. to draw on. In the early 1980s, it became the most But only in part. Most contemporary book successful audiobook producer. The BBC Radio listeners are doing other things while they listen – Collection consisted mostly of the classics, but such as driving a car or doing household chores. Such included some light entertainment. accompaniments to reading aloud of course predate Latterly some print publishers have awak- the electronic age, but not by long. One would have ened to the opportunity. HarperCollins, Hodder to go back to the primitivity of tribal storytelling to Headline, Penguin and Random House all now find listeners giving undivided attention. In the days include the production of audiobooks among their when people read aloud to each other, a character in traditional printed stock. Richard Baldwin consid- Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849) declared, “when the ers this an unfortunate fragmentation of the market, gentleman of a family reads, the ladies should always the separate identity of which, however, was recog- sew. Caroline, dear child, take your embroidery ...” nized in 1994 by the formation of the Spoken Word Publishing Association, with the objective of rais- * * * * * ing “the profile of spoken word audio with retail trade, press and consumers”. Largely unthought of by today’s book-lis- In the US, where driving distances are tening audience is that sector of society for which the greater and radio broadcasting more commercial, spoken book was originated and which remains today audiobooks have enjoyed correspondingly greater its greatest beneficiary: those who cannot see. In the favour. Publishers Weekly routinely covers audio- UK, the Royal National Institute for the Blind books in its columns, and in June 1998, which was (RNIB) launched its Talking Book Service in 1935. declared “Audio Book Month”, devoted a special In succeeding years, its service graduated from 78rpm supplement entirely to the medium. records to long-playing records to cassettes. RNIB Books on cassette are particularly appreci- Talking Books are sent on post-free loan to registered ated by solitary far-travelling drivers. Laura Bodon, blind or partially sighted subscribers. Today around a Californian book dealer, says: “We do well with 12,000 cassettes are despatched each day from the books on tape at our store as many of our customers RNIB’s 11,000-title distribution centre in Wembley, commute to work over seventy miles away, spend- near London. RNIB recordings can be played only on ing three or four hours a day driving to and from special players supplied to members, not on commer- work. I don’t like driving, but listening to a book on cial equipment available to the public. tape makes it bearable. I will sometimes listen to The first publicly available talking books one when I am working on my needle-point or were produced in the 1970s by two American com- doing housework (which I loathe). Most of our panies – Caedmon and Argos. A British company, radio channels here are country music which I can’t Pickwick, produced some single-tape detective and stand.” Ms Bodon also sees the demand for audio- Dr Who and Flash Gordon stories. These early efforts books increasing due to the ageing of the popula- were recherché items tucked away in a few book- tion, some of whom find print reading difficult. shops. About the year 1978, Richard Baldwin of Large-print books are less convenient than listening EMI, the music distributors, added to its “Music for to cassettes.