(urth) a journal entry from 1991

aaron aaronsingleton at gmail.com
Tue Jul 30 20:20:03 PDT 2013


Oddly enough, while I enjoy reading to others, I do not enjoy listening to
books being read.  Audiobooks put me to sleep.  Strange but true.


On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 9:56 PM, António Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>wrote:

> More power to yous, but personally I can't follow a book that is being
> read aloud by someone else. Maybe if I really had to...
>
> No dia 31/07/2013, às 01:58, aaron <aaronsingleton at gmail.com> escreveu:
>
> I read TBotNS to my wife back in '05.  It was a blast.  I even got to the
> point where I had different voices and cadences for each character.  I have
> also read 5HC to her, and Vance's Dying Earth series.  I find it a great
> way to introduce someone to my favorite works--I mean, there is no pressure
> other than to listen and relax.  Looking forward to reading some Wolfe and
> Vance to my son one day soon, too.
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 5:09 PM, Christopher Simon <
> kierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>  That was really a pleasure to read, thanks for sharing.
>>  ------------------------------
>> From: Editor B <b at rox.com>
>> Sent: 7/30/2013 2:19 PM
>> To: urth at urth.net
>>
>> Subject: (urth) a journal entry from 1991
>>
>> Hey all. I thought I'd delurk briefly to share an entry from my private
>> journals dating way back to 1991. I'm pasting below for those who care to
>> take a look. It's about reading Wolfe to my then-girlfriend, identified
>> here simply as K to protect her identity. To date I've read *The Book of
>> the New Sun* aloud four times now, and I'm kind of curious if others
>> have tried this. It's quite an experience. Also, it should be noted that
>> this was written before the net came to the masses, which may account for
>> my presumption that I was some sort of super elite reader. That, and the
>> arrogance of youth. — Editor B
>>
>>
>> *7/10/91 Wednesday*
>>
>> the work day started late for K, so she woke me up around 8am and we had
>> breakfast together (after I did my exercises — I think I'll be doing 30 of
>> each now, though I haven't done push-ups for a while). After she left I
>> looked over Chapter IX in *Shadow of the Torturer* ("The House Azure")
>> but I only read it in a whisper because my throat was was a little raw from
>> smoking *Leonicus sibiricus* last night with K. (Yes, the package came
>> from Of the Jungle just a couple days ago. We smoked by candlelight, with
>> spacy music playing, and seemed to enjoy some psychic effects. But the
>> jury's still out.) As regards Gene Wolfe, I guess I should explain that K
>> finally said go last week, after three agonizing months (at least) since I
>> told her I'd like to share *The Book of the New Sun* with her. Every day
>> I look over the chapter I am to read that night, and I read it aloud to
>> myself, so that I can get the inflections right and look up any unfamiliar
>> words. All day long I relish the thought of it, and it comforts me at work
>> to think that when I get home, I will read her a chapter. I know that it's
>> wrong to pin so much on this, but I do. At least we're past the anxious
>> part — I asked her to listen to the first seven chapters before deciding
>> whether she wanted to go on, and she did, and after the 7th (in which
>> Severian meets Thecla) she said she was enjoying the story. From this point
>> I can only imagine that her interest will wax. I know that she doesn't see
>> even a fraction of what I see in Wolfe's writing, but then she hasn't read
>> it ten times over. *The Book of the New Sun* is like a mystery that has
>> to be unraveled, and that takes time and patience. How many of his readers
>> have penetrated as deeply into the mystery as I, I wonder? His flowery
>> sentences don't always lend themselves to being read aloud, but my
>> prediction is that by this time next week, when Thecla is dead and Severian
>> leaves the guild, K will be hooked. At this point, she's still rather
>> ambivalent about Severian as a protagonist.
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Aaron Singleton
>
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-- 
Aaron Singleton
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