Hearing Is Believing
In three weeks, Nikki and I will be moving to a new, bigger, better place in West L.A. This will reduce her commute by about 50%. It will reduce my commute by about -100%.
So now comes the unpleasant prospect of sitting idly on the 405, fighting through canyon traffic on one of the four roads that lead over the hill from L.A. to the Valley, losing radio reception, and letting the quiet rumbling of my diesel lull me into another world. I have to be at work at 6pm, although typically I try to arrive by 5 so my drive happens in the 4:00 hour instead of later. With the new place, for appreciable time savings I’d have to leave in about the 2:00 hour. Which leaves me with time to kill.
The Buena Vista branch of the Burbank Public Library has become my friend. It’s two blocks from work and it has lots of quiet nooks with plugs for one’s laptop. Even the lady who glared at me, chomping deafeningly on cough drops, and then admonished me for the volume of my cell phone couldn’t dampen my spirits. Pity there aren’t more books there.
A much wider selection can be found at the Central branch, down the road a few miles. The Central branch is the kind of library you dreaded going to back in the days when you couldn’t research a term paper from your computer. The librarians are all dough-faced old ladies or mildly retarded teenagers with faces like a bulldog who’s been kicked by a brick. The bathroom is the kind of place I made a mental note of in case I need a dingy, dismal scene for some future movie. The place reeks of kid sweat and boredom.
I decided I’d like to read more by Chuck Palahniuk, so I look him up whenever I’m at the Buena Vista branch. Everything’s always checked out. Until the other day, when I found that the Central branch had an audiorecording of his book Choke.
So I trooped down to the Central branch, held my breath and found the audiobook section. Choke was a Book On CD. The Books On CD shelf was sandwiched between classical music CDs and the Mack Bolan: Executioner section of Books On Tape. There were all of about twelve titles, most of them things like How to Organize Your Existence. I had to ask for Choke. It had just been returned and was still by the circulation desk.
“What’s this about?” asked Dough-Face #6.
“Pretty popular, eh?” I said.
“I was just curious. There’s no summary or anything of it anywhere.”
I shrugged. “I don’t really know the plot. It’s by the author of Fight Club.”
“Ah,” she said, as if that explained everything, and yet nothing.
I thought maybe I could listen to it while doing something boring at work, or while getting dressed at home or something. It’s seven hours long. It languished in my car for a few days. I found myself wishing I had an iPod so I could listen to it in the car.
Then it struck me. At a red light I fired up my laptop. Started it playing. Turned down the screen brightness to save the battery. I’d never heard a book on tape. I didn’t know what to expect.
Music greeted me. A deep announcer’s voice. “Random House Audible presents Choke, by Chuck Palahniuk,” the voice said. It pronounced it PAL-uh-nuk. “Read by the author.”
Was this creepy, actor’s baritone the voice of the author? No, I discovered. Chuck Palahniuk had a vaguely nowhere accent and an even cadence that tended to make sentences sound sort of inquisitive. He read his work without much of the inflection that an actor would bring to the stage. His rhythms brought something more, perhaps, to the text than the way they probably appeared on the page, than the way I would have read them.
Occasionally he stumbled. He stopped for a breath before a nine-syllable medical term. He got a few steps ahead of himself sometimes, and broke the cadence of a sentence. It was nice. It was like he was Homer or something, telling the story around a fire, dredging it verbatim from perfected memory, breezing through vulgarities with the detachment of penance after confession.
When I got to work, I had a peculiar feeling like I’d just been at that red light, that I didn’t remember the rest of the drive. I’d been perfectly alert; my driving hadn’t suffered. But I think I found a way to make that impending commute tolerable.
So now comes the unpleasant prospect of sitting idly on the 405, fighting through canyon traffic on one of the four roads that lead over the hill from L.A. to the Valley, losing radio reception, and letting the quiet rumbling of my diesel lull me into another world. I have to be at work at 6pm, although typically I try to arrive by 5 so my drive happens in the 4:00 hour instead of later. With the new place, for appreciable time savings I’d have to leave in about the 2:00 hour. Which leaves me with time to kill.
The Buena Vista branch of the Burbank Public Library has become my friend. It’s two blocks from work and it has lots of quiet nooks with plugs for one’s laptop. Even the lady who glared at me, chomping deafeningly on cough drops, and then admonished me for the volume of my cell phone couldn’t dampen my spirits. Pity there aren’t more books there.
A much wider selection can be found at the Central branch, down the road a few miles. The Central branch is the kind of library you dreaded going to back in the days when you couldn’t research a term paper from your computer. The librarians are all dough-faced old ladies or mildly retarded teenagers with faces like a bulldog who’s been kicked by a brick. The bathroom is the kind of place I made a mental note of in case I need a dingy, dismal scene for some future movie. The place reeks of kid sweat and boredom.
I decided I’d like to read more by Chuck Palahniuk, so I look him up whenever I’m at the Buena Vista branch. Everything’s always checked out. Until the other day, when I found that the Central branch had an audiorecording of his book Choke.
So I trooped down to the Central branch, held my breath and found the audiobook section. Choke was a Book On CD. The Books On CD shelf was sandwiched between classical music CDs and the Mack Bolan: Executioner section of Books On Tape. There were all of about twelve titles, most of them things like How to Organize Your Existence. I had to ask for Choke. It had just been returned and was still by the circulation desk.
“What’s this about?” asked Dough-Face #6.
“Pretty popular, eh?” I said.
“I was just curious. There’s no summary or anything of it anywhere.”
I shrugged. “I don’t really know the plot. It’s by the author of Fight Club.”
“Ah,” she said, as if that explained everything, and yet nothing.
I thought maybe I could listen to it while doing something boring at work, or while getting dressed at home or something. It’s seven hours long. It languished in my car for a few days. I found myself wishing I had an iPod so I could listen to it in the car.
Then it struck me. At a red light I fired up my laptop. Started it playing. Turned down the screen brightness to save the battery. I’d never heard a book on tape. I didn’t know what to expect.
Music greeted me. A deep announcer’s voice. “Random House Audible presents Choke, by Chuck Palahniuk,” the voice said. It pronounced it PAL-uh-nuk. “Read by the author.”
Was this creepy, actor’s baritone the voice of the author? No, I discovered. Chuck Palahniuk had a vaguely nowhere accent and an even cadence that tended to make sentences sound sort of inquisitive. He read his work without much of the inflection that an actor would bring to the stage. His rhythms brought something more, perhaps, to the text than the way they probably appeared on the page, than the way I would have read them.
Occasionally he stumbled. He stopped for a breath before a nine-syllable medical term. He got a few steps ahead of himself sometimes, and broke the cadence of a sentence. It was nice. It was like he was Homer or something, telling the story around a fire, dredging it verbatim from perfected memory, breezing through vulgarities with the detachment of penance after confession.
When I got to work, I had a peculiar feeling like I’d just been at that red light, that I didn’t remember the rest of the drive. I’d been perfectly alert; my driving hadn’t suffered. But I think I found a way to make that impending commute tolerable.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home