Lance Eaton is a writer, college instructor, and instructional designer in the Greater Boston area.  He has taught courses on comics, monsters, literature, history, and popular culture.   He collects advance degrees and jobs.  He has reviewed audiobooks for nearly a decade and is quickly approaching his 1000th review of various media.  His musings can be found at his blog, By Any Other Nerd:  http://byanyothernerd.blogspot.com

Sound Disruptions: Sound Thoughts About Audiobooks…Please?

By Lance Eaton

I’ve been an avid fan of audiobooks since I was about fifteen and stumbled upon Star Wars abridgements in my local library.  I had already read the books, but that I could listen to them, brought this nerd one step further into the world of Star Wars (of which I could never get enough).  I soon discovered The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy BBC production.  That was the true game changer for me.  That’s when audiobooks got real.  In middle school, I had tried several times to read Hitchhiker’s Guide.  People told me that I would enjoy them.  I didn’t.  I couldn’t get it.  But then again, no one told me that the tone was what mattered.  Reading Douglas Adams’ work straight feels absurd, but not funny.  When one realizes that intent is absurdity and the tone is wry British humor; it becomes something else.  And that’s what the audio production gave me.  It brought the world of Douglas Adams into light and I fell in love with both the author and the form. 

Since then, I have listened to thousands of audiobooks (and am close to the 1000th mark of audiobooks reviewed in the last 10 years).  That my love affair with audiobooks started in the 1990s and continues on today, almost 20 years later speaks volumes about how central they have been to my life.  I have ample audioboooks ready to listen to in my car, an easy dozen on my iPod, and still more loaded on any of the computers or mobile devices I work with.  I devour about 2-3 a week in a light week.  I’ve single-handedly hooked  more than a dozen people on audiobooks through my constant berating and evangelizing.

However, this column, Sound Disruptions is going beyond talking about how great audiobooks are.  I’ll start by directing the conversation to this article in the NY Times Blog:  http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/does-reading-an-audio-book-count/. Sure, you get the occasional semi-insightful and thoughtful article (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/05/history-of-audiobooks.html).  But in over 100 years of recording text to audio we’re still stuck having the same conversation: “does it count?” or some rendering thereof. In many ways, it reminds me of the decade-spanning mind-numbing declaration that “Comics aren’t just for kids anymore,” best mocked in this Onion article:  http://www.theonion.com/articles/comics-not-just-for-kids-anymore-reports-85000th-m,28727/

I want to move beyond the basics.  Audiobooks are a billion dollar industry and are listened to by millions of people around the world.  Their origins mix the oral tradition that dominated much of human history with the fast-paced development of technology in the late 19^th and early 20^th century.  And yet, virtually all writing on audiobooks beyond reviews falls into the following categories:

Audiobooks are so much better than before:  This article or review highlights how narrators are seriously talented and can make or break an audiobook.  Often, the emphasis is on how skillful a narrator is but lacks any larger critical consideration to the transition from text to audio.

“Real” talent narrating audiobooks: Building upon the idea of audiobooks being better, this strain of articles identifies “real” acting talent narrating audiobooks.  This is insulting to professional narrators in some ways and largely just trying to validate the form through endorsement.  Give me Stefan Rudnicki over any brand-name actor or actress (Ian McKellen may be my only exception) for an audiobook narration, any day!

Audiobooks are/are not reading:  The most famous promoters of audiobooks include Stephen King and Neil Gaiman who strongly stand behind the declaration that listening to audiobooks is the real deal.  However, others lament that it is cheating, lacks substantive engagement, or just is another sign of the decline of civilization.  However, largely, these articles don’t delve into how both camps have elements of truth, but that depends on what reading is supposed to be. 

Audiobooks are now digital:  The digitization of audiobooks has been a boon for the industry in terms of overhead cost.  Audible and iTunes have fundamentally changed how many audiobooks the consumer will purchase in a year and many have become less dependent on libraries.  These articles are also often tied to local libraries and their acquiring access to Overdrive, the premier digital audiobook lending library service.  Accessibility is an important piece, but there is still more to say on this topic that hasn’t been addressed.  

Reviews are largely abysmal.  Most print publications usually don’t review audiobooks or review them superficially (200 words or less).  The reluctance to spend much print on reviewing audiobooks is usually due to the fact that the physical book has been reviewed or because of the larger audience for print, demands more attention.  From a business point of view that makes sense.  But even publications focused on audiobooks such as Audiofile Magazine don’t delve deep into the audiobook waters.  They go for quantity over quality in terms of reviews (and that’s not deriding the quality of those reviews, but coming in at under 140 words per review, they inevitably lack depth).  Even Sue Arnold, audiobook reviewer for The Guardian – http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/suearnold – is granted limited space to delve into any intriguing angles of audiobooks in her regular reviews. 

In the realm of academia, audiobooks feel more like a footnote within a footnote.  There have been a limited range of academic articles that engage audiobooks in some way.  To date, there has been but one academic book on the subject, Audiobooks, Literature, and Sound Studies edited by Matthew Rubery –http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415883528/.  Interesting in scope, it has yet to make its way into any circles of discussion among audiobook critics or fans (expect a forthcoming column on discussing the book.  Given its price, that’s of no surprise. 

So what I look to offer in this ongoing column is an attempt to push the discussion to the next level.  Beyond an oral rendering of a text, what do audiobooks have to offer us?  Why are they worth our intellectual thought and what can they reveal to us about the power of storytelling, adaptation, and what we hear when we “listen” to a book instead of reading it?  I will look to convince the reader that they are not only worth listening to but they are worth studying or thinking about on a higher level than previously considered.