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MY OWN TRUE STORY

Authors reading memoirs deliver more than their words. They bring themselves into listeners’ hearts.

Remember the warm, round rhythm of Dylan Thomas reading A CHILD’S CHRISTMAS IN WALES? “One year was so much like another in those years around the sea-town . . . that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.”

When Caedmon made that recording of Thomas’s autobiographical poem in 1952, they gave succeeding generations a nostalgic holiday tradition. They also presented us with the precious gift of a great writer reading his personal story in his own voice—a voice that rings down the decades with unique command.

Memoirs read aloud by the writer have a singular value. “Experience radiates through the author’s voice,” says Sherry Huber, who, as vice president for Random House Audio Publishing, has produced hundreds of such recordings. “I have a very special place in my heart for the author-reader. I believe that a writer reading a memoir creates a living document of enduring value. This testifying has a power that lifts the writing from the page and magnifies it, dignifies it with life and breath.”

Who else but Christopher Reeve could have recorded his autobiography, STILL ME, asks Robert Kessler, who produced Reeve’s book. The background hum of the respirator mingled with Reeve’s voice as he read and gave a matchless verisimilitude to the listening experience. Now that Reeve is dead, that recording is a moving, irreplaceable piece of personal history.

Books such as Christopher Reeve’s have made author-read autobiographies so popular that publishers devote significant resources to them. Random House, which has a separate imprint for such memoirs, has been asking authors to record their life stories for over 20 years. “In 1985, we had Maya Angelou reading I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, surely one of the most extraordinary audio testimonies ever to the triumph of the human spirit,” says Huber. “This was followed by Lauren Bacall sharing BY MYSELF and Spalding Gray performing SEX AND DEATH TO AGE FOURTEEN. These voices, once heard, are unforgettable.”

A memoir read by the person who lived it is a form of personal testimony, a way of saying, “This is my truth in my own voice.” When he narrated ANGELA’S ASHES, Frank McCourt sang aloud his mother’s favorite songs just as she had sung them. That’s a familiarity that only the writer could bring to the story. Vernon Jordan also sang when he recorded his autobiography, VERNON CAN READ! When he launches into the old spiritual “Wading in the Water,” it’s clear that he cannot hold a tune. But rather than tarnishing the artistic value of the audiobook, his flat notes transport listeners to the South in which he lived, to hot summer Sundays spent in church with young Vernon, who sang lustily, but off-key.

One of Huber’s most memorable recording sessions occurred with Eudora Welty. She was reading THE OPTIMIST’S DAUGHTER, a novel drawn from her life. “This was a book that I had known and loved for years, but when this shy, gentle, and yet determined woman of a certain age bit into it word by word I heard things I had never known before, both about her and about the story.”

Entering the memoirist’s past by hearing his or her voice may be magical for listeners, but reliving their lives through narration can be a mixed experience for the writers themselves. When Katherine Graham recorded PERSONAL HISTORY for Random House, she found the process to be emotionally draining. She had already re-experienced the triumphs and difficulties of owning THE WASHINGTON POST by writing the book. In the recording booth, she found that instead of being safely contained in paper, all the good and the bad parts of her life were given new life. The result, says Huber, is “a dignified, quietly told revelation of searing honesty, pain, and resolve.”

Likewise, when Nuala O’Faolain recorded her first memoir, ARE YOU SOMEBODY? she had to cope anew with her mother’s death. “Saying words [aloud] makes emotions more alive, and for better or worse, we re-feel what happens. Happy memories glow. Regrets are very difficult to say.”
Difficult, yet many find that giving voice to the good and the bad is ultimately uplifting. Jane Fonda delighted in the recording of MY LIFE SO FAR. “I took almost five years to write this book, and I poured into it things that I think are really important. To be able to say them out loud and to know that there will be people who will hear it is terrific.”

Saying things out loud can trigger new understanding, as well. Olympia Dukakis found it difficult to relive the sections of her autobiography, ASK ME AGAIN TOMORROW, that describe her father’s extramarital wanderings. Yet, the recording process gave her fresh perceptions. “It just came over me, what was going on in his life.”

She also found she had the urge to rewrite: “There must be a better way to say that,” she thought. It’s a common experience. Tracy Kidder, who just narrated his Vietnam War memoir, MY DETACHMENT, also recorded his previous book, MOUNTAINS BEYOND MOUNTAINS. He finds that some words are “easy enough to see and hear in your mind, but hard to say. I think that if I were writing something that would only be read aloud, I might write differently.”

Journalist Anne Garrels not only wanted to change words as she recorded NAKED IN BAGHDAD, she tried to add information to her book. “The producers wouldn’t let me!” she exclaims with mock frustration.

Ah, those producers. They purport to take extra care of author-narrators. “I do a lot of calming down,” says Robert Kessler. Yet producers are taskmasters all the same. After all, even when reading their own life stories, writers are as likely as the rest of us to substitute, transpose, and mispronounce words, breathe incorrectly, and trail off before sentences are finished. Tony Hillerman complains, albeit with an audible twinkle, that when he recorded SELDOM DISAPPOINTED, “The audio guy made me stop, made me pronounce words the way they’re supposed to be pronounced.” In his Oklahoma accent, he grumbles, “They want you to sound like an East Coast Yankee.”

Vernon Jordan says that his perfection-minded producer reminded him of his high-school English teacher. “I would read and she would say, ‘Stop.’ I would stop. She would say, ‘Read it again.’ I would read it again. I was completely at her mercy! I did everything she said to do.”

And that’s for an abridged book. Almost all memoirs read by authors are the shortened version. While some, including Jane Fonda, Madeleine Albright, and Vernon Jordan, have recorded the complete book, the 30 to 50 hours of reading is too great a strain for most whose career is not the spoken word. That’s when professional narrators take over. Barbara Caruso, who has recorded several Earphones Award-winning memoirs, including Joan Didion’s recent THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING, says that she and her colleagues bear a particular kind of responsibility when narrating an autobiography. Caruso tries to disappear behind the words. “This is someone’s life. I may offer a hint of the author’s personality as revealed by the writing, but really, I want to recede in the shadow of the person whose story I am reading. My goal is that you notice only the words, not me.”

That was Joe Morton’s goal, as well, when he recorded Arthur Ashe’s memoir DAYS OF GRACE. Ashe, who had planned to narrate his own book, died one week before he was scheduled to begin recording. In the midst of personal sorrow, Sherry Huber sought the only replacement she thought worthy. “Joe had the gravitas, yet sweetness, to tell Arthur’s brave and inspiring story.”

Some listeners object to missing 30 percent of the written word in the abridged versions most often read by authors, but Huber believes that losing it is better than not hearing the author’s voice at all. Author readings can be artistic delights, as well as historic documents. Ruth Reichl recently won an Audie Award in the Biography/Memoir category for her recording of GARLIC AND SAPPHIRES. Says Huber: “She has an adorable way of telling her stories—her spunk, candor, and confidence are all revealed through her voice.” The value of such personal testimony is greater than the snobbery inherent in demanding unabridged or nothing.

When Jane Fonda said, “I want MY LIFE in my voice,” she also meant, I want my life in my voice.” Autobiographies narrated by the person who lived them create an intimacy between writer and listener that is different than the relationship between writer and book-reader. They provide that rare gift, a unique window into another person’s heart.—Aurelia C. Scott

AUG/SEP 06
© AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

Photo © Brigid Collins, Getty Images