The sounds of silence
The New York Times has a very fun piece (yes, that was New York Times, and yes, that was “very fun”) about the struggles audiobook publishers face when trying to capture typographical quirks in audio format. When the footnote-happy David Foster Wallace recorded the audio version of his new essay collection Consider the Lobster, his voice was electronically treated to sound more muted for the footnotes. For Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, a drawing that was originally included in the text was instead briefly described. And for Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a section that consisted of three blank pages was read aloud as “Blank page. Blank page. Blank page” for the audio adaptation.
Related links:
Click here for the New York Times story on audiobooks
