Every now and then, we like to present vintage clips of great authors reading classic literary works – works they have often written themselves. These clips can be fairly revealing. Through them, you can recapture the voices of literary greats, most long since passed. And you can hear how they give character and expression to their own works … or those of others. In response to a reader’s request, we have pulled together some of the finest examples previously featured here. And, for good measure, we’ve added prime clips of famous celebrities giving literary readings too. Hope you enjoy (and share):
1) William Faulkner Reads from As I Lay Dying
2) James Joyce Reading Finnegans Wake
3) Vintage Radio: Aldous Huxley Narrates Brave New World
4) Dominic West (aka Jimmy McNulty) Reads Jane Austen
5) Truman Capote Reads from Breakfast at Tiffany’s
6) Joyce Carol Oates Reads Eudora Welty’s “Where Is the Voice Coming From?”
7) Orson Welles Reads Moby Dick
8) Johnny Depp Reads Letters from Hunter S. Thompson
9) Ernest Hemingway Reads “In Harry’s Bar in Venice”
10) T.S. Eliot Reading from The Wasteland
11) F. Scott Fitzgerald Reads Shakespeare Out Loud
12) Dennis Hopper Reads Rudyard Kipling on Johnny Cash Show
13) Kurt Vonnegut Reads from Slaughterhouse-Five
14) Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukowski
15) William Carlos Williams Reads His Poetry (1954)
16) Orhan Pamuk Reads Vladimir Nabokov
17) Charles Bukowski “Bluebird”
18) Wallace Stevens Reads His Own Poetry
19) Tobias Wolff Reads From His New Short Story Collection
20) Listening to Famous Poets Reading Their Own Work
I highly recommend the Huxley, Depp and Hopper links. They are great.
Another from the actor pile, James Earl Jones reads Walt Whitman (1973):
http://blog.92y.org/index.php/weblog/item/92y_podcast_from_the_poetry_center_james_earl_jones_reads_walt_whitman/