We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the free, down­load­able sto­ries and nov­els by author Neil Gaiman avail­able online in video, audio, and text for­mat. This is a won­der­ful thing, to be sure; Gaiman’s a fan­tas­tic writer of dark fan­ta­sy for chil­dren and adults alike, so who bet­ter to inau­gu­rate this year’s Hal­loween cel­e­bra­tions with a new free sto­ry, avail­able for down­load through Audible.com and read by Neil him­self?

Gaiman’s new sto­ry, enti­tled “Click-Clack the Rat­tle­bag,” is creepy, for sure, but that’s all I’m going say about it. You’ll need to down­load it your­self to find out more, and you real­ly should because for every down­load of the sto­ry, Audi­ble has agreed to donate a dol­lar to one of two char­i­ties that Neil has chosen—one for the U.S. and one for the U.K.. Gaiman has more infor­ma­tion on his per­son­al web­site, where he describes his nego­ti­a­tions with Audi­ble in set­ting up the dona­tions and the process of record­ing the sto­ry. He writes:

The sto­ry is unpub­lished (it will be pub­lished in a forth­com­ing anthol­o­gy called Impos­si­ble Mon­sters, edit­ed by Kasey Lans­dale and com­ing out from Sub­ter­ranean Press). It’s fun­ny, a lit­tle bit, and it’s scary, just enough for Hal­lowe’en, I hope.

Gaiman also has a few requests: first, you need to down­load the sto­ry by Hal­loween in order to make the dona­tion; sec­ond, please don’t give the sto­ry away—encourage peo­ple to go down­load it for them­selves; and last­ly, “wait to lis­ten to it until after dark.” Atmos­phere mat­ters.

You do not need an Audi­ble account to down­load the sto­ry, but you do need to give them your email address to prove you’re a human. U.S. read­ers should go to www.audible.com/ScareUs and U.K. read­ers to www.audible.co.uk/ScareUs. (Gaiman pro­vides no instruc­tions for read­ers in oth­er coun­tries; I sup­pose they could go to either site). So don’t wait—help Audi­ble raise mon­ey for some wor­thy edu­ca­tion­al char­i­ties and get in the spir­it with some great new fic­tion from one of the most imag­i­na­tive writ­ers work­ing today. Final­ly, if you’re look­ing for more scary reads this Hal­loween, down­load Gaiman’s “All Hal­low’s Read” book rec­om­men­da­tions in a .pdf.

Note: Do you want to lis­ten to oth­er free audio books by Neil Gaiman? Just head over to Audible.com and reg­is­ter for a 30-day free tri­al. You can down­load any audio­book for free. Then, when the tri­al is over, you can con­tin­ue your Audi­ble sub­scrip­tion, or can­cel it, and still keep the audio book. The choice is entire­ly yours. And, in full dis­clo­sure, let me tell you that we have a nice arrange­ment with Audi­ble. When­ev­er some­one signs up for a free tri­al, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Final­ly, we also sug­gest that you explore our col­lec­tion of 450 Free Audio Books. It’s loaded with great clas­sics.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

When F. Scott Fitzger­ald died in 1940, his New York Times obit­u­ary claimed, “the promise of his bril­liant career was nev­er ful­filled.” This is a sen­tence that may puz­zle mod­ern-day lovers of Fitzgerald’s endur­ing­ly-rel­e­vant fic­tion, but it was the judg­ment of the time on the exhaust­ed, alco­holic writer’s career. And it was a judg­ment he often applied to him­self, as he demon­strat­ed pub­licly in his 1936 essay “The Crack-Up,” about his depres­sion. Reduced at the end of his life to writ­ing film scripts for mon­ey, a task he found degrad­ing for a “suc­cess­ful lit­er­ary man” such as him­self, Fitzger­ald also, at some time near his final year, made record­ings of him­self read­ing the work of Shake­speare, Keats, and oth­ers, pre­sum­ably also for mon­ey, though it’s not exact­ly clear who pro­duced the record­ings or why.

In the first video (above), lis­ten to Fitzger­ald deliv­er a dig­ni­fied read­ing of Othello’s speech to the Venet­ian Sen­a­tors from Act 1, Scene 3 of Oth­el­lo. Fitzger­ald stum­bles and slurs occa­sion­al­ly, and the speech may in fact be com­posed of sev­er­al dif­fer­ent takes edit­ed togeth­er, sug­gest­ing that he may have had dif­fi­cul­ty mak­ing it through. Nonethe­less, his voice is seduc­tive and sonorous; he reads the speech as a lit­er­ary mono­logue, rather than a dec­la­ra­tion. Hear more of him below, read­ing an edit­ed ver­sion of John Masefield’s “On Grow­ing Old,” a poem which may have had par­tic­u­lar poignan­cy to the man who wrote in 1936, “of course all life is in a process of break­ing down.” But even in decline, Fitzger­ald was worth lis­ten­ing to. You can find major works by F. Scott Fitzger­ald in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Cre­ates a List of 22 Essen­tial Books, 1936

Sev­en Tips From F. Scott Fitzger­ald on How to Write Fic­tion

Rare Footage of Scott and Zel­da Fitzger­ald From the 1920s