Hear Ray Bradbury’s Classic Sci-Fi Story Fahrenheit 451 as a Radio Drama

in Audio Books, Books, Literature, Radio | November 19th, 2015

fahrenheit 451

Last week we fea­tured a list of 100 nov­els all kids should read before grad­u­at­ing from high school. Cho­sen by 500 Eng­lish teach­ers from all over Britain, the list hap­pens to have a lot of over­lap with many oth­ers like it. Invari­ably, these kinds of young adult read­ing lists include Ray Bradbury’s nov­el of dystopi­an cen­sor­ship and anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism, Fahren­heit 451.  Why, I’ve always won­dered, should this nov­el be pitched almost exclu­sive­ly at teenagers, so much so that it seems like one of those books many of us read in high school, then nev­er read again, even if we are fans of Bradbury’s work?

A strange dis­con­nect emerges when we look at the his­to­ry of Bradbury’s nov­el as a teach­ing tool. Although most high school stu­dents are pre­sent­ed with free­think­ing as an ide­al, and giv­en cau­tion­ary tales of its sup­pres­sion, their own edu­ca­tions are just as often high­ly cir­cum­scribed by adults who fret about the effects of var­i­ous bad influ­ences.

Whether, as a stu­dent, you read the bowd­ler­ized or the “adult” ver­sion of Bradbury’s nov­el, per­haps it’s time to revis­it Fahren­heit 451, par­tic­u­lar­ly now that free­doms of thought, belief, and expres­sion have again come under intense scruti­ny. And in addi­tion to re-read­ing Bradbury’s nov­el, you can lis­ten to the 1971 radio play above. Pro­duced in Van­cou­ver by the CBC (and re-broad­cast in recent years by the Radio Enthu­si­asts of Puget Sound pod­cast), the abridged, one-hour adap­ta­tion by neces­si­ty changes the source mate­r­i­al, though for dra­mat­ic pur­pos­es, not to express­ly soft­en the mes­sage. Ray Brad­bury’s rep­u­ta­tion may have been tamed over the decades. He became late in life an avun­cu­lar sci-fi mas­ter, pri­mar­i­ly known as a writer of books for high school stu­dents. But at one time, his work—and sci­ence fic­tion in general—were so sub­ver­sive that the FBI kept close tabs on them.

If you like the Fahren­heit 451 adap­ta­tion, you can hear many more Brad­bury sto­ries adapt­ed into clas­sic radio plays at our pre­vi­ous post.

Also note: Tim Rob­bins has nar­rat­ed a new, unabridged audio ver­sion of Fahren­heit 451. It’s avail­able via Audible.com. You can get it for free with Audi­ble’s 30-day free tri­al. Get more details on that here.

via SFF

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who Was Afraid of Ray Brad­bury & Sci­ence Fic­tion? The FBI, It Turns Out (1959)

Sci-Fi Leg­end Ray Brad­bury Cre­ates a Vision­ary Plan to Redesign Los Ange­les

Ray Brad­bury: “The Things That You Love Should Be Things That You Do.” “Books Teach Us That”

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Charles Dickens (Channeling Jorge Luis Borges) Created a Fake Library, with 37 Witty Invented Book Titles

in Books, Letters, Literature | November 17th, 2015

dickensshelf

I don’t know about you, but I’ve sort of always asso­ci­at­ed Charles Dick­ens with the kind of humor­less moral­ism and didac­tic sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty that are hall­marks of so much Vic­to­ri­an lit­er­a­ture. That’s prob­a­bly because the work of Dick­ens con­tains no small amount of humor­less moral­ism and didac­tic sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty. But it also con­tains much wit and absur­di­ty, inven­tive char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and rich descrip­tion. While nov­els like the short Hard Times, pub­lished in 1854, can seem more like thin­ly veiled tracts of moral phi­los­o­phy than ful­ly real­ized fic­tions, oth­ers, like the strange and whim­si­cal Pick­wick Papers—Dick­ens’ first—work as fan­ci­ful, light­heart­ed satires. The big, bag­gy nov­els like Great Expec­ta­tions, Bleak House, and A Tale of Two Cities (find in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks) man­age to skill­ful­ly com­bine these two impuls­es with his own twist on the goth­ic, such that Dick­ens’ work is not over­whelmed, as it might be, by ser­mo­niz­ing.

For all of this tidy sum­ma­tion of that giant of Vic­to­ri­an let­ters, one adjec­tive now comes to mind that I would nev­er have pre­vi­ous­ly thought to apply at any time to the writer of A Christ­mas Car­ol: Bor­ge­sian, as in pos­sessed of the scholas­tic wit of 20th cen­tu­ry Argen­tine writer Jorge Luis Borges. I’m not the first to note a resem­blance, but I must say it nev­er would have occurred to me to think of the two names in the same sen­tence were it not for an extra-cur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ty Dick­ens engaged in while out­fit­ting his Lon­don home, Tavi­s­tock House, in 1851. Let­ters of Note’s sis­ter site Lists of Note brings us the fol­low­ing anec­dote:

[Dick­ens] decid­ed to fill two spaces in his new study with book­cas­es con­tain­ing fake books, the wit­ty titles of which he had invent­ed. And so, on Octo­ber 22nd, he wrote to a book­binder named Thomas Robert Eeles and sup­plied him with the fol­low­ing “list of imi­ta­tion book-backs” to be pro­duced.

You can see the complete—completely Borgesian—list below. Borges is of course well known for invent­ing titles of books that have nev­er exist­ed, but seem like they should, in anoth­er dimen­sion some­where. His inven­tion of alter­nate real­i­ties, and pub­li­ca­tions, man­i­fests in most all of his sto­ries, as well as in odd­i­ties like the Book of Imag­i­nary Beings. Like Borges’ made-up books, Dick­ens’ con­tain just the right mix of the self-seri­ous and the ridicu­lous, so as to make them at once plau­si­ble, cryp­tic, exot­ic, and hilarious—both Pick­wick­ian and, indeed, pro­to-Bor­ge­sian.

His­to­ry of a Short Chancery Suit
Cat­a­logue of Stat­ues of the Duke of Welling­ton
Five Min­utes in Chi­na. 3 vols.
Forty Winks at the Pyra­mids. 2 vols.
Aber­nethy on the Con­sti­tu­tion. 2 vols.
Mr. Green’s Over­land Mail. 2 vols.
Cap­tain Cook’s Life of Sav­age. 2 vols.
A Car­pen­ter’s Bench of Bish­ops. 2 vols.
Toot’s Uni­ver­sal Let­ter-Writer. 2 vols.
Orson­’s Art of Eti­quette.
Downeast­er’s Com­plete Cal­cu­la­tor.
His­to­ry of the Mid­dling Ages. 6 vols.
Jon­ah’s Account of the Whale.
Cap­tain Par­ry’s Virtues of Cold Tar.
Kan­t’s Ancient Hum­bugs. 10 vols.
Bow­wow­dom. A Poem.
The Quar­rel­ly Review. 4 vols.
The Gun­pow­der Mag­a­zine. 4 vols.
Steele. By the Author of “Ion.”
The Art of Cut­ting the Teeth.
Matthew’s Nurs­ery Songs. 2 vols.
Pax­ton’s Bloomers. 5 vols.
On the Use of Mer­cury by the Ancient Poets.
Drowsy’s Rec­ol­lec­tions of Noth­ing. 3 vols.
Heavyside’s Con­ver­sa­tions with Nobody. 3 vols.
Com­mon­place Book of the Old­est Inhab­i­tant. 2 vols.
Growler’s Gruffi­ol­o­gy, with Appen­dix. 4 vols.
The Books of Moses and Sons. 2 vols.
Burke (of Edin­burgh) on the Sub­lime and Beau­ti­ful. 2 vols.
Teaz­er’s Com­men­taries.
King Hen­ry the Eighth’s Evi­dences of Chris­tian­i­ty. 5 vols.
Miss Bif­fin on Deport­ment.
Mor­rison’s Pills Progress. 2 vols.
Lady Godi­va on the Horse.
Mun­chausen’s Mod­ern Mir­a­cles. 4 vols.
Richard­son’s Show of Dra­mat­ic Lit­er­a­ture. 12 vols.
Hansard’s Guide to Refresh­ing Sleep. As many vol­umes as pos­si­ble.

As Fla­vor­wire reports, design­er Ann Sap­pen­field cre­at­ed her own fake book­bind­ings with Dick­ens’ titles (see some at the top of the page, cour­tesy of the NYPL). These are part of a New York Pub­lic Library exhib­it called Charles Dick­ens: The Key to Char­ac­ter that ran in 2012–13. You can read Dick­ens orig­i­nal let­ter to Thomas Robert Eeles in The Let­ters of Charles Dick­ens here.

via Lists of Note/Fla­vor­wire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Dick­ens Gave His Cat “Bob” a Sec­ond Life as a Let­ter Open­er

Charles Dick­ens’ Hand-Edit­ed Copy of His Clas­sic Hol­i­day Tale, A Christ­mas Car­ol

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Haruki Murakami Novels Sold in Polish Vending Machines

in Books | November 17th, 2015

murakami vending machine fb

Out with the Coke cans, pota­to chips, Twix bars and oth­er junk foods.

In with the Haru­ki Muraka­mi nov­els.

That’s what hap­pened last year when Muzu, a pub­lish­er in Poland, cre­at­ed three vend­ing machines stocked with copies of Murakami’s Colour­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and the Year of His Pil­grim­age and then placed them in Pol­ish train sta­tions locat­ed in War­saw, Poz­nan, and Wro­claw. It seemed like a nat­ur­al thing to do, see­ing that (notes the fan blog Haru­ki Muraka­mi Stuff) Tsuku­ru Taza­ki, the main char­ac­ter of the nov­el, “likes train sta­tions and works as a train sta­tion design­er for a Tokyo rail­way com­pa­ny.” Let’s cross our fin­gers and hope this is the start of a healthy trend.

via Vin­tage Anchor

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Dream­i­ly Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Japan’s Jazz and Base­ball-Lov­ing Post­mod­ern Nov­el­ist

Pat­ti Smith Reviews Haru­ki Murakami’s New Nov­el, Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

A 56-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Ray Charles, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

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100 Novels All Kids Should Read Before Leaving High School

in Books, Education, K-12, Literature | November 12th, 2015

to-kill-a-mockingbird-book-cover1

Last year, a Slate essay called “Against YA” by Ruth Gra­ham irked thou­sands of read­ers who took offense at her argu­ment that although grown-ups “bran­dish their copies of teen nov­els with pride…. [a]dults should feel embar­rassed about read­ing lit­er­a­ture writ­ten for chil­dren.” Whether we label her arti­cle an instance of sham­ing, trolling, or just the expres­sion of a not-espe­cial­ly con­se­quen­tial, “fud­dy-dud­dy opin­ion,” what it also served to highlight—as so many oth­er thought­ful and not-so-thought­ful online essays have done—is the huge sales num­bers of so-called YA, a lit­er­ary boom that shows no signs of slow­ing. Young adult fic­tion, along with children’s books in gen­er­al, saw dou­ble dig­it growth in 2014, a phe­nom­e­non in part dri­ven by those sup­pos­ed­ly self-infan­tiliz­ing adults Gra­ham faults.

The grown-ups read­ing teen books do so, Gra­ham writes, because “today’s YA, we are con­stant­ly remind­ed, is world­ly and adult-wor­thy.” Maybe, maybe not, but there is anoth­er ques­tion to ask here as well, whol­ly apart from whether the age 30–44 cohort who account for 28 per­cent of YA sales “should” be buy­ing and read­ing YA books. And that ques­tion is: should young adults read Young Adult fic­tion? And what counts as Young Adult fic­tion any­way? A 2012 NPR list of the “100 Best-Ever Teen Nov­els” includes the expect­ed Har­ry Pot­ter and Hunger Games series (at num­bers one and two, respec­tive­ly), as well as more “lit­er­ary,” but still obvi­ous, choic­es like John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars and S.E. Hinton’s clas­sic The Out­siders.

It also includes Dou­glas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Frank Herbert’s Dune, Ursu­la K. Le Guin’s Earth­sea series, and Ray Bradbury’s Fahren­heit 451. It what sense do all of these very dif­fer­ent kinds of books—some very com­plex and chal­leng­ing, some very much less so—qualify as “teen nov­els”? Per­haps some of the fuzzi­ness about qual­i­ty and appro­pri­ate­ness comes from the fact that many “Top-what­ev­er” lists like NPR’s are com­piled by read­ers, of all ages. And enjoy­ment, not edi­fi­ca­tion, usu­al­ly tops a gen­er­al read­er­ship’s list of cri­te­ri­on for “top”-ness. How­ev­er, what would such a list look like if strict­ly com­piled by edu­ca­tors?

You can find out in anoth­er top 100 list: the 100 Fic­tion Books All Chil­dren Should Read Before Leav­ing Sec­ondary School – Accord­ing to 500 Eng­lish Teach­ers (cre­at­ed at the request of Britain’s Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion for the Teach­ing of Eng­lish and TES mag­a­zine). There’s a good bit of crossover with the read­er-cho­sen NPR list; the Har­ry Pot­ter books come in at sixth place. Both lists fea­ture clas­sics like Harp­er Lee’s To Kill a Mock­ing­bird. But the teacher-cho­sen list also includes more “adult” writ­ers like Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, and Toni Mor­ri­son. One teacher quot­ed in an Express arti­cle describes his own cri­te­ria: “It’s always a bal­anc­ing act in the books that teach­ers select. Do you go for some­thing that stu­dents will enjoy and lap up and read, or do you go for some­thing that will help them cut their teeth?”

There seems to be a good bal­ance of both here. You can see the first ten titles below, with links to free online ver­sions where avail­able. The com­plete list of 100 books for teenagers is here.

1 Nine­teen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell (Ama­zon)

2 To Kill A Mock­ing­bird, by Harp­er Lee (free eBook)

3 Ani­mal Farm, by George Orwell (free eBook)

4 Lord Of The Flies, by William Gold­ing (Ama­zon)

5 Of Mice And Men, by John Stein­beck (Ama­zon)

6 The Har­ry Pot­ter series, by J K Rowl­ing (Ama­zon)

7 A Christ­mas Car­ol, by Charles Dick­ens (free eBook)

8 The Catch­er In The Rye, by J D Salinger (Ama­zon)

9 Great Expec­ta­tions, by Charles Dick­ens (free eBook)

10 Pride And Prej­u­dice, by Jane Austen (free eBook)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books

The Best Books of 2012: Lists by The New York Times, NPR, The Guardian and More

74 Essen­tial Books for Your Per­son­al Library: A List Curat­ed by Female Cre­atives

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Sea-Serpents, Vampires, Pirates & More: The Public Domain Review’s Second Book of Essays

in Books | November 12th, 2015

Münster_Thier_2 (2) (1)

The image above is a ver­sion of Sebas­t­ian Münster’s 16th-cen­tu­ry chart of sea mon­sters, star­ring all kinds of fan­tas­ti­cal denizens of the deep: from ship-eat­ing ser­pents and giant lob­sters to some kind of seal-octo­pus hybrid. Fea­tured in the open­ing essay on the his­to­ry of sea ser­pents, the image is one of nine­ty-nine illus­tra­tions to adorn the pages of The Pub­lic Domain Review’s won­der­ful new book of select­ed essays.

That the col­lec­tion should begin with this most elu­sive of snakes is per­haps par­tic­u­lar­ly appro­pri­ate. Rep­re­sent­ing as it does the very idea of ter­ra incog­ni­ta, the sea ser­pent is a fig­ure which echoes on in so many of the essays which fol­low, if we see these “lands unknown” to be not mere­ly geo­graph­i­cal but to refer also to the less­er known realms of knowl­edge. All man­ner of oft-over­looked his­to­ries are explored in the book. We learn of the strange skele­tal tableaux of Fred­erik Ruysch, pay a vis­it to Humphry Davy high on laugh­ing gas, and peruse the pages of the first ever pic­ture book for chil­dren (which includes a won­der­ful table of Latin ani­mal sounds). There’s also fire­works in art, pet­ty pirates on tri­al, brain­wash­ing machines, truth-reveal­ing dis­eases, synes­thet­ic auras, Byron­ic vam­pires, and Charles Darwin’s pho­to­graph col­lec­tion of asy­lum patients. Togeth­er the fif­teen essays chart a won­der­ful­ly curi­ous course through the last five hun­dred years of his­to­ry, tak­ing us on a jour­ney through some of the dark­er, stranger, and alto­geth­er more intrigu­ing cor­ners of the past.

PDRBook2014_Cover2_1000

You can find out more about the book through The Pub­lic Domain Review’s web­site. If you want it before Christ­mas (and we think it’d make an excel­lent present for that his­to­ry-lov­ing rel­a­tive!), then make sure to order by mid­night on Wednes­day 18th Novem­ber. Orders before this date will also ben­e­fit from a spe­cial reduced price.

–Adam Green is the co-founder and edi­tor of The Pub­lic Domain Review.

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Dostoevsky Draws Doodles of Raskolnikov and Other Characters in the Manuscript of Crime and Punishment

in Art, Books, Literature | November 10th, 2015

Raskolnikov Svidrigailov

Like many of us, Russ­ian lit­er­ary great Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky liked to doo­dle when he was dis­tract­ed. He left his hand­i­work in sev­er­al manuscripts—finely shad­ed draw­ings of expres­sive faces and elab­o­rate archi­tec­tur­al fea­tures. But Dostoevsky’s doo­dles were more than just a way to occu­py his mind and hands; they were an inte­gral part of his lit­er­ary method. His nov­el­is­tic imag­i­na­tion, with all of its grand excess­es, was pro­found­ly visu­al, and archi­tec­tur­al.

“Indeed,” writes Dos­to­evsky schol­ar Kon­stan­tin Barsht, “Dos­to­evsky was not con­tent to ‘write’ and ‘take notes’ in the process of cre­ative think­ing.” Instead, in his work “the mean­ing and sig­nif­i­cance of words inter­act rec­i­p­ro­cal­ly with oth­er mean­ings expressed through visu­al images.” Barsht calls it “a method of work spe­cif­ic to the writer.” We’ve shared a few of those man­u­script pages before, includ­ing one with a doo­dle of Shake­speare.

Crime and Punish Doodles

Now we bring you a few more pages of doo­dles from the author of Crime and Pun­ish­ment, a nov­el that, per­haps more so than any of his oth­ers, offers such vivid descrip­tions of its char­ac­ters that I can still clear­ly remem­ber the pic­tures I had of them in my mind the first time I read it in high school.

My visu­al­iza­tions of the angry, des­per­ate stu­dent Raskol­nikov and the sleazy socio­path­ic Svidri­gailov do not exact­ly resem­ble the faces doo­dled at the the top of the post, but that is how their author saw them, at least in this ear­ly, man­u­script stage of the nov­el.

The oth­er faces here may be those of Sonya, police inves­ti­ga­tor Por­firy Petro­vich, recidi­vist alco­holic father Semy­on Marmelodov, and oth­er char­ac­ters in the nov­el, though it’s not clear exact­ly who’s who.

Crime and Punish Doodles 2

Dos­to­evsky had much in com­mon with his nov­el­’s pro­tag­o­nist when he began the nov­el in 1865. Reduced to near-des­ti­tu­tion after gam­bling away his for­tune, the writer was also in des­per­ate straits. The sto­ry, writes lit­er­ary crit­ic Joseph Franks, was “orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived as a long short sto­ry or novel­la to be writ­ten in the first per­son,” like the fever­ish novel­la Notes From the Under­ground. In Dos­to­evsky’s man­u­script note­books, “exten­sive frag­ments of this orig­i­nal work are to be found here intact.”

Franks quotes schol­ar Edward Wasi­olek, who pub­lished a trans­la­tion of the note­books in 1967: “They con­tain draw­ings, jot­tings about prac­ti­cal mat­ters, doo­dling of var­i­ous sorts, cal­cu­la­tions about press­ing expens­es, sketch­es, and ran­dom remarks.” In short, “Dos­to­evsky sim­ply flipped his note­books open any time he wished to write,” or to prac­tice his cal­lig­ra­phy, as he does on many pages.

Crime and Punish Doodles 3

The pages of the Crime and Pun­ish­ment note­books resem­ble all of the man­u­script pages of his nov­els in their orna­men­tal hap­haz­ard­ness. You can see many more exam­ples from nov­els like The Idiot, The Pos­sessed, and A Raw Youth at the Russ­ian site Cul­ture, includ­ing the sketchy self por­trait below, next to a few sums that indi­cate the author’s per­pet­u­al pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with his trou­bled eco­nom­ic affairs.

Dostoevsky Self Portrait

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fyo­dor Dos­to­evsky Draws Elab­o­rate Doo­dles In His Man­u­scripts

Dos­to­evsky Draws a Pic­ture of Shake­speare: A New Dis­cov­ery in an Old Man­u­script

The Dig­i­tal Dos­to­evsky: Down­load Free eBooks & Audio Books of the Russ­ian Novelist’s Major Works

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Horror Legend Christopher Lee Reads Bram Stoker’s Dracula

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, Film, Literature | November 6th, 2015

Did Bram Stoker’s world-famous Drac­u­la character—perhaps the most cul­tur­al­ly unkil­l­able of all hor­ror mon­sters—derive from Irish folk­lore? Search the Gael­ic “Droch-Fhoula” (pro­nounced droc’ola) and, in addi­tion to the req­ui­site met­al bands, you’ll find ref­er­ences to the “Cas­tle of the Blood Vis­age,” to a blood-drink­ing chief­tain named Abhar­tach, and to oth­er pos­si­ble native sources of Irish writer Bram Stok­er’s 1897 nov­el. These Celtic leg­ends, the BBC writes, “may have shaped the sto­ry as much as Euro­pean myths and Goth­ic lit­er­a­ture.”

Despite all this intrigu­ing spec­u­la­tion about Dracula’s Irish ori­gins, the actors play­ing him have come from a vari­ety of places. One recent incar­na­tion, TV series Drac­u­la, did cast an Irish actor, Jonathan Rhys Mey­ers, in the role.

Hun­gar­i­an Bela Lugosi comes clos­est to the fic­tion­al character’s nation­al­i­ty, as well as that of anoth­er, per­haps dubi­ous source, Roman­ian war­lord Vlad the Impaler. Pro­tean Brit Gary Old­man played up the char­ac­ter as Slav­ic aris­to­crat in Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s some­what more faith­ful take. But one too-oft-over­looked por­tray­al by anoth­er Eng­lish actor, Christo­pher Lee, deserves much more atten­tion than it receives.

In ten low-bud­get films made by British exploita­tion stu­dio Ham­mer, Lee por­trayed the mon­strous-yet-seduc­tive blood-suck­ing noble­man as a very prop­er Eng­lish­man with “a cer­tain las­civ­i­ous sex appeal”—begin­ning with 1958’s Hor­ror of Drac­u­la (see a trail­er above) and end­ing with 1973’s The Satan­ic Rites of Drac­u­la. I find Lee’s Drac­u­la so mem­o­rable that I was delight­ed to hear the audio above of him read­ing an adap­ta­tion of the nov­el, in ten parts. The video begins with titles and an estab­lish­ing shot from the Ham­mer films, then segues to images from a 1966 Drac­u­la graph­ic nov­el, the source of the “pret­ty faith­ful” adap­ta­tion by Otto Binder and Craig Ten­nis, for which Lee wrote an intro­duc­tion.

The audio here was also record­ed in 1966 by the book’s edi­tor Russ Jones. Comics blog­ger Steven Thomp­son remarks that “since Drac­u­la is made up of a series of let­ters, jour­nal and diary entries, the writ­ers here log­i­cal­ly take a more straight­for­ward route of telling the tale while main­tain­ing the episod­ic feel quite well.” Rather than the voice of Count Drac­u­la, Lee reads as the nov­el­’s epis­to­lary nar­ra­tor Jonathan Hark­er, and the Drac­u­la in the art­work, drawn by artist Al McWilliams, “bears more than a pass­ing resem­blance here to actor John Car­ra­dine,” a notable Amer­i­can actor who played the char­ac­ter in Uni­ver­sal’s House of Franken­stein and House of Drac­u­la. Nonethe­less, Lee’s voice is enough to con­jure his many excep­tion­al per­for­mances as the pro­to­typ­i­cal vam­pire, a char­ac­ter and con­cept that will like­ly nev­er die.

Schol­ar and writer Bob Cur­ran, a pro­po­nent of the Irish ori­gins of Drac­u­la, argues in his book Vam­pires that leg­ends of undead, blood-drink­ing ghouls are found all over the world, which goes a long way toward explain­ing the endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of Drac­u­la in par­tic­u­lar and vam­pires in gen­er­al. We’ll prob­a­bly see anoth­er actor inher­it the role of Stok­er’s seduc­tive­ly creepy count in the near future. Who­ev­er it is will have to mea­sure him­self against not only the per­for­mances of Lugosi, Car­ra­dine, Old­man, and Mey­ers, but also against the debonair Christo­pher Lee. He would do well, wher­ev­er he comes from, to study Lee’s Drac­u­la films close­ly, and lis­ten to him read the sto­ry in the adap­ta­tion above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Lee (R.I.P.) Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and From “The Fall of the House of Ush­er”

Christo­pher Lee Nar­rates a Beau­ti­ful Ani­ma­tion of Tim Burton’s Poem, Night­mare Before Christ­mas

Watch Nos­fer­atu, the Sem­i­nal Vam­pire Film, Free Online (1922)

Hear Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” Read by the Great Bela Lugosi (1946)

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear All of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia Novels as Free Audio Books

in Audio Books, Books, K-12, Literature, Religion | November 2nd, 2015

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I have not seen the sec­ond two of a promised sev­en films based on the nov­els in C.S. Lewis’ The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia series. But I tend to agree with sev­er­al crit­ics of the first filmed adap­ta­tion, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: “The PG-rat­ed movie feels safe and con­strict­ed,” Peter Tra­vers observed, “in a way the sto­ry nev­er does on the page.” Although Lewis “did noth­ing to hide his devout Chris­tian­i­ty” in his alle­gor­i­cal Nar­nia books for young adults, nor in his grown-up sci-fi fan­ta­sy series, The Space Tril­o­gy, Lewis on the page comes across as a rig­or­ous writer first and a Chris­t­ian apol­o­gist sec­ond. Except, I’d argue, for his work of explic­it­ly pop­ulist, and rather facile, apolo­get­ics, Mere Chris­tian­i­ty (orig­i­nal­ly a series of radio lec­tures), his fic­tion and pop­u­lar non-fic­tion alike present readers—whatever their beliefs—with chal­leng­ing, inven­tive, wit­ty, and mov­ing ways to think about the human con­di­tion.

Lewis’ immer­sion in Euro­pean Medieval and Renais­sance lit­er­a­ture in his day-job role as an Oxford don—and his ecu­meni­cal, almost Jun­gian, approach to lit­er­a­ture generally—gives his fic­tion a seri­ous arche­typ­al depth that most mod­ern reli­gious nov­el­ists lack, mak­ing him, along with fel­low “Inkling” J.R.R. Tolkien, some­thing of a lit­er­ary saint in mod­ern Chris­tian­i­ty. Though it may offend the ortho­dox to say so, Lewis’ nov­els cap­ture a “deep mag­ic” at the heart of all mytho­log­i­cal and lit­er­ary tra­di­tions. And they do so in a way that makes explor­ing heavy, grown-up themes excit­ing for both chil­dren and adults. Though I’ve per­son­al­ly left behind the beliefs that ani­mat­ed my first read­ings of his books, I can still return to The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia and find in them deep mag­ic and mys­tery.

There’s no deny­ing the enor­mous influ­ence these books have had on children’s fan­ta­sy lit­er­a­ture, from Har­ry Pot­ter to Lewis’ athe­ist antag­o­nist Philip Pull­man. I look for­ward to shar­ing his books with my daugh­ter, what­ev­er she ends up mak­ing of their reli­gios­i­ty. I’ve still got my tat­tered paper­back copies, and I’ll glad­ly read them to her before she can tack­le them her­self, but I’m also grate­ful for the com­plete audio record­ings of The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia, avail­able free online and read by Eng­lish child psy­chol­o­gist and author Chris­si Hart. In install­ments of two chap­ters at a time, Hart reads all sev­en of the Nar­nia books, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspi­an, The Voy­age of the Dawn Tread­er, The Sil­ver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew, and The Last Bat­tle.

You can hear the first two chap­ters of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe above, and stream or down­load the remain­ing chap­ters, and the remain­ing six books, at Ancientfaith.com. Although Hart and the Ancient Faith site who host her read­ings clear­ly approach the nov­els from an explic­it­ly Ortho­dox per­spec­tive, I don’t think read­ers need to share their beliefs, or Lewis’, to enjoy and appre­ci­ate the sto­ry­telling mag­ic of The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia.

And it should be not­ed that CS Lewis Pte. Ltd. grant­ed per­mis­sion to put these record­ings online, accord­ing to the Ancient Faith web site. The record­ings are there­fore list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

C.S. Lewis’ Pre­scient 1937 Review of The Hob­bit by J.R.R. Tolkien: It “May Well Prove a Clas­sic”

Watch Hand-Drawn Ani­ma­tions of 7 Sto­ries & Essays by C.S. LewisWatch Hand-Drawn Ani­ma­tions of 7 Sto­ries & Essays by C.S. LewisWatch Hand-Drawn Ani­ma­tions of 7 Sto­ries & Essays by C.S. Lewis

The Only Known Record­ings of C.S. Lewis (1944–1948)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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