January 31, 2005

Morris' Folly Better in Audio

Todd Zywicki enjoyed the abridged audio version of Edmund Morris' dissapointing biography of Ronald Reagan.

First, it cuts out all of Edmund Morris's narcissistic ruminations on himself. Seriously, what was Morris thinking about? I supposed he was trying to make some sort of point about how any biography reflects the life experience and perspective of the profiler, not just the subject. Ok, ok we get it--mention it in the preface and move on. Anyway, the abridged book-on-tape version has a narrator who briefly describes these interludes and then moves on.

Second, Dutch does something that has become one of my favorite things for books-on-tape--it contains actual clips from Reagan's speeches, including many things I had never heard before. I love this aspect of the technology of books-on-tape. Why block quote a speech when you can insert an actual audio excerpt? I suspect that this is the wave of the future, which I really like. Just as a movie is different from a play, a book-on-tape is a different media from a book.