Moving forward...

Digging through old writing to get it into the archives, I came across this piece I did back in 1999, looking for Carlos Salinas in Ireland.

On the day I flew into London, the news of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet had been pushed to The Guardian’s eighth page. Hospitalized with a stomachache while his lawyers appealed a British court’s decision, a weakened Pinochet appeared to be stalling his inevitable extradition to Spain, where he would face charges of torture and other violations of human rights. London was a layover on my way to Ireland, where another former Latin American head of state was reported to be hiding out. I was determined to use some of my time there to track down Carlos Salinas de Gortari, president of Mexico from 1988 to 1994....

I am writing about Librivox, an online community of volunteers who read & record public domain books, then post the podcasts for free -- I was in Montreal 2 weeks ago to meet the founder, Hugh McGuire, a guy who is as pleasant in person as he is a mean ass rugby player.

Librivox just celebrated their one-year anniversary, for which they put together a celebratory recording, which you can find here. There are program notes here.

The recording features something close to my heart: bloopers and outtakes. I haven't listened to it yet but will.

What you're reading is a blog post by a writer noting a blog post by a blogger on a conversation between the blogger and the writer.

The Wired writer, Michael Erard, asked me why I like LibriVox, given that the recordings are of a quality that a commercial outfit such as Audible could fairly characterize as amateurish. It was a great question, and one I hadn't really considered. I realized that part of what I cherish is that these recordings aren't commercial products. They're pure expressions of a love of literature, and a desire to share that love.

Michael then made an observation that I think is exactly right. LibriVox, he suggested, taps a deep well of emotion. For those of us who were read to as children, and who have in turn read to our own children, there's just something special about reading aloud.

This past winter, while tramping through the snow, Gordon Mackenzie, Kristen McQuillen, Jean O'Sullivan, and Miette brought one of my childhood memories to life: Jack London's Call of the Wild. I would never have made time to revisit that book if it meant carving out a couple of hours of reading time. But on a winter hike it was the perfect companion.

One slice of the book that's getting cut:

Each period had its own standards for what made a good speaker. The linguist Konrad Kuiper, who studied the speech styles of auctioneers and sportscasters in Smooth Talkers, defines the good speaker according to his or her connection to their communities. People “who are the best speakers, the most fluent, the most impressive, the ones held in highest regard,” Kuiper wrote, “are those who command a wide range of language resources and use them creatively.” Good speakers master the language their community gives them to use. If the community tells jokes, they tell jokes. If the community quotes holy texts, they quote holy texts. And when the community hears their language and their history reflected in the speakers’ and talkers’ choices, they accept them. The people who speak well are the ones who have crystallized, in words, what it means to belong to that group of people in that place and time.

I like Kuiper’s definition because it can be applied to other historical periods, even other cultures, and to kinds of verbal art, like story-telling or preaching, not just public speaking. It just as effectively characterizes the good talker, the raconteur, the person who entertains you at the bar and the dinner table. Along with the cooked traditions of public speaking (such as the Toastmasters) come raw ones: the spontaneous, unrehearsed verbal displays by Quakers, speakers in tongues, Beat poets, rappers, and radio talk show hosts. This definition can be applied to conversations, too. In Western societies, for instance, people usually operate by the principle that you should contribute just the right amount of information to a conversation. No more, no less.

1. The explanation wasn't needed.
2. It was a distraction from the narrative.
3. To be honest, I was never entirely comfortable with the rule-bound conception of the good speaker that Kuiper's definition implies, at the same time it offers ambiguity: what does "creatively" mean, exactly? On the other hand, I do like the way it's bigger than rhetoric's usual fetish for the audience -- in rhetorical terms, pathos is usually conceived as giving the audience what they want, whereas Kuiper's definition includes what is wantable, that is, what is available to want.

OK, so this is making me think these paragraphs shouldn't go. After all, I included it int he first place because I wanted another to to define the "good speaker" in a way that was a) not focused on delivery (eg., glibness) b) rooted in/trapped in situation. It succedds with both of those...

I'm officially not convinced. But I'm posting this anyway.

I'm a sucker for revisualizations of the countries in the world like this project.

Worldmapper maps the world according to dozens of variables; the maps are downloadable--and as posters.

To make a long story short, the story I was writing about Librivox for Wired was killed...to read the story in its full depth and sprawl, look for an online journal, Audience 2.0, making its debut September 9. Somehow I was alert enough on a Saturday morning to find the project, and somehow Mike Pick was alert enough to accept my contribution, all before 11 a.m., then write that "Michael Erard is a veteran journalist of every publication you ever felt worth reading."

My essay will be an exodus narrative, or Freedom After Travails in Slavery, Then a Long Difficult Journey Related, In Which The Land of Milk and Honey Is Glimpsed.

UPDATE: Sept. 9 is the launch date, so see everything at www.audience2.org.