If you've read Dune... conversations?

[asterroc]

I am currently listening to an unabridged audiobook¹ of Frank Herbert's Dune with a full cast doing the different characters. I am wondering about the editorial/production choice to have a full cast, and about the claim of unabridged.

The conversations as read have very little "Paul said," "Jessica replied" sort of commentary. They tend to be only what the individual people actually said. For example, if Jessica were and Paul were talking about his homework over breakfast, and Leto walked in in the middle of it...

"So did you finish your homework last night?"
"Very quickly, it was just algebra."
"And what did you learn from it?"
"If you drop a book from the top of a building, its motion is governed by a quadratic equation."
"That isn't what I was taught, since you also have to take air friction into account."
"But you can simplify the equations if you make the assumption that there isn't any air friction."
"And we haven't gotten up to air friction yet."²

In the audio book, since there are three different readers for the lines said by Paul, Jessica, and Leto, it is obvious who said what, but there aren't any "Leto walked into the conversation and commented that..." that in a print version of the book would indicate who said what in a long exchange, or if three people are involved in the conversation. Is this lack of "Paul said" actually in the original text, or was there an editorial decision to remove those? If the original text did not include any "Paul said"s, that would explain the production choice to have a cast.

And while I'm asking, is there a name for doing "Paul said"s, or for not doing them?

¹The production is copyright 2007 Audio Renaissance, and narrated by a cast listed on Audible.com as Scott Brick, Orlagh Cassidy, Euan Morton,and Simon Vance, but possibly including more.
²In case you're curious, my intent here was for the speakers to be JPJPLJP, though the last L and J could be swapped and still have it make sense.

Comments

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

I don't have my copy with me, so I don't remember if that's consistent with the book or not.

Although, you know, I'd hope that if it truly is an "unabridged" version that it would be word-for-word the same text.

I do recall that there were a fair number of lines that were thought rather than spoken. How are they dealing with that?

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Things that are thought generally have contextual cues, "Paul thought to himself," "mused Paul." Even so, I think those are usually done by the person who's doing the narration, rather than the person doing Paul, for example. Audible lists four voice actors/narrators, and I can identify that the narrator, Paul, and Jessica are different people, but I'm not clear if Leto is the same as the narrator, though I'm pretty sure a bunch of the bit characters (lieutenant #3, etc.) who are all done by the narrator person.

[marquiswildbill.livejournal.com]

I can't find my copy offhand and I don't remember.

[datan0de.livejournal.com]

I read Dune about 25 years ago, so I'm af, raid I can't say one way the another. However, I'd LOVE to know which performance of Dune you're listening to and what you think of it! Like the above comment though, I remember that a LOT of the book focused on what people we're thinking, rather than what was actually spoken.

If your audiobook is unabridged and well done, please let me know. femetal is always looking for a good audiobook!

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Footnote 1 above is everything that Audible.com tells me about that reading at a quick glance. If that's not enough for femetal to find it, let me know and I can see if Audible has more info.

What I get on Audible is generally good quality, with Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver being the one exception - they abridged that one with phrases of "the pages 145-167 can be summarized as follows...". Too bad Audible doesn't have a convenient way to share lists. I also read a lot of audiobooks through my library system's online digital catalog.

I just read "The Windup Girl" through Audible, which I think you recommended. If that was you or if you read it anyway, I've got a question on that one too.

[freakylynx.livejournal.com]

Been awhile since I've read the books but I do remember a number of conversations where I had to re-read them to make sure I knew who was saying what :P

[rosefox]

And while I'm asking, is there a name for doing "Paul said"s, or for not doing them?

They're called dialogue tags.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :)

[femetal.livejournal.com]

Just flipping through my copy, it looks like there are several two-party conversations that alternate back and forth for a page or more without any dialogue tags. It also looks like any conversations with more than two participants rely heavily on dialogue tags to avoid ambiguity (almost every line has "she said", "Paul said", etc)

I'd think that it's safe to drop any dialogue tags which have no other information when producing a "full cast recording", because the tags actually make the material far more cumbersome in that case. However, in cases where the tags give away moods, tone, actions, etc, it seems important to me that they be included for an "unabridged" label to be accurate. Of course, from an entirely purist standpoint, no "unabridged" title should have a single word omitted, but as a purist, I wouldn't accept a full-cast recording anyway, because the actors have too much influence over interpretation of tone. This is one of the reasons I love author-read material, though most authors make *very* poor readers (Scott Sigler being an exception.)

Also, I, too, was bothered by the treatment that Quicksilver received, though I never read the original, so perhaps the omission is justified, provided it doesn't claim to be unabridged (I try to avoid abridged titles, but I might have bought this one before I realized that it was.) There are some portions of some books that, while I'll read the book over and over, I will skip certain sections because I can't bear to slog through them another time. (Atlas Shrugged is the prime example.)

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

It's also possible that the dialogue tags are there, but I'm not noticing them. I'll try and pay closer attention.

I've read quite a few of Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker series in audiobook format. I don't have the specific production/edition info handy at work, but these tended to have one man and one woman narrator - if the chapter was about Alvin the man would read it, and if the chapter was about Penny the woman would read it. Sometimes when a chapter, especially a climactic one, featured both, the two narrators would take turns reading the text, but they did maintain the dialogue tags, which felt a bit awkward to me, but remained true to the text.

Since I bought Quicksilver through Audible, I lodged a complaint and they refunded my credits. That book was just impossible for me to read in the abridged audiobook format. There has only been one other book that I found the recording to be impossible to finish: the Libravox recording of Frankenstein, where the reader for the middle third apparently had dyslexia. I also did not finish the Libravox recording of Moby Dick, but that was not the fault of the recording; even in audiobook format it was too boring to finish.

FWIW I've read both Snowcrash and Ananthem in audiobook format. The Snowcrash edition I read was on cassette tapes and I didn't even realize was abridged until I read the print version. The abridged version selectively abridged the mysticism of the book, making it flow very well, but losing an important aspect of the original novel. Anathem from Audible was unabridged, and embellished the original work with polyphonic chants at the start of each chapter, which I greatly enjoyed. I read it twice, partially due to the complexity of the work.

[spazzy444.livejournal.com]

Could you list some of the audiobooks you enjoyed lately. I'm going through them too quickly and have to rely heavily on other's suggestions. I often think some of the best books I've read were word-of-mouth suggestions.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I just finished "The Windup Girl" by Bagliaducci or something like that. Pretty interesting, but not awesome.

As mentioned above, a while ago I read "Anathem" Neal Stephenson and I really enjoyed it. "The Time Traveler's Wife" also was an excellent audiobook, but I think you said you read that already in print. "Liar" was a good YA book. "Idlewild" by Nick Sagan was *excellent*! Anything by Orson Scott Card is good, and I've read a number of the newer Pern (Anne McCaffrey and Todd McCaffrey) novels in audio format.

[allandaros.livejournal.com]

Well, it looks like folks have beaten me to the Dune punch, alas! I'm curious to hear what you think; Dune is one of my Very Favorite Books and I love discussing it.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I'm reading it because you told me to. :) I think I may have read it in the past, a lot of it seems familiar to me. I get occasional flashes of feminist critique of it (characters are male by default, with female added only when it makes a difference), but I know that in the context of its time it was progressive to have Jessica be so powerful and to have a whole order of powerful women politicians. I'll analyze more when I'm done, and remind me if I don't.

[sildra.livejournal.com]

Dune's portrayal of women really bothered me when I read it, and I think it may have been one of the major reasons I didn't like the book. I won't elaborate because 1) I read it when I was 14, which was quite a long time ago, and 2) I don't know if you've gotten to the parts I'm thinking of yet. It is a fairly common criticism of the book, and I'm told it gets worse as the series progresses (although I had no desire to continue after the first book).

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Considering your and freakylynx's conflicting comments about the rest of the series, I am now fascinated.

[sildra.livejournal.com]

Well, mine is based only on what friends have told me over the years...

[freakylynx.livejournal.com]

I'd be curious to see how you feel about the later books when the Bene Gesserit have much more significant roles (they take less and less the role of villain as the series goes on) and especially when they start dealing with the Honored Matres.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Considering your and sildra's conflicting comments about the rest of the series, I am now fascinated.