I am uncomplacented

[firecat]

If you ever find yourself getting complacent and starting to think that the world makes some kind of sense, just consider this: There is an audio edition of Ursula K. Le Guin's The A Wizard of Earthsea...
...read by Harlan Ellison.

He doesn't do a horrible job or anything, but his narration style is very dramatic, and it's hard for me to imagine a narrator less well suited to Le Guin's writing style.

I'm really curious how the collaboration came about. (She must have approved it, since she reads the first and last paragraph of the book.)

Maybe they did it as some kind of in-joke on the book's theme... (the main character discovers, runs from, and then hunts his [Jungian-style] Shadow).

Comments

[opus119.livejournal.com]

I will definitely skip that. It would probably destroy the warm feeling I have about that book.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

That sounds remarkably strange.

(I'm also surprised by how much it matters to me that the title uses the indefinite article; it just doesn't sound like Le Guin with "the"!)

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

Mr. E responds, "What? She's a woman writer...he's into women..."

[firecat]

Ack, you're right! It was really late when I wrote that journal entry...

[firecat]

That's not funny!

:)

[firecat]

If you're hankering to listen to the book, there is at least one more audio edition, with a different narrator. I found it in the Peninsula Library System. I don't know how good the narrator is, but in the audible.com reviews for the HE edition some people praised it.

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

Huh, I should listen to that sometime.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

It's interesting to me how different it makes the title feel (and how 'A' is the right title). It's similar to how I feel about The Origin of Species - the common mistake Origin of The Species is a different book Darwin would never have written.