Unnameable, But in No Way Unlistenable
05/19/2006
The Unnameable: Tales of
Horror from the Pen of H. P. Lovecraft, Master of the Macabre (Also known as
The Unnameable, Four Tales by H. P. Lovecraft, 1890-1937: Legendary Master of
the Macabre). Spoken-Word Audiobook CD with music. Read by David Cade. (ISBN
# 0-9552090-0-5)
Macabre, phantasmagoric, surreal, enigmatic, disturbing, unsettling, bizarre, grotesque, dystopian, eerie, haunting, evanescent—even insane are words that rush through my mind as I listened to Four Tales by H.P. Lovecraft, read by David Cade, with music composed by Roberto Barzini (www.davidcade.net). This audio CD includes “The Book,” “The Music of Erich Zann,” “The Cats of Ulthar,” and “The Unnameable.”
Commercially produced books on audiocassette and CD are a relatively new phenomenon for sighted people, but I have enjoyed recorded books since the early 1970s. As a child, I learned of the Talking Book Program offered by the Library of Congress-sponsored National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (www.loc.gov/nls) from a social worker. My three decades-long familiarity with the spoken word recordings of NLS gives me a unique perspective on audio products and styles of narration.
To me, listening to talking book narrators is similar to a theatrical experience for a sighted person, due to the various recording styles of readers. For example, I have noticed that some audio book readers do not favor a highly dramatic interpretation. Rather than develop a separate voice for every character in a novel, they generate one standard masculine voice for male characters, a feminine one for women, and a generic reading voice for any text not part of a dialog. This technique simplifies the listener’s job by streamlining the auditory experience. Though not as common, other narrators have developed a gallery of voices and accents for a given novel’s characters. This literally brings the novel to life—in the theater of the mind.
In general, commercially-produced audio, or at least what I have heard, tends more to the latter style. Narrators bring a richly realized esthetic to the reading: accents, diverse voices, savoring the words as much as speaking them. Audio books can also have musical touches, to embellish the mood, and these are often further enhanced by additional sound effects relevant to the plot, such as wind noises, weather sounds, steps fading into the distance, etc.
For the reading of this CD, actor David Cade brings a conductor’s persona to the telling of these tales. They are treated more like atmospheric tone poems. Cade’s voice itself becomes an instrument that creates a glissando over alliterative phrases, coming to a crescendo on certain words after building momentum. His voice and the music become a pas de deux of sound, a forceful duet hurling the listener through Lovecraft’s narratives. And what exactly are these narratives about? For starters, the deceptively fairy tale like “The Cats of Ulthar” relates in tongue-in-cheek fashion a tale of cats taking their revenge on cruel humans by eating them alive. “The Music of Erich Zann” is a tale where an aging violinist produces sinister yet wonderful music late at night, music which hypnotizes an unnamed narrator and causes him to make a disturbing discovery. And the title story, “The Unnameable,” a writer of weird fiction and a companion investigate a cemetery near an old, dilapidated house in Arkham, Massachusetts. As the two sit upon a weathered tomb, they share the tale of an indescribable entity—which, unfortunately, ultimately attacks them. Although they survive, they awaken at a hospital, with strange lacerations and shapes on their backs.
I kept thinking of Poe while listening to this CD. These stories were told through an interlocutor, often educated, who describes a series of events that leaves the reader wondering if, in the words of the Lovecraft entry in Supernatural Fiction Writers, “The protagonist must endure his horrors utterly alone, unsure of his sanity
and deeply shaken by the implications of what happens to him…. [Lovecraft’s] protagonist, rationalizing desperately to avoid facing some ominous truth threatening to break through, must finally face that truth and its implication…. humankind has a really motelike insignificance in the scheme of things.”
Anyone wishing to hear David's review can visit his blog.