The wonderful Daniel / Great Plains made this superb video tutorial explaining LibriVox to the uninitiated:
[Link].
More to come, we hope. Thanks Daniel.
One of the oddities in the LibriVox catalog is our recording of James Joyce’s Ulysses. It gets not-infrequent complaints, well-deserved I suppose if a listener is expecting, oh, an audiobook of James Joyce’s Ulysses. While some of the chapters of that book are read straight up, it was an early project where “creative interpretations” were encouraged, and there are some strange chapters in there. The first chapter, one I participated in, seems to stop many listeners in their tracks.
The recorders of chapter one have been called: fools, jerks, jocks, idiots, criminals and worse; the recording has been called: an insult to Joyce, an insult to listeners, an insult to literature, a travesty, a hoax, a bad joke, and embarrassing, among other things. One listener suggested that his dog would do a better job of making the recording.
Of course I tell every complainant that we’ll put up alternate versions along with the originals if they wish to record it for us, as is standard LibriVox policy; so far no one has produced another recording for us.
Still I thought it worthwhile to give a bit of context to our version of Ulysses.
LibriVox started in late August 2005, really got rolling in September 2005; by the end of October 05, we’d completed eight (yes, 8) books: Conrad’s Secret Agent; Frank L Baum’s Road to Oz; Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground; Washington Irving’s Old Christmas, Henry James’ International Episode (both requests from the Internet Archive), Call of the Wild, Frankenstein, and PG Wodehouse’s Psmith in the City. All reasonable, approachable, easy books. And relatively short.
And so when I proposed Ulysses as a book we should tackle, in early November 2005, just two months and change after LibriVox came into being … there was something of a gasp in our little (at the time) community of free-public-domain-audiobook makers … Ulysses? … Joyce’s Ulysses? Yikes. We were only figuring out how to manage more than a handful of projects at the time. We were just a bunch of strangers who thought it would be fun to make free audiobooks, and we were cobbling together a way to get it done by anyone in the world who wanted to help out. But: Ulysses?
In the spirit of taking on impossible tasks (our objective, after all, is to record every public domain text in the universe and give the audiobooks away for free), we jumped in. Ulysses project start date: November 8, 2005; finish date: June 16, 2007 (19 months later).
Because Ulysses seemed like such a crazy project, we added some special rules to go along with the recording of this, probably the most intimidating book in the English language:
1.editing allowed but not required … you can record it as is. bad sound, backround noise, whatever, will add to the experience, I *think* JJ would approve
2. extra points for recording in a pub or public place (on the street is good)
3. bonus points if you record in dublin
4. you are encouraged to get others to help you record your chapter
5. more extra points for getting several people to record with you in a pub.
6. square those points if those other people are strangers
7. Target completion date: midnight, June 14 (2006) [actual completion: June 16, 2007]
[You can see the forum discussions from the project thread when it was launched].
And with that set of special guidelines, off we went, with little regard for anything except trying to make a free audio version of Ulysses, or at least something like that. This project was and is truly different than anything else LibriVox did – because we were so liberal in approach to the text. But to me, anyway, it paralleled the madness of LibriVox itself. We were driven not by thoughts of who might listen, but rather by the wonderful craziness of the idea of getting a bunch of amateurs to try to record the darned thing; and that crazy idea was translated, I can report, into wonderful craziness on the evening of the recording of Chapter One of Ulysses, at my house. An indescribable night of art and performance and bacchanalia, at the end of which there was an audio document, an mp3. It would take a year-and-a-half before the rest of the chapters would be finished, and published. Would anyone listen? Who knew? Who cared? [I can’t remember what the total downloads we’d had in those first couple of months of LibriVox, but it couldn’t have been more than a few hundred, possibly a few thousand].
As for the other chapters of our Ulysses, there is so much variety in that audiobook: from the chaotic and impromptu, to the straight, to the ambitiously artistic (see: Chapter 15f [mp3]) and the abstract (see: Chapter 18 [mp3]).
The point with LibriVox in the early days (and, I would argue, still) was just to make these recordings, and to keep making them, to encourage more people to make, and give away, recordings of books they cared about, until we’d finished recording all the books there were to record. We just hoped that someone somewhere might find some use for some of these audiobooks at some point. Our focus though has always been on the readers, the volunteers, the people making recordings – they are our true constituents; that the rest of the world gets a library of free audiobooks has always seemed to me to be a wonderful fringe benefit of our true work, which is helping people make and give away recordings of texts they love.
And of course, we’ve always had the following policy: if you do not like any of our recordings, please record an alternate version for us and we’ll post it along with the first.
Still, knowing that Ulysses is a strange beast, our catalog page states the following:
NOTE: Because of the nature of this project, there was a bending of usual LibriVox procedures: pub-like background noise was encouraged, as well as creative group readings; and no editing was required, so in places there may be some accidental variation from the original text. Listener be warned!
So, if you find yourself listening to our recording of Ulysses & agreeing with our previous correspondents who think we are insulting poor James Joyce’s memory by allowing such an audiobook to exist, here are some practical responses:
So, perhaps you won’t like our recording of Ulysses. Or, perhaps you might pour yourself one of your favourite beverages, and sit down to listen to, and enjoy a chaotic performance of Joyce’s chaotic work.
But the thing we wish, more than anything else, is that you would make a recording for us: of Ulysses, or any other public domain text that you love dearly, and think ought to be available in audio format to the whole world, for free.
As we approach the 91st anniversary of the Armistice that ended major hostilities in the First World War, this week’s picks are in remembrance of all those who served in the defence of their countries.
LibriVox recordings are Public Domain in the USA. Some of these works may not be in the Public Domain in countries where copyright extends for a period of 50-70 years after the author’s death. Please check copyright laws in your own country before downloading, otherwise you may be violating copyright laws.
We have released two new audiobooks this week: A School History of the Great War, which includes European history leading up to the war and reasons for America’s eventual entry into the war, and Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front 1914-1915, a most moving account of a British nurse’s experiences during the first year of World War One.
In some of our weekly poetry projects, where a particular poem is read by a variety of readers, you will find works by some of the most distinguished war poets:
During the week commencing November 8th, why not come and join us in making your own recording of The Soldier by Rupert Brooke?
There is a rich variety of books written about the First World War. Here are some suggestions:
Two books by James Norman Hall: High Adventure A Narrative of Air Fighting in France and Kitchener’s Mob Adventures of an American in the British Army.
Four Weeks in the Trenches by Fritz Kreisler, the famed violinist’s account of his service on the Russian Front.
Canada’s Hundred Days: With the Canadian Corps from Amiens to Mons, Aug. 8 – Nov. 11, 1918. Part One. Amiens by John Frederick Livesay.
The Escape of a Princess Pat by George Pearson, an account of the capture, imprisonment and final escape of Corporal Edwards, of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry.
Brieven van den nutteloozen toeschouwer, a series of newspaper columns in Dutch, written by well-known Dutch author Louis Couperus in 1914, during the first weeks of World War I.
In the Field (1914-1915) by Marcel Dupont, “a modest Lieutenant of Chasseurs”.
Over the Top by Arthur Empey, an account of the horror of trench warfare. As a little light relief, this also includes Empey’s popular “Tommy’s Dictionary of the Trenches” which humorously demystifies the slang used by the British soldier.
Observations of an Orderly by Ward Muir, who brings us into the heart of an English war hospital, describing scenes of cleanliness, triumph, order and sadness.
There are also a number of interesting items in Short Works Collections, including:
Remember, remember your files in November!
All those sections that people forgot.
So please get recording, it’s very rewarding.
Can you think of a reason why not?
It’s that time again when we look at books that need a final push to get them into the catalogue. All these projects need you. Let’s see how many books we can catalogue in November! Please sign up in the project threads.
Readers: please check your outstanding claims (click on your name in the Magic Window of a project you have volunteered for).
BCs: please see this special post just for you – to help get stalled projects going again!