mandarine

I have just finished ‘reading’ Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn in three days, by way of an mp3 audio-book freely dowloaded from loudlit.org. I reckon I enjoyed it mightily good, I did. I was a little bothered at first with the southerner accent the narrator chose to use, and with the way he made the runaway slave Jim sound a bit like Jar-Jar Binks. But by and by I got used to it, and although I still suspect those accents were somewhat fake (like Glenn Close’s and Liv Tyler’s in Altman’s Cookie’s Fortune — which is one of my most favouritest movies), they blended in the landscape and contributed to the whole atmosphere. I am generally not a fan of linear scenarios, but in this case, the linear narration was perfectly suited to the linear flow of the Mississippi river.

And now a few quotes. One of the innumerable passages that made me laugh out loud:

“Looky here, Jim; does a cat talk like we do?”

“No, a cat don’t.”

“Well, does a cow?”

“No, a cow don’t, nuther.”

“Does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?”

“No, dey don’t.”

“It’s natural and right for ‘em to talk different from each other, ain’t it?”

“Course.”

“And ain’t it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different from US?”

“Why, mos’ sholy it is.”

“Well, then, why ain’t it natural and right for a FRENCHMAN to talk different from us? You answer me that.”

“Is a cat a man, Huck?”

“No.”

“Well, den, dey ain’t no sense in a cat talkin’ like a man. Is a cow a man?–er is a cow a cat?”

“No, she ain’t either of them.”

“Well, den, she ain’t got no business to talk like either one er the yuther of ‘em. Is a Frenchman a man?”

“Yes.”

“WELL, den! Dad blame it, why doan’ he TALK like a man? You answer me DAT!”

I see it warn’t no use wasting words–you can’t learn a nigger to argue. So I quit.

And one that represents the whole spirit of the book:

I went to sleep, and Jim didn’t call me when it was my turn. He often done that. When I waked up just at daybreak he was sitting there with his head down betwixt his knees, moaning and mourning to himself. I didn’t take notice nor let on. I knowed what it was about. He was thinking about his wife and his children, away up yonder, and he was low and homesick; because he hadn’t ever been away from home before in his life; and I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their’n. It don’t seem natural, but I reckon it’s so.

And about audio-books: they are really a revolution. Audio-books abolish stupid jobs and wasted time. I used to think ironing was the vainest activity on Earth. Well, I have changed my mind: I can read Charles Dickens or Jane Austen while I iron. Cooking, gardening, commuting, lying sick in bed, waiting for delayed airplanes, fishing: there is hardly any way of wasting one’s time that resists the power of audio-books. If I was a student now, I’d choose a very dull evening job that requires neither concentration nor vocal interaction, and I’d listen to whatever mp3 courses I could find: quantum mechanics, particle physics, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, mathematics. I am sure that this way of learning would be perfectly complementary with the more academic written tradition.

And such a way of reading or learning while working is now accessible to cleaning ladies, grape-pickers, assembly line workers, truck drivers, monks: it will never be too late to become a student anymore.

Next up (still an audio-book): A Tale Of Two Cities.

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