Audiobooks and the Sound of My Father's Voice

Even now with Father's Day in the rearview mirror, my dad remains on my mind. He pops up there most days in some fashion—in the ninth inning of a Cubs game, when his and my beloved Steelers play, when the final round of the U.S. Open is underway on Dad's Day, as it always is. When I run the mower on the lawn, Dad invariably comes to me. He taught me to cut the grass in strips, back and forth, and then the next time to go the opposite way. "It helps the grass grow better," he said. Don't know if that's really true, but I do it anyway. Always have. 

This Father's Day, my younger son Graham wanted to make me something in his wood shop. My father's DNA was passed to him. Dad was good with his hands. He made furniture and was once, when he was a young man, a carpenter who worked building homes. Graham makes wooden pens, bottle openers, wine bottle stoppers, and men's hand razors. That's what he wanted to make me, a razor of rosewood, and he wanted to do it with me there as he turned the wood on his lathe. He even let me try it. "I want it to be something we made together," he said. 

Left to right: My father, my great grandfather,
my grandfather, and me as a boy. 

Watching Graham work, I could see my father standing there, smiling. He would have been over the moon to have seen his grandson working with his hands, sawdust flying, crafting wood into a work of art. I could hear his voice, saying, "Graham, that is beautiful work." 

I miss my father. And the one thing I miss most is his voice, hearing him laugh, tell a joke, teach me something about lawn care, groan at the television as the leader at the U.S. Open misses a birdie putt. 

A couple of weeks ago, I was reading about how author Michael Lewis will be offering some of his work through Audible only—audiobook only. Not print. No book. No ebook. Voice only. There was some criticism of this approach. Authors scolded him for abandoning the printed word. I think that's a bit harsh. He's only celebrating a new delivery platform. Nothing wrong with that. Audiobooks still lag far behind print or even ebooks. But it's really not about the sales aspect, I believe. It's about the voice. 

Storytelling began with tales told through speech, not print, not pantings on cave walls, but with verbal communication, not formal language as we know it, but rather grunts or snarls. Still, the stories were communicated through the human voice, and there is no reason why that process, through the modern-day audiobook, shouldn't be continued and celebrated. I'm considering a new project in a year or so that may be offered as an audiobook only because I believe in the human voice—its nuanced tellings, its emotional shades of expression—delicate story elements that could never be duplicated in print. 

Working on audiobook of the book of essays
There's a Hamster in the Dashboard

What I would give to hear the voice of my father tell a story, his expressive baritone working its way through setting, dialogue, character building. My father was a good storyteller. He was part Irish, so that my have something to do with it, right? But Irish or not, the human voice gives us something we could never experience in print. Yes, I love reading. I love writing. I love beautiful prose. But telling a story, voice only, may be the most primal, and at the same time, the most natural way of sharing our stories. 

I think Dad would agree

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