The Storyteller

I recently had the great pleasure to listen to the audiobook of Michael Shara's The Killer Angels, a historical novel that tells the story of the battle of Gettysburg. The masterful reading was performed by Stephen Hoye, and American actor with extensive training in Shakespeare - he even worked the Old Vic for many years.

The Killer Angels is an extraordinary book - and extremely influential. It inspired my former classmate Joss Whedon to write "Serenity", and it was the single reason why Ken Burns became fixated on the war between the states.

My eyesight has been deteriorating as I slide into middle-age, and I am discovering the joy of audiobooks, which make long car drives quite pleasurable. I haven't found any non-fiction books that play as well on audio as fiction - and there is an entire range of quality in the fiction audio book genre. Jim Dale's has won a great deal of renown for his readings of the Harry Potter books - material fitting for a scenery chewing stage actor with a lot of range.

But historical novels are a different animal. The drama and anguish of real history is not suited to Broadway theatrics that actors like Jim Dale and Patrick Stewart traffic in. Hoye's reading of The Killer Angels offers subtle characterizations - just enough to distinguish the characters - but not straying too far from the actor's own voice and pitch. While Hoye demonstrates a remarkable facility with accents - Virginian southern, Irish, British, Down-east Mainer - they never overwhelm the novelistic narrative - or attempt to turn the novel into a "drama". He doesn't play the characters broadly, but rather maintains a consistent voice - perhaps he consciously decided to defer to the author's voice and intent, and empty out his quiver of actorly tricks.

I've always steered clear of the Civil War - no sympathy for Southern Honor, and the lack of visual reference points (except of course, Mathew Brady's photos) never gave the material a foothold in my visually-oriented brain. And fat-assed civil-war re-enactors are up there with tea-baggers and Sarah Palin fans as people most worthy of ridicule. I never even bothered to check out the Ken Burns documentary. I think that may change now. Perhaps you need to be middle-aged to appreciate the resonances of the Civil War - and have had personal experience with disaster, folly, ego, loss, love, death and idealism. Which is not to say there is any danger of me donning a uniform and participating in a re-enactment of Pickett's charge, but nevertheless I can see the attraction.