Producers Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman will work together with documentarian Ken Burns to curate an audiobook collection for Audible called Playtone.
The series is named after the three creators’ film and television production company, featuring a wide range of books–you can see the complete list of titles below. The series will include Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried narrated by Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston. Check it out:
Other books in the Playtone line are the classic war memoirs With the Old Breed by E.B. Sledge and Helmet for my Pillow by Robert Leckie. These two memoirs, which inspired Playtone’s award-winning HBO miniseries The Pacific, are narrated by the actors who portrayed Sledge and Leckie in the series, Joseph Mazzello and James Badge Dale, and both feature introductions by Hanks. Finally, celebrated documentarian Burns (The Civil War, The Dust Bowl) has handpicked a selection of audiobooks covering the past 150 years of American history that has inspired his own work, personally recording introductions to each.
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Yes, you read that correctly. Today I take back the Man Cave.
Maybe I'll do some writing later. In the Man Cave. Ah, that's the stuff.
One of my favorite books--top five (seriously)--is Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. If you're familiar, skip ahead. If not, well, it's a collection of stories (sort of) and a novel (sort of). O'Brien served in the military during that awful tragedy in Vietnam, and The Things They Carried follows a platoon through combat, coming home, and even fictional Tim's experience before the war. Or is it fictional Tim? Are the members of the platoon fictional? Just how much of this book is true, how much is made up?
Damn, it's a good book when it has you asking those kind of questions.
My last visit home really inspired me. You've seen the pictures. I've had this seed of an idea to write a novel/collection (kindasorta experimental) with my hometown as the base. Yes, it would be horror-esque. More dark fantasy and magical realism, I think. Yes, I would break a few narrative conventions, ala The Things They Carried. Visiting home again, I just knew this was the right thing to do. Maybe a little too ambitious for a writer of my skill, but hell. I'd rather try to climb a mountain than roll down a hill.
It's been brewing for a while. I better just write it, huh? In fact I've already started:
Elroy Jantz’s first death was an accident.
Early in the Rutgers-Camden workshop we reflected on the auguring power of literary lists—what they can tell us about a story not-yet-unfolded, what they teach us about voice. We used, as our exemplars, the opening pages of Colum McCann's
Dancer, the extraordinary yield in Tim O'Brien's
The Things They Carried, and the evocative early pages of Rahna Reiko Rizzuto's
Hiroshima in the Morning. We heard:
What was flung onstage during his first season in Paris:
ten one-hundred-franc bills held together in a plastic band;
a packet of Russian tea;
... daffodils stolen from the gardens in the Louvre causing the gardeners to work overtime from five until seven in the evening to make sure the beds weren't further plundered;
... death threats;
hotel keys;
love letters;
and on the fifteenth night, a single long-stemmed gold-plated rose.
(McCann, extracted from a much longer list)
The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters matches, sewing kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water.
(O'Brien, and this is merely the beginning of his brilliant catalog)
These are the things I packed:
— Twelve blank notebooks (paper is more expensive in Japan, or so I'm told);
— Three hundred tablets of Motrin IB and a bottle of 240 of the world's heaviest multivitamins;
— Forty-eight AA batteries in case my tape recorder dies mid-interview once a week, every week, for the six months I'll be away from home;
— Twenty-four copies of my first novel to give as omiyage;
— Two never-opened textbooks on how to read kanji.
(Rizzuto, a list then answered by a second titled: These are the things I know:)
All three lists featured here sit toward or at the very start of books—before we know plot or meaning, before w
This proportionately correct real world Charlie Brown by Tim O’Brien is pretty cool. (via Box Brown).
It reminded me of Pixeloo’s “Untooned” drawings like his Homer Simpson:
He’s also done Jessica Rabbit, Super Mario, and Stewie.
I have been at work on a book off and on for two years, as I have previously posted. It's an historical novel, deeply researched, and three voices carry the plot.
Here is the lesson of a multiply voiced novel: Collisions are essential, and they should not look like coincidence. The collisions (between characters, within moments, across voices) must carry meaning. They must signify.
I work on the signifiers now. It is slow but fascinating going. I look to the masters to see how it is done—Louise Erdrich, William Faulkner, and now Jayne Anne Phillips in her new novel, Lark & Termite, which got her a starred PW review, for starters, but more than that, it has Tim O'Brien saying:
What a beautiful, beautiful novel this is—so rich and intricate in its drama, so elegantly written, so tender, so convincing, so penetrating, so incredibly moving. I can declare without hesitation or qualification that Lark and Termite is by far the best new novel I've read in the last five years or so.
I'd love to know of other masters of collision, of when you think multiply voiced novels work.
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You're shaking off summer and waking up I see. Good to know. :D
Loved that story. Can't wait to see what you can do with the conventions Tim put forth. Good luck.
Ah, home is where the heart (and the best story ideas) is/are.
Cate - Yes. It was a sweet dream while it lasted, but I have stories to write.
Jamie - The idea is perfect in my head. Too bad nobody else can read it there.
Barry - You said it. It's good to be back.
I loved The Things They Carried, devouring it in an afternoon.
I loved The Things They Carried, devouring it in an afternoon.
Never read it, but I'll have to pick it up. :-D
Yes, get back to the writing. :-D Write whatever you want--no matter how ambitious you think it is. I have a friend who was just recently a high school English teacher and signed with a great agent and received a major deal for her YA trilogy. ;-)
Back to the man cave and inspired! Sounds like some good writing time coming up.
All hail the man cave!
I wish I had a man cave. All I have is a man closet.
<3 for that first line. Also, how on earth would we ever get MORE skill if we kept doing the same crap over and over. I think you'll surprise yourself :D
(But not me, as I'm already sure it'll be rad.)
Oh thank you!
I love your saying 'I would rather climb a mountain than roll down a hill'
I needed to say that to myself every morning from now on...
Good luck with your book...
I am as usual late to the party, but that's an awesome first line and I love the idea behind the book! Good luck with it.