Since the middle of last week I’ve been stealing a quarter of an hour here, half an hour there to work on a very self-indulgent piece of flash fiction. It was inspired by two things. The first was a comment I heard over the festive season. The second was a notoriously short and difficult chapter from Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. Anyone who hasn’t read that particular work will, at best, simply be bemused by what is below. Those who have will understand exactly how self-indulgent I’m being.
Originally this piece was just a way for me to fill some spare time one afternoon, but I’ve found myself coming back to it fascinated by the puzzle getting speaker’s voice right presents me. I even went so far as to record myself reading it so I could hear what works and what fails. Because listening to my own voice always makes me cringe and because I wanted to hide under my desk after I listened to myself reading for 3 minutes or so I immediately thought of posting that file here.
After all nothing says it’s Monday like a bit of public self-humiliation, right?
<span><a href=”http://soundcloud.com/outspoken-omphaloskeptic/vardmangrowsup”>VardmanGrowsUp</a> by <a href=”http://soundcloud.com/outspoken-omphaloskeptic”>Outspoken Omphaloskeptic</a></span>
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January 10th, 2011 at 13:27
Excellent piece and good to hear your digitally stored voice. Does this make you part Faulkner, part Tron?
January 10th, 2011 at 17:48
Despite my pretensions the only time I channel Faulkner is when I’m drinking. I hadn’t thought of the Tron angle though. I’ll have to be careful with this recording malarky. . .
January 12th, 2011 at 10:47
I loved it, and I’d love to hear (or read) more. A genuinely wonderful three minutes. ‘As I Lay Dying’ is on my ever-growing ‘To Read’ list, so I guess some of it went over my head, but I enjoyed it immensely nevertheless.
I usually find it quite hard to concentrate on spoken-word fiction, but a short piece like this worked really well. I also thought your voice was a perfect fit for the story.
January 12th, 2011 at 14:11
Thanks Steve, I’m glad people liked this. It’s nice to see that I managed to give the speaker an appropriate voice.
I’m a big fan of Faulkner in general though I often hesitate to recommend it to others following some very negative reactions in the past. “As I Lay Dying’ is well worth a read and, when you do have chance to take it in, you’ll see just how obvious and self-indulgent this piece really is.
January 12th, 2011 at 15:38
[...] Steve First, you need to head over to The Outspoken Omphaloskeptic and take a listen to his tale, Vardman Grows Up. You back? Good. Then let’s begin. I was really quite taken with the story and it has made me [...]