Caution: spoilers for Moved a Mountain, Sang for the Birds, Saw Stars, and Robbed a Bank within...
The most shocking surprise sprung on me through listening to the Cat Who... audiobooks was the discovery that, at least according to George Guidall, our favorite alias is pronounced FROAB-nitz, not FROBB-nitz as I thought. Have I been mangling my own site's name all this time? Oh, Lordy.
A few weeks ago, I finally took the initiative and began checking out my library's entire stock of Cat Who... books-on-tape. Unfortunately, this being Great Falls, Montana, my library's "entire stock" was limited to five abridged volumes - Sang for the Birds, Saw Stars, and Robbed a Bank, all read by the esteemed George Guidall, Moved a Mountain, read by Theodore Bikel, and a copy of Wasn't There with broken cassettes that skipped. I'm therefore basing my opinions on a sample much narrower than I'd like, but I believe I have enough info to draw some general opinions about the two major concerns of the production - the voice acting and the editing.
Voices first. George Guidall, reader for all but two or three of the audiobooks, is much-beloved and -praised in the Cat Who... community, and after listening to the palpable effort, joy, and life he puts into his performance, I understand why. His narration is clear, well-paced, and delightful to listen to, and his voice is strong, even, well-modulated, friendly, and welcoming. This is a man who takes a great interest in ensuring his audience enjoys his work. Not that I'm without my reservations - I did have occasional problems with Guidall's lauded Qwilleran, who is too gruff and tired-sounding for my tastes at times (namely, in Sang for the Birds and on and off throughout Saw Stars - oddly, I found no issue at all with his performance in Robbed the Bank). A few of the characters sound flat-out too old - Bushy, for one - and, most disappointingly, Guidall voices most all of the women, even the taciturn, all-business Deputy Greenleaf, in the same precious, fretty-fussy-matron tone, very frequently (and obviously) inappropriate and almost always overaffected. With all the painstaking, loving audio work on these tapes, it's a pity that Guidall inexplicably chooses to slack off here and fail to vocally differentiate between practically half the supporting characters.
There are some well-voiced females, though - Susan Exbridge and Lois Inchpot, for two - and, aside from Guidall's "female problem" and save for a way-too-energetic Edd, the other supporting characters are by and large satisfyingly, warmly voiced.
Guidall opts for a perpetual tone of familiar, well-worn comfort - an overall wise choice, both well-delivered and -received, but one with the unfortunate side effect of often depriving Braun's more trenchant lines of the bite and wit they deserve (and one which also poses the intriguing question of how Guidall approaches the not-so-cozy city installments). On the whole, though, it's the much-appreciated care and effort in Guidall's approach which remain in one's memory, not the stumbles; he's a good man for the job.
Bikel, though, isn't cut out for audiobook work. His voice itself is fine - sensible, kind but authorative - but his delivery is all wrong. There's an unnaturalness, a counter-intuitiveness to his reading style - he places an odd, inappropriate emphasis on certain words within sentences, and there are no vocal cues like pauses or rises in his voice to distinguish dialogue from the narrative. He doesn't give characters distinct, individual voices until halfway through the story, and his tone of voice is inconsistent and wavering, often dipping below the threshhold of audibility. All this adds up to a tape that's taxing to follow; it took a concentrated effort and a lot of ear-straining for me to follow along - and this is for a story I've read several times before. I imagine that first-time listeners, not to mention those who put audiobooks on as background to some other, attention-diverting activity like long-distance driving or gardening, would be in a much harder-pressed boat.
I must say, though, that while Bikel's work was problematic, I was in a way grateful to hear "flat", unaffected line readings, and not only for the females. The voicing issues - particularly Guidall's, who takes such care to make the characters his own and "mold" distinct character voices - do underscore the problem with turning the novels into movies - however skillful the performances, my mind still rejected some voices out-of-hand as disconcertingly unpalatable, as they couldn't possibly belong to my characters. A bustling, saucy, plain-spoken Maggie Sprenkle? No way - I always envisioned her as a classy, softly-spoken yet cheery and very friendly lady. Sang for the Birds's Mary Coggin a reedy-sounding, fast-talking, brittle little old lady? I wanted her to exude the confidence her pride in her long life gave her, with an outgoing, somewhat hearty voice befitting her plow-pulling heritage. After 20+ books and, in my own case, about 12 years of reading, one builds up an unavoidable internal resistance to "our" characters being tampered with (indeed, I'm sure some people are reacting the same way to my visualizations as I am to these of Guidall's).
Fans seek out the unabridged cassettes, but the abridged versions are what's mass-market. To set a frame of reference, a quick, general book-by-book overview of what's kept in and what's excised follows:
Moved a Mountain: It's been a while since I've read Mountain, but most of its scenes appear to be intact in some (albeit pared-down) form. Mountain is at an advantage in this respect, though, because Bikel reads at a clip much faster than Guidall's, enabling more material to be packed into the tapes. It does seem, though, that much of the environmental damage wrought by the Spuds' development is elided in favor of concentrating on the main mystery plot thread of the railroading of Forrest.
Sadly, the descriptions of the beautiful "dragon cloud" vistas visible from Tiptop's summit are also omitted, but perhaps the lines need to be read on paper to truly come fully alive in the reader's mind.
Sang for the Birds - The Mrs. Fish-eye and Spell Game subplots are completely gone, and some of the Art Center scenes have been wisely trimmed back. The impact of Phoebe's death is adversely affected by editing decisions unrelated to any one specific cut; see below.
Saw Stars - Believe it or not, the editors actually manage to get Saw Stars to half-way make sense, for Pete's sake, by leaving in only the parts which were the foci of continuing plot threads - Owen Bowen's restaurant troubles, the Great Dune, Tess's visit, etc. - along with any UFO stuff that pops up along the way to preserve the extraterrestrial motif. To be honest, they served up a little more of Tess's crow-cartoon blathering than I could tolerate in such a compacted space, but I suppose you have to take coherent subplots in this book where you can find them.
Robbed a Bank - Sticks solely to the Mackintosh Inn intrigue before the murder, then follows only the homicide investigation and Qwilleran's journey through his family history afterward, with naught in the way of detours but a much-truncated Scottish Festival and some stuff about buying hand-crafted wood boxes from Thornton that I'd completely forgotten from my first read. Little bits of other scenes eke through here and there, but all-around, some pretty strigent cutting. The second tape nevertheless does manage to provide a goodly amount of texture to the story, though.
A couple of friends in the publishing business have theorized that Braun is such a moneymaker for Putnam that they publish her books no questions asked, unedited, a policy which, if a reality, has hurt her work. It's interesting, therefore, to observe how the editing here both brings out some of the potential of the later books and underscores their weaknesses. As previously touched upon, a great deal of much-needed clarity and tightness is brought to the story by concentrating on a couple story threads; the plots have a certain degree of focus and direction now, instead of haphazardly lurching along. We don't have quite the "HE'S the guilty one" constant finger-pointing that was there before with Boze and Chester Ramsbottom, with only one suspect with dozens of leads implicating him and Qwilleran blithely, maddeningly loitering about town, ignoring the situation; the tape story literally cuts to the chase and arrives at the appropriate confession or realization once the perpetrator's identity is evident enough, instead of spinning its wheels and stringing readers along like numbskulls as the recent books are prone to do.
On the other hand, the editing pares down to the bare bones mysteries that are quite the anorexics to begin with. Certain sequences are tenser for it - Mary Coggin's death, the discovery of the true mastermind behind Northern Land Improvement - but the overall flimsiness and rudimentariness of the puzzle is much more pronounced without all the clutter padding it. The same goes for the dearth of any meaningful sleuthing; it's painfully apparent that we and Qwilleran both are passively watching a story unfold rather than actively investigating a crime. The character-stocking problem is also evident in such a truncated space - I imagine it'd be tough for someone listening to these on a car trip to keep track of the individual identities of Beverly Forfar, Thornton Haggis, Paul Skumble, Phoebe Sloan, and Duff Campbell, all introduced in quick, brief succession down at the Art Center.
And then there is the flip side of what one misses from the cuts. Though some bits were indeed slashed from Moved a Mountain (I grit my teeth when I discovered they'd cut the priceless payoff line to Qwilleran's dining experience in "family restaurants"), the book is so rich compared to the other three, with the atmospheric and plot-forwarding material integrated and synthesized fairly seamlessly, that there's always a wealth of entertaining stuff on tap no matter what the tape narrative chooses to focus on. Conversely, the later books severely segregate Qwill's small-town-life adventures from the mystery (that's why the books feel so choppy), so I found myself sorely missing various funny tidbits from them that by necessity fell on the chopping block - stuff like Qwilleran's amusing torrent of stupefied boredom as Joe Buzzard at Delacamp's party. That's what happens when your book's best parts are in the incidentals. As for the culling of certain subplots nonessential to the larger story - Mrs. Fish-eye and the Spell Game - it's understandable for the sake of preserving clarity in a limited space, but the small-town, intimately homey Moose County atmosphere is worse off for it.
The tapes have varying editors. Some take admirable care to retain the tidbits that keep faithful readers & listeners up-to-date on developments in the recurring cast's lives - Gary and Celia's weddings, etc. - while others trim a little more. One aspect of the editing that is consistently very well done is the sense of place - the shortened descriptions which introduce a new locale are succinct enough to enable the reader to get a good, immediate handle on the physical geography, but retain the atmosphere evoked by the original, longer passages.
A few of the great emotional scenes are mangled. Most all the tense moments in Mountain - Qwill's fall down the waterfall, Polly's phone call, the escape from Tiptop - fall completely flat due to Bikel reading too quickly and deadened emotionlessly. The small details that underline Phoebe's vulnerability and sadness did not fare well in an abridgement, and so her death seems less the tragic, pathetic waste it was in the book. (To be honest, though, Guidall's fussy-matron voice, neither small nor light enough to suit Phoebe, does contribute to this letdown; Phoebe's final letter to Qwilleran, as well, is read with too much laborious regret, in an older-but-wiser vein, and is not confused or scared or pathetic or unaware enough.) The big fiasco, however, was Boze's death. Its lack of emotional power initially led me to believe the scene had been severely truncated, but after a reread proved that to be untrue, I've surmised that a failing in tone is probably at fault. The original journey to Boze's hideout was dark and anxious, at once balanced and heightened by Lenny's focused determination, and the starkness of the confrontation enabled the reader to feel all the concern, desperation, and fear Lenny himself felt for his friend. In the audiobook, though, Lenny is more glib golly-gee-whilikers than friend-on-a-desperate-mission, sounding in his attempts to talk Boze down like a ten-year-old calling up to a buddy in his treehouse; it hardly seems he realizesd that he's dealing with a serious matter at all. The undue emphasis earlier placed on Lenny's tracking Boze through gum wrappers only serves to further cripple the climax, imbuing the scene with a rather goofy feel before Lenny even starts talking. What a shame - and an irony - that one of the recent books' few truly great scenes should be laid ashambles in an audiobook rendition that often actually improves on the original.
Guidall must be commended, though, for attempting a little rescue operation in regards to what was Qwilleran's impatient and insensitive attitude in the book, voicing his few climactic lines ("This is insane!") under his breath in an insistent, warning-off, "psst! take a hint" tone, suggesting that Qwilleran is indeed concerned but simply does not think it a good idea to confront Boze now. (And though Qwill's "believe whatever you makes your feeble mind comfortable" line is still vile, Guidall does try to sugar-coat it with the warmest voice-acting he can muster.) In fact, many of the other Qwilleran-the-jerk scenes - Qwill's self-aggrandizing speech before the genealogical society, his snatching others' change with his animated toy bank - are culled entirely, so the editors pitched in on this front as well. More power to 'em.
Notes from hither and yon - despite my earlier complaints about the handling of certain emotional parts of the books, both Guidall and the editors do a good job of relaying the long, sad tale of reality settling in on Annie & Dana's little stand for love. The Robbed the Bank tapes also keep in the reference to Kirt Nightengale moving in, a rather odd and unnecessary tidbit to survive the abridgement. Speaking of the abridgement, to directly correct a bit of misinformation out there, the assertion that all the Guidall tapes are unabridged is, as evident from this review, not true.
I note that Qwill's impromptu "Chinese proverb" ("Man on ladder, directed by woman below; not good") is excised from the Sang for the Birds tapes, while G. Allen Barter's execrable "them wacky battered women" line from the same book ("Could she possibly be a little wacky from being punched?") is retained. I can see the reasoning in omitting the former, but the latter seems the more offensive case. Barter's line still floors me every time I read or hear it - not for that LJB wrote it, as G. Allen Barter strikes me as at heart such a cool, unconcerned, uncaring man that the line sadly does not seem out of character, but just on the pure unchallenged sentiment alone. I've never heard another criticism of it, though, let alone any mention of it in any context; am I the only one who finds it objectionable?
They kept Maggie Sprenkle's match-the-kitty-to-her-literary-namesake challenge in. I wonder how many cars they cracked up from distracted drivers racking their brains for the answers.
Ending note: At the very end of Mountain - after the story itself has ended, just before the tape spool runs out - someone (Bikel, presumably) says something in either a Slavic tongue or in heavy-metal-record-played-backwards Satan-speak. Are there any linguists or minions of the Dark Lord out there who can translate?
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