Authors in Their Own Words

In the past year, I’ve enjoyed finding recordings of authors reading their own material online. Some voices sound the way I expected— Tolkein’s , for example—and some did not— Lewis’ , for example. I can’t say I expected Chesterton to sound the way he did, but I can’t say I was surprised either. This is all by way of introduction to recordings a friend sent me of Flannery O’Connor reading her work at Notre Dame the year before she died. Hers is a voice that rings with a southern earthiness we Yanks can’t begin to fathom. I listened to her reading an essay on grotesque characters in southern literature, and the essay’s flavor considerably increased by my hearing it through a Georgian drawl.