From Dawn to Decadence, Part 2 [Unabridged] [Audio Cassette]

Jacques Barzun (Author), Edward Lewis (Narrator)

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks; Unabridged edition (August 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786120096
• ISBN-13: 978-0786120093
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.6 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,087,889 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Great book, terrible reading, March 11, 2005

By 

Michael Mikesell (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: From Dawn to Decadence, Part 2 (Audio Cassette)

As Amazon has a propensity to affix customer reviews from one product to a similar but importantly different one, and as the company continues to refuse to let us sort comments by the edition to which they apply, I offer this disclaimer: I'm reviewing the UNABRIDGED audio cassette edition of Barzun's *From Dawn to Decadence*, read by Edward Lewis. Please note this is not the same reader appearing on the ABRIDGED edition, which is read by Herrmann Edward.

You should also know that this edition (Parts 1 and 2, sold separately for some reason) is 29 cassettes spanning 43 hours. That's a lot of listening, a lot of time to invest in both an author and a narrator. (I have no idea how long the abridged edition is; I wish that were evident from the site.)

While it's a huge boon to have the entire book available for listening, please be warned that this Barzun lover finds Edward Lewis's narration extremely difficult to listen to. I may not make it past the second tape. His voice is thin and his intonations unnatural. He comes off sounding, to my ears, entirely self-conscious and out of his element, perhaps out of his intellectual league with a writer of this caliber. It's almost impossible to focus on Barzun's wonderful prose, so distracted am I by the effort I perceive in its reading.

Further, and this is mere speculation, it sounds as though the reader's voice has been digitally manipulated at times in order to achieve a producer's desired intonation in key spots. That may not, in fact, be the case--what a laborious task that would be, across 43 hours of audio!--but in any case, something is very odd in the reading and something is very odd in the audio itself.

(This is especially painful now, as I've just listened to George Orwell's *Portrait in Sound*, nine intoxicating hours of Orwell's essays and novels read with sensitivity and aplomb by the British actor George Rose, who I will always hear and relish in my mind's ear when I read Orwell in print.)

The work at hand may be one book where it's best to stick with the proper paper edition, if possible, especially since Barzun's presentation is less linear than we're accustomed to, offering suggestions for further reading in little "pull quotes" within the pages and where they're most relevant, rather than in a list at the back of the book.