Classics Narrated

A phlegmatic lawyer who gets more business hires an additional copyist, or scrivener, in mid-19th century Manhattan. At first, work goes well, but Bartleby's quirks grow, upsetting the lawyer and his temperamental staff.

Returning from the Inner Station, Marlow falls ill after Kurtz dies. Recovering, he is compelled to carry Kurtz's writings back to Europe, and to bring sympathy to his bereft fiancee, trying hard not to speak ill of the dead.

The Russian trader explains Kurtz's overwhelming force of personality to Marlow. They find Kurtz desperately sick, but unwilling to leave the jungle and its people, and take him back on board the steamer regardless.

At the Inner Station, Marlow finds violence, death, uncanny echoes of Kurtz's presence, and an odd trader, who informs him that the people fought to keep Kurtz with them.

Marlow steams deeper into the jungle, to the Inner Station, growing more fascinated as he learns more of Kurtz, a man of remarkable abilities. Hunger follows the ship, whose crew are cannibals, with dense fog adding to the palpable tension.

Marlow travels to central Africa, finds death, callous indifference, anxiety, and avarice instead of vaunted civilizing ideals in his employer's stations.

At a conference on board ship near London, an old sailor named Marlow recounts his decision to join a European trading company active in Africa.

Lucy has frustrating conversations with the Misses Alan and her mother, but a chance meeting with old Mr. Emerson helps her realize what she's tried to deny. The last chapter brings us back to Florence, and the room whose view started the tale.

Mr. Beebe learns that Cecil's engagement to Lucy has been broken, as Cecil leaves Windy Corners. Without completely understanding her motives, he supports her plan to escape, by traveling to Greece with the elderly ladies they met in Florence.

Lucy, denying her feelings for George, throws him out, following lively discussion. She then breaks her engagement to Cecil, who behaves exasperatingly well.

Lucy refuses to face her feelings for George, as he and his father settle in the neighborhood. Cecil, oblivious, narrates a passage from a new novel clearly based on her encounter with George in Florence.

The Emersons arrive in the Summer Street neighborhood. Freddy and Mr. Beebe make friends with George, and Cecil falls further in the estimation of Lucy's mother.

A clearer picture of the Honeychurch family's position in their community emerges. Cecil meddles in finding new tenants, and Lucy goes to visit him and his mother at their place in London.

Cecil meets the neighbors of the Honeychurch family, and dislikes them. His first kiss from Lucy goes awry.

From Italy, the scene shifts to Sussex, England. Here we meet Lucy's mother and brother, and find she has a new suitor.

All our cast goes for a sight-seeing drive, with a reckless and amorous coachman. Lucy has an encounter with George Emerson that causes consternation; Charlotte decides they must leave Florence.

Lucy, confused by the previous day, accompanies Charlotte on errands. En route, they meet the novelist, Miss Lavish, and hear distressing rumors of the Emersons from the Rev. Mr. Eager.

Only at the piano does Lucy reveal her inward passion; conversation with Miss Alan and Rev. Mr. Beebe shows social constraints. She goes alone on an errand, and sees a violent crime. Faint, she accepts George Emerson's company.

Lucy sets out to view the Church of the Holy Cross, with a clever lady as guide. They lose their way, and then lose sight of one another. Lucy meets the Emersons at the church, and learns more of them than she wanted to know.

Miss Honeychurch, chaperoned by Miss Bartlett, touring Florence in the early 1900's, has an unsuitable room; unsuitable strangers offer their better rooms instead.

For listeners who may want further information on the historical background of Lorna Doone, my spouse and I offer this.

This selection seems sensitive, possibly painful to some. Even though this may languish in obscurity, I want to articulate the reasons why it seemed worthwhile to do this, along with the almost equally compelling reasons for leaving it aside. Why not do it? Racism. This choice could be construed as degrading to black people, a reminder of oppression, subjugation, the southern (or American) system from the end of Reconstruction through at least the Civil Rights era that was paternalistic at best, and nothing short of state terrorism at worst (lynching, the Klan, segregation, poll tax, literacy tests.) However, these two stories are iconic; for an American to go through life not knowing the story of the Tar-Baby and the Briar Patch is miserable ignorance. In themselves, they show humor, intelligence, and the fun of turnabout. The frame story is another matter. Old black Uncle Remus tells these tales to a blond seven-year old boy, whose mother is “Miss Sally.? The boy is the child of the farm or plantation’s owner. Remus, as far as I can tell from quick reading, lives alone; no wife, no children, no close friends. This is Uncle Tom, of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin? all over again; sexless, dependent, there to serve the white folks, including their children. He is a convenient device for the transcriber, Joel Chandler Harris, to set down the stories that helped pass the time and lift the burden of care for the black folks. To me, this assumption that black peoples’ lives were meaningful and valuable only as far as they figured in those of white folks is the most pernicious aspect of the books. Mr. Harris may have felt guilt over this work. His biography notes his shyness and diffidence, not to be wondered at for a man who made his fortune exploiting oral tradition of the oppressed. Even the name of his storyteller, Remus, might refer to that. In the legend of Rome’s foundation, Remus was the other twin brother, supplanted, possibly murdered, by his brother Romulus. Even though Mr. Harris tried to identify with Harriet Beecher Stowe, weirdly calling Uncle Tom’s Cabin a “wonderful defense of slavery as it existed in the South,? giving his title character the name of the forgotten co-founder of Rome may have expressed recognition of the historic and continuing exploitation and oppression of black people. So, it’s for the folk tradition that I record this, and my belief that despite their compromised origin, these two stories at least are vital, and must be remembered. For my own imagination, I like to think of Uncle Remus telling these stories to his own folks, black as well as white. Of course, as authors like Faulkner remind, his kin could fall either side of the color line. Narrating them may seem odd, coming from a “white? man, but, appearance aside, I’d be surprised if my DNA didn’t show quite a bit of non-European ancestry; a mutt. In any case, they’re easier to understand when heard, since rhythm and emphasis help to clarify dialect hard to decipher on the page. Also, it seems to me that many black actors/narrators/voice artists, might find this beneath their dignity. I’m just going to try and render it as well as I can. For those interested in further reading, the scholar Julius Lester has rendered a version of Uncle Remus intended to preserve the folklore, while removing racially offensive content.

The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story, and How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp For Mr. Fox (the Briar Patch).

Of course you've heard of Rip's long nap; here's the whole story of the henpecked feckless farmer who went for a ramble, drank strange drink with strangers, drowsed off a loyal subject of George III, and woke 20 years later in the young USA.

Jack London's account of a foolhardy arctic Yukon trip, in late December of the early twentieth century.