Meeting Simon Vance & Jerusalem

Courtesy of Paul Titangos Photography

Yesterday evening, Victor, Paul and I attended an event jointly organized by SCPL and Recorded Books, LLC.

It was attended by a group of intimate but hardcore audiobook readers combined with fervent fans of author Alan Moore. Simon Vance, the reader of Moore's Jerusalem, started the evening by recalling his interviews with the writer about his "million-word" (in actuality, about 600,000 words) new publication. What was it about? What emphasis did he need to pay attention to? The audience was treated with the author's recorded answers.

After watching his live performance drawn from segments of a number of chapters, the audience asked Vance how he started his career as a narrator, his treatment of genders, his use of accents in books, his role in selecting reading material and his personal favorite authors and books. It turns out that Vance volunteered for a nonprofit organization recording books for the blind in the early 80s in Great Britain. Before long his unique voice was talent-spotted by the BBC, and later by Blackstone Audio, and Recorded Books. With his acting ability, he is known for bringing books to life with various characters. At the event, he revealed to his audience one secret to his success: consulting with writers whenever necessary. For instance one chapter in Jerusalem was extremely difficult to render. He contacted Moore again and found out that it was conceived in Irish. Accordingly he narrated in with the appropriate Irish accent, and the result was a success.

Vance has been narrating over 800 audiobooks over more than 3 decades and has won numerous awards. Like any Olympian, his accomplishment comes with both talent and hard work. The reading of Jerusalem is 57 hours long, but it took the entire month of June for him to complete the recording of the book. Even though he has limited say in selecting his reading materials, as Hollywood stars do, writers like Dickens and Proust remain his lifelong favorites. He loves a well-written book with well-created characters who make right choices, such as Hakan Nesser's Inspector Van Veeteren.

Courtesy of Paul Titangos Photography

The impatient audience wanted to know when they could listen to Jerusalem. It seems that they have to wait for a few more weeks, as its street date is 13 September 2016! Visit then at http://www.santacruzpl.org/ or http://santacruzca.oneclickdigital.com/ for a digital audio.