The Blackstone Little, Big
2 January 2012
Blackstone Audio has just released the official audio book version of Little, Big as read by John Crowley. On the back cover of the MP3-CD version (and presumably the regular CD version as well, which I have not yet seen) appears the following fine print:
The text of Little, Big used for this recording is the Author’s Preferred Text, as revised, restored, and corrected for a new, museum-quality edition of Little, Big edited by Ron Drummond and scheduled for 2012 publication by the Seattle small press, Incunabula. For more information, visit www.LittleBig25.com. Please note that in the course of recording Little, Big, the author occasionally made minor adjustments to the text in response to the simple exigencies of reading it aloud; these changes do not take precedence over the Author’s Preferred Text as found in the Incunabula edition of the novel.
Not being an mp3 kind of guy, I nevertheless managed to borrow a player and have listened to the first half hour or so (of 24 and a half hours total!) of John Crowley’s reading, and am thrilled to report that it is even better than I expected. Crowley is a fine reader, as anyone who has heard him read in public knows. His voice takes one back to another era, another sense of time. Kudos to Blackstone on the production values, which are first rate. (Please note that the Little, Big Project is unaffiliated with Blackstone Audio and will receive no percentage from sales of the audio book; that said, we were more than happy to approve and facilitate John’s use of the Preferred Text for the recording, and to promote the superb results here).
Meanwhile, our work finalizing the glorious new physical edition of Little, Big proceeded somewhat more slowly during December — John D. Berry is still working on implementing final corrections and changes to Book Five and I am still working on creating the final correction documents for Book Six – but we are both looking forward eagerly to wrapping up production work relatively early in the New Year and to finally delivering the book to the printer.
Best Wishes,
Ron Drummond
Publisher