The best way to hear your story anew is to listen to somebody else read it.
I enjoyed that pleasure and privilege recently when Tantor/RB Media hired voice actor Paul Bellantoni to narrate my novel, “Splinter.”
“Splinter”—set in Norway—was my effort to capture and dramatize the popular rise of a stout resistance to fascism after Germany smacked the Norwegians with a full-on, blitzkrieg invasion in April of 1940.
My lengthy background in journalism drove me to render events in ‘Splinter’ as fact-based as I could, and also strive for verisimilitude in culture, religion, politics, weaponry, geography, architecture and even the weather amid that period. Naturally, I also hoped to make my story incredibly vivid, my main characters attractive and compelling, and their situation amazingly fraught.
Bellantoni brought to this table a keen and fresh perspective, as well as a gift for grasping the essential core of characters.
He made them spring to audio life by supplying a distinctive tone, unique pacing, and custom accent for each. Such a wizardly level of literary ventriloquism had convinced me that he was the proper guy for this job, right from the first moment I listened to his sound-sample from Tantor.
A SEAT AT THE FEET OF MY MUSES
Those who’ve read other issues of this newsletter already know I was raised in a small town at the edge of the Everglades. For quite some time, I thought the most powerful people around were our town’s storytellers. The main ones were: priests who thundered or coaxed or made pleas to us on Gospel grounds from their pulpits; a pair of matronly librarians who kept my book bag stuffed from week to week; and a mom who liked to sit me and my sibs by a fireplace in evenings to read us classics like “Tom Sawyer” and “My Friend Flicka.”
I noted early on that I loved feeling spellbound by words. Still, that wasn’t my sole interest; I also was fairly adept at math. Around fourth grade, I could perceive a fork would arrive quickly as I trod the path ahead. I could either emphasize a pursuit of the hard logic and pure precision of mathematics—which I guessed would eventually deliver me into some branch of the sciences. Or, I could focus on the soft logic and vague imputations of language, which initially seemed far less disciplined and rigorous. However, I did sense that such presumed deficits—oddly enough—made language more lifelike, and supplied better descriptions of the complex, contradictory human realities I saw churning around me.
What finally settled this matter was a vinyl album my oldest brother toted home from his high school library: a recording of actors Basil Rathbone and Vincent Price narrating the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. This burst of expert storytelling floored me—literally. I’d get that album spinning on a turntable, lie down on a rug, close my eyes, and listen to the discs over and over. That is, till that tragic day came when my brother had to take the album back.
No other experience in my young life better fulfilled the famous dictum of the Belle of Amherst (Emily Dickinson): “There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away…”
Then and there, I decided language would constitute my main course of learning. It’s remained so since, and I’m convinced that was the correct choice. But one part I got dead wrong was my childish whim that pursuit of language would prove less rigorous than chasing mastery in math, algebra or calculus. Au contraire, mon frère…
A STORYTELLER FINDS HIS VOICE
Paul Bellantoni was born in Waltham, Massachusetts—an industrial city some three centuries more developed than that swampy, pioneer village where I festered as a youth. He grew up in Concord, learned to swim in Walden Pond. With nary a drop of false modesty, Paul notes that he was too precocious to last long in public schools. His parents took him private, first to an all-boys junior high and then to a coed private high school, where—joy of joys—he found himself able to chase girls on a daily basis.
Paul says he didn’t have one giant “Aha!” moment, as I did on that day when I first wrapped my ears around the mingled storytelling chops of Messrs. Poe, Rathbone and Price. What he did experience, though, was a series of events, starting in junior high, that pretty much added up to the same thing. A fetal yen to perform was readily nurtured; he found himself joining the cast every time he tried out for a school play or a musical.
One thing that helped him is he went through puberty at age 10 and his voice began to drop, making him a distinctive stage presence. A thing that didn’t help was that his dad told him—in no uncertain terms—if he intended to make theater his major in college, he’d be paying his own tuition. So, first in Boston and then in New York City, young Paul had to pursue a “real” degree (he picked journalism).
Nevertheless, he persisted in doing what he loved on the side. Auditioning for roles and taking acting and singing classes consumed as much spare time as he could manage. A few Off-Broadway gigs led to bigger deals that led to roles of increasing clout. His father attended venues and grew to appreciate his son’s talent and drive. And he also relented, promising to support Paul as he sought to advance in his art. Fairly soon after that, daddy no longer had to dig for his wallet, since Paul’s career had taken wing on its own.
DO YOU KNOW THE WAY TO WORK IN L. A.
Paul Bellantoni enjoyed a ten-year stint, singing opera in the U.S. and Europe. He left that stage in 2005, divorced, remarried, returned to New York, took voice-acting classes then found work supplying voice-overs while writing a book of advice for young singers who hoped to get into opera. He moved to Los Angeles, took classes in audiobook narration and added that capability to ongoing gigs in video games and animated films. He also dubbed foreign film roles into English for the likes of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and Disney.
What he brings to all his projects isn’t only the vocal range and control of a professional singer. He also possesses the chameleon-like versatility of a veteran actor able to inhabit either bit parts or a lead with equal fervor. Along with it comes a life-long fascination with language that’s resulted in an ability to speak French, Italian and German; he also possesses capability in Latin, Greek and Russian. The combination lets him explore and reproduce accents and dialects of just about any region with confidence, enthusiasm, and—soon—skill.
To me, his most distinguishing characteristic is—not quite humility, since the man is cognizant of his accomplishments and confident in his ability—but the workmanlike attitude he takes toward his craft. He deploys a journeyman’s approach to getting a job done, doesn’t seem to indulge at all in the lofty self-regard of a diva or star.
“I see myself as a ‘utility infielder,’ to use a baseball analogy,” Paul says. “I may not be the guy who’s going to hit 60 home runs, but you can plug me in just about anywhere.”
Plug him into your project, and you must might win a prize. For example, the man has three Audiofile Earphone Awards to his credit. (And counting, I’d like to think… I’m beginning to root hard for ‘Splinter,’ here.)
HOW I PUT MY SPLINTER IN HIS HANDS
Bronzeville Books—the print and e-book publisher of “Splinter”—kindly granted me permission to negotiate an audio contract with Tantor, who sent me samples of prospects from their stable of readers. As I related above, after a single minute of listening to Bellantoni, I grew convinced that he was “the guy.”
As you might imagine, a buckaroo with his skill-set is no slam-dunk to corral. He’s presently booked about three months in advance, and often finds himself working more days in a row than he prefers. For anyone who thinks narrating ought to be effortless (“That ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it, money for nothin’ and your chicks for free…” – M. Knopfler), one of Paul’s rules-of-thumb is: a full week in the studio nets you only about a dozen hours of finished audio. It’s a fairly high effort-to-output ratio.
I did enjoy an ace-in-the-hole in this scenario: Paul already had been a World War II buff, from early childhood onward. Another ace was, he likes to learn new stuff as he goes along. It’s a big reason why he prefers to narrate non-fiction as much or more than fiction. So, my fact-based storytelling (I call it “faction”) hit him smack dab in a couple of sweet spots.
Here’s how he put it: “Narrating ‘Splinter’ was a joy. World War II fascinates me, but I knew little of Norway’s part. It’s exciting to watch Kristian and Helene find a way to join the resistance. Deciding to tangle with fascism feels brave and poignant. Relevant too, in light of modern issues.”
Much of Paul’s narration occurs in his home studio—a 4×6-foot sound booth—where he uses his own equipment to record. “I go in there, and it’s just me and the mic, and suddenly everything is incredibly intimate,” he says. “I’ve been narrating since about 2018, and I just adore it, it brings me so much joy. The fact that I constantly get to do a wonderful array of things keeps me satisfied, artistically.”
OUR FOUNDING FORMAT RANKS WITH THE BEST
Narration is humanity’s oldest form of storytelling. Narrators are curators of an astoundingly ancient craft.
Scroll back from modern day electronic media, movies and television, go on past all forms of writing, through ideograms, cuneiform, hieroglyphs and beyond. Enter the age of the town criers, village gossips, the griots and the bards. Think of Homer holding forth in an Athens plaza on Troy and Ulysses, and then crawl further on back into hide tents and caves, where the lore of tribes got transmitted around flickering fires in a winter-long unfurling of tales told by elders and medicine men and primeval minstrels.
Next, scoot your mind right on back into modern times. The way we now tell and absorb stories has been indelibly shaped by more than a century of cinema. And yet, even so, we have single-voice narrators still employed, still being celebrated for perfecting their art. In cinematic terms, such a narrator must: pace and clearly reveal a story; establish and explore each character; convey emotion and tension in scenes; and just via deft use of timbre and tone, suggest such exotica as camera angle and frame, lighting, weather, costume, and soundtrack.
On one hand, it’s a ridiculous challenge. A narrator is like a one-man band—a minstrel with a base drum hanging on his back, a harmonica in a rack, a guitar on a strap; he holds a trumpet on his right side and a kazoo on his left, and has cymbals strapped to both knees—who then energizes all this gear while attempting to regale you with a symphony.
Except, a narrator seeks to accomplish that very same thing with just a single instrument: his or her voice. And what a magnificent achievement it is, if he or she manages to pull it off!
Paul Bellantoni had to learn how to nurture and protect his instrument early on. A man can’t sing Wagner for four hours above a 70-piece orchestra while projecting to a crowd of thousands without mastering that basic skill. These days, he coddles his pipes with several dozen types of tea, and keeps his lungs in shape by swimming laps for an hour twice a week.
The biggest lesson he says he’s gained over the course of his career is that all of his personal life experiences constitute a mighty resource to tap whenever it’s time to explore a character. “Bring as much of you to this job as you can,” he says. And he plans to keep doing it for decades to come.
That is, if Tilly Norwood clones and AI don’t rise—too far! (Norwood is an AI-generated actress who’s begun to make real Hollywood actors break out in cold sweats at night.) Audiobooks are also on the march these days, as a burgeoning segment of overall sales. The New York Times recently added an audiobook category to bestseller lists in its “review of books” section.
But a threat of using computer-generated voices to narrate books looms on our horizon. One lamentable outcome: robot voices commanded to read AI-composed novels to ‘bot audiences programmed to geometrically jack book ratings up charts—without any of it ever encountering human hands, eyeballs, ears, or minds. A consummate digital circle-jerk, as well as a consummation devoutly to be unwished.
Bellantoni believes, as I do, that the human touch might be imitated, but never convincingly generated via computer. At least not yet, and hopefully not ever. Or, at least, not for a good, long while.
“I’ve yet to meet an author,” Paul told me, “who says, ‘Okay, it took me a year or six or ten to write this book, and now I’m ready and willing to hear a computer narrate it. Can’t imagine an author ever saying anything like that.”
Amen, Mister B! Me, neither.
Note: Our new, audio ‘Splinter,’ splendidly narrated by Paul Bellantoni, can be found by scanning the QR code below with your phone, or by clicking here.
