I’m probably not the best person to write about “The Moth.” It’s a collection of 50 stories from the public radio show The Moth Radio Hour, which I’ve never listened to. It caught my eye at Micawber’s because my son is a fan of the show, and I decided to buy it based on his enthusiasm. The stories selected for this anthology are transcribed exactly as they were spoken on the radio show. About a third of them I found compelling, another third were interesting, and a third left me wondering why they were included. Moth participants are not allowed to use a script or notes. Putting their stories into print as is (or as was) works best for the deliveries that were pretty polished, not so well for some others. I’ve read transcriptions of spoken word poetry performances, and they usually suffer in written form. Garrison Keillor recently published a collection that includes some of his monologues. I haven’t looked at that book yet, but I’m interested to see how well the monologues translate to print. Dave Healy
Posted on: Fri, 16 May 2014 01:48:26 +0000
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