In case it’s overlooked in the Comments to the piece below, here is an informative memorandum from R.:
It is unimaginably strange to hear an ‘Unspeakable Desolation’ story read in a US accent … for those not traumatised by the mere suggestion, http://tinyurl.com/58avg5 is the place to go, but you have to weather an advertisement, a dictionary definition, and some stuff about trains before the dawning of the Main Feature. ‘Weird, awesome stuff,’ the host declares.
I have to say I like Norm Sherman’s narration very much, particularly the way he intones the words “magnetic … mute … blind … love monkeysâ€.Â
Norm seems to extract every gram of innuendo from what I had previously presumed to be an entirely innocent science-fiction yarn.
I do hope Norm doesn’t get ‘taken’ by enraged Tundists…
Norm Sherman said that Far, Far Away had “deep Freudian subtext and rich religious undertones.” It sounded totally straightforward and innocent to me. I’m religiously tone deaf, so I have leave that to other listeners to decide. But I was able to perform the well-known laboratory test for Freudian subtexts: I listened to it again over the phone while doodling on the back of an envelope. It looks totally innocent to me:
http://www.jampan.co.nz/~glyn/mmblm.jpg