Bending an Ear to Audible Prose on Tape

The non-musical audiocassette began life as unadorned as a nail. You got a voice, reading or reciting, and that was that. But as the audiocassette market has grown--and it appears to be growing fast--the cassettes have been getting fancier.

Steve Sohmer, who reprocessed his novel “Favorite Son” into a savagely reviewed TV miniseries, has also turned it into one of the most elaborate audiocassettes so far (Bantam Audio, two cassettes). It is for all practical purposes a three-hour radio show, with musical stings and bridges, a full cast of voices and rat-a-tat-tat sound effects.

As on television, “Favorite Son” remains a bloody and heavy-breathing cynical political thriller whose artifices are even more sharply evident than they were in print.

Only slightly less ambitious is a new series of “Star Trek” tapes from Simon & Schuster Audioworks, which offer original music, sound effects and two famous voices. “Yesterday’s Son,” adapted by Ann Crispin from her novel, has Leonard Nimoy and James Doohan from the original “Trek” cast tell the tale of Spock and his new-found son Zar fighting the deadly Romulans (one cassette, 90 minutes).

On another tape, “The Entropy Effect” by Vonda M. McIntyre, Nimoy and George Takei take us through Spock’s efforts to bring Capt. Kirk back to life after he has been killed by the mad scientist Georges Mordreaux up there on Aleph Prime. This 90-minute cassette is also sleekly done, and just what the Trekkies ordered for those earthly traffic jams.

Lawrence Thornton’s best-selling and well-reviewed novel “Imagining Argentina” offers only one voice: Mandy Patinkin, hushed and dramatic, punctuated by some uncommonly effective and appropriate guitar music (Bantam Audio, two cassettes, 180 minutes).

Thornton’s story deals with the political kidnapings and executions of Argentina’s 1970s. It borrows from the work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and others the eerie devices of what has come to be called magical realism. Patinkin’s reading is almost too hushed, yet the material is engrossing.

F. Murray Abraham, the Salieri of “Amadeus,” reads Gaston Leroux’s “The Phantom of the Opera” on Caedmon (two cassettes, three hours). It is a no-holds-barred rendition, with atmospheric music by William Gugala Hirtz. Fine for a last-minute brush-up before going to see the musical (unless, of course, you don’t want to know how it comes out).

The enhanced cassettes remind you not least that radio drama could be very good, but also very corny and unconvincing, especially when the sound effects interrupt the perfect quiet of the studio.

The one-voice reading is still the norm in audiocassettes, and I’m not sure there is any real substitute for it. When I last looked, for example, the best-selling audiocassette package was KABC’s Michael Jackson reading Stephen W. Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” (Dove Books on Tape, four cassettes, four hours).

Hawking’s work, a mind-tuggingly difficult examination of space, time and the universe, has been not only high on but atop the list of best-selling books for more than seven months. That is phenomenal, and so is the popularity of the cassette version, although Jackson’s crisp and breezy delivery suggests that he understands every word. Knowing Jackson, he may.

The unabridged reading was the beginning and is the norm in audio rentals but not in sales because of the cost. For purists, there is still no substitute for hearing every word (just as the VCR does not replace the neighborhood cinema). From Recorded Books Inc. has lately arrived “Right Ho, Jeeves,” an Alexander Spencer reading of one of the P.G. Wodehouse novels about the supremely silly Bertie Wooster and his supremely smart and forgiving butler.

“Right Ho, Jeeves” pushes the form about as far as it can go, I think. Hearing it through is like trying for the Guinness Record for consuming whipped cream. Yet the Wodehouse nonsense, insubstantial as it is, is stylish, charming and still very funny, and Spencer’s Niven-esque accents are just right. (Recorded Books rental information: (800) 638-1304.)