Fred Wemyss emailed me last week asking me if I was aware that there were textual differences between the audiobook of The Pale King and the published version... I was not! Fred only read along with the audio only to the last sixty or so pages of the book. That's a lot of uncharted territory.
Has anyone else listened to the audio AND read the hardback?
Edit: I also forgot to mention that most of the footnotes are not included in the audio book either.
Here's some of what Fred had to say:
Did you know there are substantial differences in the Little Brown text and the Hachette Audiobooks text (both are U.S. editions) of THE PALE KING? Example: Chapter 49 in the printed text has Chris Fogle as the point of view and the audio has Shinn there, even though Chris Fogle has the lengthy midsection of the novel in both printed and audio versions. I listened to the audio in its entirety and, for the last twenty pages or so, followed along with the written and found entire sentences which were on the audio simply missing from the printed. The audio makes some things clearer. Print for Chapter 47 immediately identifies "The woman" as Toni Ware. The audio just calls her "The woman."
and
The parts I read simultaneously while listening to audio were in the last sixty or so pages of the book, but I can tell you a couple of places to look for discrepancies:
The chapter where Glendenning has his meltdown. (The picnic where he gets paranoid.) He is asked if he has children. The audiobook has him saying he has no children. (It's some sort of punchline. He's misunderstood the question and it's a VERY funny line of his.) That line is missing from the US hardcover edition.
Chris Fogle is called Chris Fogle in both the audio and the US hardcover in the big middle chapter. (He's the guy whose father is killed at the train station.) But, while the hardcover has "Chris Fogle" reporting to Lehrl's lackeys near the end of the book (the chapter in which they are giving his a "test" and he seems to be passing it) the audio has "Shinn" (whose first name I can't remember) in place of Chris Fogle. (Shinn is the blond Asian referred to only briefly in an earlier chapter.)
Chris Fogle is called Chris Fogle in both the audio and the US hardcover in the big middle chapter. (He's the guy whose father is killed at the train station.) But, while the hardcover has "Chris Fogle" reporting to Lehrl's lackeys near the end of the book (the chapter in which they are giving his a "test" and he seems to be passing it) the audio has "Shinn" (whose first name I can't remember) in place of Chris Fogle. (Shinn is the blond Asian referred to only briefly in an earlier chapter.)
The lady who puts snot on her own dress in order to imply to a store manager that his clerk spat on her is named Toni something in the hardcover and is only called "The woman" in the audio.
Several sentences have their parts inverted. I can't remember specifics but a typical sentence change goes this way: "Joe twice borrowed Matt's car." This would become: "Twice, Joe borrowed Matt's car."
And a little more in Fred's Goodreads review here, thanks, Fred:
The footnotes are excluded entirely from the audio, except in the cases where the footnote has an asterisk instead of a number.
Anyone else in the same situation with any observations?
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