StoryCorps Review

The two stories I listened to were the 2016 story with Julie and Fred Taylor, about a man who writes apology letters to airline customers who experience flight disruptions, and the 2009 story with Nicholas Petron, about his grandfather and the apartment building he owned.

The 2016 entry has no interviewer present in the audio; Fred Taylor simply begins talking about himself, and Julie Taylor chimes in around halfway through. Structurally this is something between a shift to a conversation and a shift to a second narrator of the same story. Segments of Fred Taylor’s apology letters, or possibly the same apology letter, are interspersed; he starts into them as if they were simply part of the story but then they fade out as he continues with the original track of the story, which I frankly found jarring. I think a clearer indication of when the segments of the letter started would’ve improved things. The piece uses bouncy jazz as background music, which keeps the tone light and emphasizes the humor, but it sounded to me exactly like the kind of music that would be used to set a historical ambience for a piece about or set during World War II, which strikes me as a rather odd choice for a contemporary story. The outro consisted of at least ten seconds of music with no dialogue and did not begin to fade out immediately, which created somewhat of an awkward pause. The audio quality, however, is very crisp, and the music is never too loud or distracting.

The 2009 entry also has no interview present, and is presented as a monologue from Nicholas Petron. There is no background music, which I suspect is because the story changes in emotional tone from warm and happy to rather desolate and it would’ve been hard to find music that would suit this and would shift at the right time. The lack of music also lends the story a more intimate feeling, which is appropriate for a story about family and the connection that comes from proximity; it’s as if he’s in the room with you directly telling you the story. I did not catch any points where I was sure there was a cut, but the story flows quickly enough that I suspect there were pauses cut out. When he finishes talking the story ends. I think this was an effective way to do things.