Over the years, I have heard many readings of Poe’s work. There was a recording of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” that is fixed in my mind as representing the consummate voice of Auguste Dupin, just as another series of recordings has fixed in my mind the perfect voice of Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster. The “Rue Morgue” recording depicts Dupin with all the air of sophistication, drollery, abstraction, mystification and sarcasm that the story so vividly attributes to the detective. Then again, I remember a recording of “The Pit and the Pendulum” in which the narrator’s voice, very basso profundo, almost gutteral, and entirely appropriate, was accompanied by strange sound-effects on a guitar—a device that should have been obtrusive and annoying but which I quickly grew to like. I have not heard many really bad readings, but I am not satisfied that all of Poe’s best stories have exemplary recorded counterparts. I cannot remember offhand, for example, a reading of “The Fall of the House of Usher” or “William Wilson” that struck me as so thoroughly true and well done as the renditions cited above.

But there is some hope that those exemplars may soon appear. Wayne June’s reading of a poem and two stories in this, the first volume of an ongoing series, is excellent and bodes well for what may follow. June’s voice is deep, reminding me much of Orson Welles’, and is a fitting complement for the works selected. The first of them, “The Raven”, is supplied with a variation of tone and emphasis that give the poem’s frequent rhymes and strong rhythm the contrast and relief necessary to allow the formal scheme to recede and the matter to take its place in the listener’s attention.

The next pieces, “The Black Cat” and “The Cask of Amontillado”, are likewise enjoyable. His tone is somber and subdued but clear. The characters are well-distinguished in dialogue; the narrative voice is more dispassionate than dramatic and permits the words themselves to take center stage. And the andante pace allows him to distinguish irony with a well chosen pause, as when Montresor refers to Fortunato as “my . . . friend.” Fortunato, in particular, is rendered in such a way as to make his doom affecting, while Montresor’s voice, once his enemy is imprisoned, is cold with mockery.

For me, at least, there is a special pleasure in hearing the right kind of story read aloud. There is a temptation to think that the word on the page, because of its clerical and academic dominance, is superior to the word in the air, just as it may be tempting for a writer (and reviewer) to think composition more valuable than improvisation. But a story well-written, perhaps once read and half-forgotten, and presented fluently to the ear can embody much that is lost, less of necessity than neglect, on the printed page. And it is worth hoping that recordings such as this by June continue to be made—for the sake of such restorations, as well as for the hope of those missing exemplars.