I did a recording for the blind of one of my books, and the accrued time was 9 hours, 32 minutes. The book is about 70,000 words long. The figures we are examining tell us that in recording that book I'd be pronouncing no more than my conversational quota for seven days. That doesn't sound so sweaty. But then the novel I read out had a narrative, a proper first act, second act, and third act. Do words that end up telling a tale cause less of a strain on the listener than plain old badinage?
Not so clear, not at all. In the four hours required to hear "Hamlet" -- for the sake of convenience, think of it as 60 schoolboy speeches, or 60,000 words -- do we feel less tired than after a four-hour session at home with visitors, going through cocktails, dinner, postdinner conversation, maybe a little poker? There is the difference that if listening to "Hamlet" one absolutely has to concentrate on what is being said. That is more of a strain than absorbing, more or less, the more or less unabsorbing contributions of a visitor.
If it is a politician we are listening to, we know that what he speaks will reflect the speechwriters' awareness of limited attention spans. There will therefore be strophes designed to cause the listener to turn his head from side to side, which heightens attention and inhibits sleepiness.
Those always in search of utilitarian opportunities have an interesting challenge in the figures cited. When Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee woke in the medieval court and saw Simon Stylites perched on top of a pillar, he thought to harness a wheel with a bell attached to a generator, so that while in pious service of the Lord, the stylite could simultaneously generate electricity.
What might Al Gore simultaneously generate while speaking his 10,000 words per day? Well, he could fortify the national reserves of patience, fatalism, endurance. Perhaps, at the next convention, he will announce his new discovery.