Richard Wright’s The Man Who Lived Underground will be published for the first time this month. To write it:
He used an Ediphone—a recording device that etched a simulacrum of his voice onto a spinning wax cylinder when he spoke into its handset—to narrate his story, then edited his work by playing it back and revising as he listened. And the effect of that process can be heard in the text, which strides forward with the hurried rhythm of someone speaking to themselves aloud.