Patinkin recorded an audiobook with Betty Buckley in the Fall of 1998 titled "The Diaries of Adam & Eve: Translated by Mark Twain". (Patinkin reads 'Adam'.) It was released by Fair Oaks Audio in both CD and casette format in September 1999. Walter Cronkite provides the narration. According to the publisher, "It turns out that Mandy has quite an affinity for Twain. As he put it, 'We were born on the same day...but not the same year!' ...Mandy was a joy to work with; Twain's humor broke him up at times, and he read some of the tender, heartbreaking lines so untypical of Twain over and over until he was satisfied. The several bits of dialog with Betty are especially nice." The audiobook is a two-hour unabridged listener's edition.

"Someone has woven the best parts together to create "a harmonious narrative" that works best as a playlet. But it's the charming audio version with actors Mandy Patinkin and Betty Buckley that makes this literary experience come alive with all the wonder, innocence and pig-headedness that its two protagonists convey.

...Mandy Patinkin's knack for comic timing is perfect in this role." -- Holt Uncensored (Click for full review.)

Don Roberts (publisher): When I had the thought that the Diaries should be an audiobook, I knew that Betty Buckley and Mandy Patinkin were Mark Twain's Eve and Adam. There was never a list of other possibilities. In fact, had we not been able to enlist both of them, I doubt that we'd have proceeded with the project. They have musical voices; they sing and interpret lyrics better than anyone I can think of. And there's so much music or poetry in Twain's words. Later, when I realized we'd need a narrator, I immediately thought of Walter Cronkite's voice. I never imagined the Diaries being read by just one voice. The interplay of the male and female voices was essential...

...It had bothered me that Adam came across as a sort of dolt compared to Eve, especially in the first half of their story, but those added lines reveal his sensitivity, his musical side, as well as Twain's wry humor. So discovering them was like finding a gift from Mark Twain to Mandy Patinkin. We gave him and Betty Buckley a copy of the book and a script of only their own lines. (They recorded separately, a month apart.) If they had recorded from the actual book, there would have been a lot of problems with pages turning, no place to make notations, that sort of thing. I included notes of explanation and pronunciation wherever I thought it would help, because we had a very limited number of hours with each one in the studio. Then in post-production we made a couple of very slight changes to the "script" when wehad something on tape that we just had to use: Betty's humming and flipping pages between takes, not realizing that the tape was rolling; Mandy's baby sounds.

...I've recently listened to the entire six hours we have on tape, and it's pretty fascinating to relive those sessions-and listen to two extraordinary actors at work. Twain wrote some incredibly long sentences for Eve, and it's interesting to hear Betty's struggle with some of them. At one point, she groans magnificently and says, "This is hard," but she always managed to find the rhythm in Twain's word play. She has incredible vocal control. Mandy was as much a pleasure to watch as to listen to. He leaned into the mike and would "conduct" his reading with his arms and hands. He became fixated on one passage, where after 12 years Adam admits, "It is better to live outside the garden with her, than inside the garden without her." He read it 30 times (I counted!) before he was satisfied. It was as if he were cutting and polishing a diamond.

...Because of the incredible pressure of time, a recording session isn't where the revelations are realized. I suppose it's like taking a photograph: you can't be quite sure what you've got until later on. So it was a few days afterward that we listened to Mandy's tape and noted how haltingly he speaks at first. Whether that was his intent or not, it made great sense to us since Adam isn't the natural-born talker that Eve is.

..."The Making of an Audiobook" is a 40-minute presentation that Gary and I are giving in bookstores and libraries-anywhere that we're invited. It consists of recorded excerpts from the sessions as well as from the completed audiobook, with our commentary. For instance, we play Betty's reading of the dialogue when Adam shows her the tree and warns her of the trouble that will come if they eat the fruit. Then we play Mandy's reading. And finally, we play the final edited piece. Our audience hears the actors at work, flubbing lines, repeating some over and over, asking for direction. Those pieces together run close to six minutes, and they're a bit frustrating to listen to. But the edited three minutes are seamless, and you'd swear the two had recorded it together. Well, we hope they do.

--Interview with the publisher of The Diaries of Adam & Eve audiobook (Click to read entire interview.)

"The performances of Betty Buckley and Mandy Patinkin do justice to Twain's work. You'll want to listen to this one more than once. " --Roanoke Times

"Originally written separately at the turn of the 20th century, the diaries have been woven together to form a sort of point-counterpoint between Adam and Eve. Conscious of their historical importance as the first humans, they chronicle their views on life before and after The Fall, on their sons Cain and Abel, on God and each other. Unfortunately, the diaries tend to resemble a goofball 1970s TV sitcom with Adam (Mandy Patinkin) sounding like a bumbling and bemused Fred MacMurray and Eve (Betty Buckley) as sort of a gushy bubblehead. It is not until the end that Eve and Adam begin to show signs of moving beyond cartoon caricature and becoming more human." --Dallas Morning News

Read reviews at Fair Oaks (publisher) website

Diary of the Making of The Diaries of Adam & Eve Audiobook