Thomas F. Lennon

Sweeping, Eccentric, Joyful

Reviewed: 09-10-23

It is easy to be awed by the sweep of knowledge that Paul Johnson displays. Yet the intensity of the research is matched by boundless curiosity, flashes of high humor, thumbnail sketches of dozens of memorable characters wilth wonderful gossippy asides and a kind of thrillling optimism that courses through the writing.

Paul Johnson is an eccentric and controversial writer. He was trained as a historian but was not affiliated with any univerity -- he was a journalist, started out politically left, moved pretty sharply right, and wrote books for a general audience, with a kind of storytelling flair and fearlessness that a professional historian would never allow himself. He doesn't hide his feelings; he dislikes Napoleon, loves the Duke of Wellington, is in awe of the brilliant and hard-working working class engineers and tinkerers who without formal training launched the Industrial Revolution with their inventions. He doesn't hide how terrifying "modernity" was then (and by implication now); he captures the accelerating pace of 19th century life, how fast it moved, how cruel and murderous it so often was, yet there's a joy that underlies this story: he tips his hat to all the gifts that modernity has created. The narrator captures the author's voice beautifully and she seems completely at ease reproducing the accents (American southern, upper-class British, insurgent Irish, etc) of all the colorful individuals who come into these pages..

Johnson is endlessly curious, constantly taking digressions -- one minute he's talking about how the British Navy in the 1820s worked to eliminate the slave trade, a few pages later he's with a group of visionary and ambitious painters in Paris changing how watercolor paintings are made and reproduced, or how duelling was gradually driven out of modern life, how central heating started to reach the middle classes, how organized sports (boxing especially) swept through the UK. The book is very long and digressive, but I never felt impatient -- not just because the sketches were so compelling, but because he is throughout pullilng forward his themes and preoccupations. The horrors in this history (the massacres of the Napoleonic wars, the ruthless efficiency of the slave trade, the extermination of indigenous peoples in the New World) are vividly captured, but Johnson also pays close attention to how modern societies find ways to correct course. Listening to this, you marvel at the nuances of human progress, and emerge enriched, informed, touched and also a litlte more optimistic about our own brand of modernity, our future.

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Fascinating book but a difficult listen

Reviewed: 07-04-22

I don’t fault the narrator, so much as the publisher. If you’ve got a book about 2 French intellectuals, hire a narrator who has a little bit of knowledge of how French ounds. This narrator mispronounced familiar words and names Camus, De Gaulle, the Sorbonne, etc and it made it hard. Not his fault that he speaks no French. He was miscast and given no support in the audio booth.

The main character, Jacques Monod, was an astonishing human being, a brilliant and brave man, and a great character for a book. It was very exciting to learn about him. The philosopher Camus plays a support role, and the author of the book struggles a little bit trying to give them equal weight. Sean Carroll is a science writer and I felt he was more insightful about the scientist than the philosopher,but in the end you do feel that the parallel between the two Frenchmen is very much justified. I was very glad I read this book.

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1 person found this helpful

A Satire - and deeply human

Reviewed: 02-27-22

It is an achievement to write something this satirical and in many ways scathing, and yet create a central character who, even if inarticulate and morally limited, still grabs and holds our deepest sympathy throughout. The book is as finely observed a portrait of America at the outset of the "roaring Twenties" as one could hope to find - and in its meticulously details and wry understatement, it is also often laugh-out-loud funny. But as Babbitt goes through his crises of identity and mid-life, I was gripped with worry for him, and I saw myself in him.

David Colacci has beautifully captured the "voice" of Babbitt, filled with bravura and yet with this undertow of vulnerability. I read the book in Whispersync, going back and forth between the written and the audiobook, but I preferred listening. Collacci breathed extra vitality into the story and its central character.

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Non-fiction storytelling from a maestro

Reviewed: 12-13-21

I believe that the author David Quammen never studied science -- that he loved the outdoors and he came to his job (non-fiction writing) because he couldn't earn a living being a novelist. That might be one of the reasons he's so good at what he does -- he tells you a hell of a tale and when the science gets technical, he holds your hand and reassures you while he deftly explains it to you, in small enough bursts that you don't panic and you don't give up. I read his short book on Darwin - it's a gem. This is more ambitious -- a sweeping update on how the science of evolution has . . .well, evolved in recent years, as microbiological discoveries made a lot of really smart people need to re-think Darwin. All the new findings don't prove Darwin wrong, anymore than Einstein disproved Newton -- but they update Darwin's ideas in some ways that are just plain astounding. And at times disturbing! Quammen juggles an ensemble of memorable characters -- scientists who are friends or who are rivals, and sometimes both at the same time -- as he tells this epic story of human curiosity and discovery.

And the reading such a pleasure! Jacques Roy has nailed the author's "voice:" plain-spoken, vernacular, engaging without ever being showy. A perfect match. The thirteen hours raced by.

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Is there anything this author cannot do?

Reviewed: 10-06-21

Not only is the author by all accounts a giant in modern physics but it turns out he's a graceful and passionate writer. Not fair that one person can do all of that!

He sets himself the task of making non-scientists like me care about the most obscure aspects of elementary particle physics. You don't know what elementary particie physics is? Neither did I! And I would say that 20% or more of what Weinberg writes in this book went right over my head. But it didn't subtract from my joy in the book, which at its core is a celebration of human curiosity and diligence in cracking the code to the most fundamental laws of nature. You emerge staggered by what human beings, when they collaborate, are capable of.

The book is an act of intellectual generosity -- a researcher taking time away from his research to explain his field to those who don't understand it. Steven Weinberg died this year -- let's tip our hat to an extraordinary man.

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A masterpiece, masterfully performed

Reviewed: 12-22-20

This is an astonishing book! Incredibly witty, outrageous, sexy, irreverent, sometimes vulgar, often so funny that, walking through the streets with my earbuds in, I would laugh out loud. It was long and I thought I would have trouble getting through it, but I'd eagerly turn it back on at each free moment just for the joy of it, the humor enriched by what is actually, beneath all the satirical laughs, a very touching portrait of family members who cannot for the life of them communicate with each other but where each one remains deeply tied to every other, by love as well as habit.

But I really want to talk about the reader. I do not think I would have finished the book if I'd been reading it the traditional way. David McCallion carried me along; his manner captured perfectly (for me) the tone of the author's voice-- outrageous, verbose, sometimes pompous, at times absurdly erudite and show-offy, sometimes shamelessly working to win over the affection of the reader -- a most unreliable narrator, a con man and lovable scoundrel whom you wanted to hear more from, even as he picks your pocket and abuses your trust.. I have no idea who McCallion is but it's a hell of an achievement. And to sustain that in a recording booth by yourself for all those hours! His "Uncle Toby" voice is a comic masterpiece. The reading is not perfect: his voice for the father, Walter Shandy, and Corporal Trim are at times too close to each other. And when he has to read excerpts in French (don't worry, that's all part of the humor, you're not expected to understand it), it's clear that he has nobody to coach him on the basics of pronunciation. C'mon, publisher, give this wonderful actor a bit of support, coach him on the French re-reads and edit them back in. But these criticisms are easily forgotten when compared to the achievement of so successfully capturing the spirit and "voice" of this book. This is a classic that is going to be listened to 50 years from now. I feel lucky to have found this performance, a read for the ages - a great reading of a great, great, great book.

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2 people found this helpful

Towering reputation but. . .

Reviewed: 07-21-20

I could not fully grasp the reasons for this book being as famous as it is. The prose is classical and magisterial, the Erudition beyond question, And there’s an interesting parallel between Rome’s time of glory and the PAX americana that surrounded her as she wrote this book in the late 1940s and early 1950s. But I could never quite believe that this was Hadrian’s voice

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Landmark political memoir

Reviewed: 02-21-20

Orwell writes so simply, straightforwardly, modestly, that it's easy to underestimate both the man and his memoir. He is a towering figure - not just in literature, but in 20th C politics -- and this memoir one of his peak achievements. He rutdissects the cynicism and amorality of Communist power politics in anti-Franco Spain -- and yet remembers and celebrate the only time in his life -- on the front lines -- when he experienced a life free of hierarchy and class. He is so nonchalant that you have to read between the lines to grasp how brave he was -- and the episode when he is wounded is utterly gripping. Without any fanfare,he makes a profound moral statement about the first clash between fascism and communism.

The recording was made in 1992 and shows its age. Davidson's voice sounds almost like a parody of the breezy, plummy British upper-classes -- especially distracting since the issue of class is so important to Orwell and he, middle-class/upper middle-class, wouldn't have sounded like that. Davidson mispronounces all the Spanish, and can't pull off the American dialogue in the book. It would be great to get an updated recording that also folds in Lionel Trilling's famous introduction. Until then, I recommend listening at x1.25 speed, where the stylistic quirks are felt much less.

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2 people found this helpful

An odd reading performance -- maybe the right one?

Reviewed: 01-15-20

The recording dates back to the 1990s and it's odd -- a near caricature of an English gentleman's voice and accent. Initially it felt very much the wrong voice for this plain-spoken, unpretentious left-wing writer, whose loathing of so many aspects of the English upper-classes rings through his writings. But by the end of this brilliant book, my objections had lifted, for the second half of WIGAN PIER is a ruthlessly confessional insight into how class prejudices endure in all of us, including the writer, despite our best efforts, and the actor's upper class tones felt suddenly appropriate.

This is one strange book -- a deeply moving portrait of the miseries of English working-class life among the miners of Northern England, followed by a harrowing critique of socialism from a man who believed deeply in Socialism but was too honest not to attack its faults. A classic I'd heard about for decades and I'm so glad I know understand why it's a classic, one that has in no way lost its poliltical relevance.

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more than a masterpiece

Reviewed: 11-26-19

Brilliant and strangely modern, with its proto-feminist heroine (or anti-heroine) and its playfully unreliable narrator. When I say Vanity Fair is a masterpiece, I'm just saying what millions of readers have said before.

So let me tell you instead about John Castle. This actor skillfully captures the various characters of the novel, their tone of voice, their accent (his version of a Frenchman trying to speak English is especially inspired.) But his achievement goes much further. The most important voice he has captured is that of the author, or rather the narrator, which in this novel is not quite the same thing. The narrator divulges dark secrets and then . . .holds other secrets back, claiming ignorance or wishing to spare the reader. The narrator is brilliant, hard-edged, at times lyrical -- and often, like many other figures who crowd this book, not entirely trustworthy. Castle, in his pauses, his breaths, his hesitations, his hints of irony, has become that voice.

Generally, it's convenience that pushes me to listen to books, rather than read them. But this time I'm sure I've been treated to a much richer experience than the already rich, rich experience of the millions before me who didn't listen, but merely turned the pages of this great book.

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1 person found this helpful