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Becoming Faulkner
- The Art and Life of William Faulker
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
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Publisher's summary
William Faulkner was the greatest American novelist of the 20th century, yet he lived a life marked by a pervasive sense of failure. Throughout his career, he remained haunted by his inability to master a series of personal and professional challenges: his less-than-heroic military career; the loss of his brother in an airplane crash; a disappointing stint as a Hollywood screenwriter; and a destructive bout with alcoholism. In this imaginative biography, Philip Weinstein - a leading authority on the great novelist - targets Faulkner's embattled sense of self as central to both his life and his work. Weinstein shows how Faulkner's troubled interactions with time, place, and history - with antebellum practices and racial division - take on their fullest meanings in his fiction. Exploring the resonance of his own unpreparedness, Faulkner invented a singular language that captured human consciousness under stress as never before. Becoming Faulkner joins Faulkner's life and art in a bold new way, giving listeners a full vantage from which to better understand this 20th-century literary genius.
Weinstein shows how Faulkner's troubled interactions with time, place, and history - with antebellum practices and southern heritage - form a pattern that played out over the course of his entire life. At the same time, these incidents take on their fullest meanings in his fiction. It was in meditating on his failures, his own unreadiness, Weinstein argues, that Faulkner came up with his singular language, one that captured human consciousness under stress as never before. His fruitless striving catapulted American literature to a new level of sophistication. Narrating the events that comprised Faulkner's life, biographers have long struggled to depict his personal complexity, the paradoxes that shaped his decisions and dogged his relationships. But without a consideration of the writing as well, the troubles in the life fail to reveal their deeper resonance. By skillfully analyzing the work while tracing the events, Weinstein achieves a full portrait, revealing struggles that animate his life and shadows that complicate his work. Becoming Faulkner thus conjoins Faulkner's life and art in a bold new way, giving listeners a full vantage from which to better understand this 20th-century literary genius.
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At the Existentialist Café
- Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
- By: Sarah Bakewell
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Paris, 1933: Three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow philosopher who raves to them about a new conceptual framework from Berlin called phenomenology. "You see," he says, "if you are a phenomenologist, you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!"
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Consistent look at incoherent philosophy
- By Gary on 06-19-16
By: Sarah Bakewell
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Reading Like a Writer
- By: Francine Prose
- Narrated by: Nanette Savard
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters and discover why their work has endured. Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire listeners to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart.
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Practical, literate, generous
- By Gare on 04-13-08
By: Francine Prose
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Mark Twain
- A Life
- By: Ron Powers
- Narrated by: Ron Powers
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Abridged
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Mark Twain founded the American voice. His works are a living national treasury: taught, quoted, and reprinted more than those of any writer except Shakespeare. His awestruck contemporaries saw him as the representative figure of his times, and his influence has deeply flavored the 20th and 21st centuries.
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Buy the Book
- By W.Denis on 10-22-05
By: Ron Powers
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The Devil Finds Work
- An Essay
- By: James Baldwin
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 3 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Baldwin's personal reflections on movies gathered here in a book-length essay are also a probing appraisal of American racial politics. Offering an incisive look at racism in American movies and a vision of America's self-delusions and deceptions, Baldwin challenges the underlying assumptions in such films as In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and The Exorcist.
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A Critical Masterpiece.
- By Ramon McGee on 05-10-18
By: James Baldwin
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J. D. Salinger: A Life
- By: Kenneth Slawenski
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 19 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the most popular and mysterious figures in American literary history, J. D. Salinger eluded fans and journalists for most of his life. Now comes a new biography that Peter Ackroyd in the Times of London calls "energetic and magnificently researched" - a book from which "a true picture of Salinger emerges". Filled with new information and revelations garnered from countless interviews, letters, and public records, J. D. Salinger: A Life presents an extraordinary life that spanned nearly the entire 20th century.
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Things I've Been Silent About
- By: Azar Nafisi
- Narrated by: Naila Azad
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Azar Nafisi, author of the beloved international best seller Reading Lolita in Tehran, now gives us a stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, memories of her life lived in thrall to a powerful and complex mother, against the background of a country's political revolution.
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Family portrait in the frame of history
- By Galina COS on 07-02-16
By: Azar Nafisi
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Ted Hughes
- The Unauthorized Life
- By: Jonathan Bate
- Narrated by: Mike Grady
- Length: 25 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Ted Hughes, poet laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. With an equal gift for poetry and prose, and with a soul as capacious as any poet in history, he was also a prolific children's writer and has been hailed as the greatest English letter writer since John Keats. His magnetic personality and insatiable appetite for friendship, love, and life also attracted more scandal than any poet since Lord Byron.
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Phenomenal thanks to narrator!
- By equinox14 on 06-26-16
By: Jonathan Bate
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The Awakening
- By: Kate Chopin
- Narrated by: Susie Berneis
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Unsatisfied with the expectations of Creole society and unhappy with her family life, Edna Pontellier begins to fall in love with the dapper Robert Lebrun. Lebrun's flirtations, along with the lifestyle of renowned musician Mademoiselle Reisz, rejuvenates Edna's sense of freedom and independence. However, an affair with the womanizer Alcee Arobin provides Edna with a taste of the danger that comes with living outside of social convention.
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Good story, great reading.
- By Donald on 03-14-17
By: Kate Chopin
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Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life
- By: Gerald Martin
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 22 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In his novels and short stories, Gabriel García Márquez has transformed the particulars of his own life and the lives of his fellow Colombians into wondrous fiction. While telling the story of the sloppily dressed, skinny young man who rose from obscurity as a provincial journalist to international fame as the progenitor of a new literature, Gerald Martin also considers the tensions in García Márquez's life between celebrity and the personal quest for literary quality, between politics and writing, and between the seductions of power, solitude, and love.
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Great content, somewhat disappointing narrator.
- By Paola Herrington on 01-08-13
By: Gerald Martin
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How Fiction Works
- By: James Wood
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Ranging widely from Homer to David Foster Wallace, from What Maisie Knew to Make Way for Ducklings, Wood takes the reader through the basic elements of the art, step by step. He sums up two decades of insight with wit and concision, resulting in nothing less than a philosophy of the novel, which has won critical acclaim nationwide, from the San Francisco Chronicle to the New York Times Book Review.
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Educational!
- By Don on 05-04-09
By: James Wood
What listeners say about Becoming Faulkner
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Sammy L
- 06-22-20
Well Done
Excellent read and author was had become Faulkner was Faulkner In many ways like reading Faulkner. Beautifully written. A real treat
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- W Perry Hall
- 05-01-14
Miss.'s BCS-Bundren.Compson.Snopes/Sutpen/Sartoris
The Art and Life of William Faulkner is told in an interesting, at times captivating, manner without a lot of academician double-speak. It explores Faulkner's drive and defects, masterpieces and failures in art and in life.
It was of tremendous help in reading and interpreting The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, As I Lay Dying and Sanctuary.
Ballerini does an excellent job with the narration.
I thoroughly enjoyed and thus highly recommend this.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Albert Kendrick
- 11-13-18
Boring
I am new to literary biography, if that is how you refer to this work. I have read most of Faulkner’s novels, which helped, since much of what Weinstein covered were themes across groups of Faulkner’s novels. I felt I learned quite a bit and this book provided me some perspective on Faulkner’s work, but I can’t say I enjoyed it that much. I found the literary analysis a bit overdone and pretentious even while finding some value in it. I enjoyed more the segments of biography and how Faulkner’s life affected his novels and his themes. I haven’t read enough of this type of work to know if it is the genre or the execution that left me unsatisfied and a bit bored. Reading about Faulkner’s and other authors’ lives does make you wonder if often gifts of this type come with significant troubles in dealing with life’s normal challenges. #Biography #Boring #Pretentious #Tagsgiving #Sweepstakes
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1 person found this helpful
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- Thomas Purtzer
- 03-08-19
Superb analysis of writing legend William Faulkner
This audio book is great! I think anyone listening to it should have a sound knowledge of what Faulkner wrote. I have read almost all of his writings. This book analyzed what drove Faulkner to become who he became. Excellent job!’
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- Jed B
- 06-30-17
Heartily recommend
Others have complained of redundancy, but how can you write like Hemingway & evoke Faulkner? Especially when you're teasing out support for your thesis by quoting from the man's work. This sheds light both on the man and on the work; it doesn't revere him or sully him, but the writer is clearly a fan, and so he does get flowery at times. I found it satisfying.
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Overall
- Lawrence J. Emery
- 08-20-18
Biography mixed with Faulkner's literary work.
Treasured insights into a complex artist are intermixed with his own struggle with life. Please read Faulkner's books. This work is thoughtful and engaging, requiring its readers to better appreciate Faulkner's art while examining the human heart and the struggle of life.
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1 person found this helpful
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- mary
- 05-08-19
I can’t stomach it
He reads it in a detached sing song
voice. It’s horrible. The story is told
In uppity language that is hard to follow. What a waste! Ugh!
I just wanted to find out about this famous writer.
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