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Both Flesh and Not
- Essays
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, Katherine Kellgren
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
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Publisher's summary
Beloved for his epic agony, brilliantly discerning eye, and hilarious and constantly self-questioning tone, David Foster Wallace was heralded by both critics and fans as the voice of a generation. Both Flesh and Not gathers 15 essays never published in book form, including "Federer Both Flesh and Not", considered by many to be his nonfiction masterpiece; "The (As it Were) Seminal Importance of Terminator 2", which deftly dissects James Cameron's blockbuster; and "Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young", an examination of television's effect on a new generation of writers.
A sweeping, exhilarating collection of the author's most emotionally immediate work, Both Flesh and Not spans almost 20 years of Wallace's career and reminds us why A.O. Scott called him "The Best Mind of His Generation" (The New York Times).
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A bit of a mixed bag with some amazing discussion
- By Justin on 04-27-22
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Six Walks in the Fictional Woods
- By: Umberto Eco
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In this exhilarating book, we accompany Umberto Eco as he explores the intricacies of fictional form and method. Using examples ranging from fairy tales and Flaubert, Poe and Mickey Spillane, Eco draws us in by means of a novelist's techniques, making us his collaborators in the creation of his text and in the investigation of some of fiction's most basic mechanisms.
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big ideas presented simply
- By Ashton on 01-31-14
By: Umberto Eco
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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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The Art of Fiction
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Ayn Rand discusses how a writer combines abstract ideas with concrete action and description to achieve a unity of theme, plot, characterization, and style, the four essential elements of fiction. Here, too, are Rand's illuminating analyses of passages from famous writers, rewrites of scenes from her own works, and fascinating rules for building dramatic plots and characters with depth.
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Get Stein on Writing
- By Lois on 12-04-09
By: Ayn Rand
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Women & Power
- A Manifesto
- By: Mary Beard
- Narrated by: Mary Beard
- Length: 1 hr and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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At long last, Mary Beard addresses in one brave book the misogynists and trolls who mercilessly attack and demean women the world over, including, very often, Mary herself. In Women & Power, she traces the origins of this misogyny to its ancient roots, examining the pitfalls of gender and the ways that history has mistreated strong women since time immemorial.
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Short and fabulous
- By André C. on 03-13-20
By: Mary Beard
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Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue
- The Untold History of English
- By: John McWhorter
- Narrated by: John McWhorter
- Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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A survey of the quirks and quandaries of the English language, focusing on our strange and wonderful grammar. Why do we say "I am reading a catalog" instead of "I read a catalog"? Why do we say "do" at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue distills hundreds of years of fascinating lore into one lively history.
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Great for casual linguists
- By Bertie on 01-11-10
By: John McWhorter
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Gumption
- Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America's Gutsiest Troublemakers
- By: Nick Offerman
- Narrated by: Nick Offerman
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The star of Parks and Recreation and author of the New York Times best seller Paddle Your Own Canoe returns with a second book that humorously highlights 21 figures from our nation’s history, from her inception to present day - Nick’s personal pantheon of “great Americans". After the great success of his autobiography, Paddle Your Own Canoe, Offerman now focuses on the lives of those who inspired him. From George Washington to Willie Nelson, he describes 21 heroic figures and why they inspire in him such great meaning.
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Swagger and mirth
- By Tamara Shope on 09-14-15
By: Nick Offerman
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Angels and Ages
- A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life
- By: Adam Gopnik
- Narrated by: Adam Gopnik
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Written 200 years after Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln shared a birthday on February 12, 1809, this insightful account sheds new light on two men who changed the way we think about the meaning of life and death. Award-winning journalist Adam Gopnik's unique perspective, combined with previously unexplored stories and figures, reveals two men planted firmly at the roots of modern views and liberal values.
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Connecting Darwin and Lincoln
- By Joshua Kim on 06-10-12
By: Adam Gopnik
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A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
- Essays and Arguments
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Paul Garcia
- Length: 17 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In this exuberantly praised book - a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner - David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction.
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Wonderful book, terrible narration!
- By Karen on 08-20-13
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Consider the Lobster (A Story from Consider the Lobster)
- And Other Essays
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Robert Petkoff
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
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Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures.
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How this differs from the other version
- By Jonathan Penley on 12-26-17
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The Pale King
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.
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The King is dead, long live the King!
- By Darwin8u on 10-31-16
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Oblivion
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness--a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity.
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Just 2 Fast & Huge & ALL Interconnected 4 Words
- By Darwin8u on 08-22-12
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Girl with Curious Hair
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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From the eerily "real", almost holographic evocations of historical figures like Lyndon Johnson and over-televised game-show hosts and late-night comedians to the title story, in which terminal punk nihilism meets Young Republicanism, David Foster Wallace renders the incredible comprehensible, the bizarre normal, the absurd hilarious, and the familiar strange.
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This book is not NOT a Datsun!
- By Darwin8u on 04-15-12
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Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Cerveris, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 17 mins
- Highlights
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. In his exuberantly acclaimed collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, he combines hilarity and an escalating disquiet in stories that astonish, entertain, and expand our ideas of the pleasures that fiction can afford.
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This is ABRIDGED
- By Mark on 09-26-09
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A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
- Essays and Arguments
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Paul Garcia
- Length: 17 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
In this exuberantly praised book - a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner - David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction.
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Wonderful book, terrible narration!
- By Karen on 08-20-13
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Consider the Lobster (A Story from Consider the Lobster)
- And Other Essays
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Robert Petkoff
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures.
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How this differs from the other version
- By Jonathan Penley on 12-26-17
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The Pale King
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.
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The King is dead, long live the King!
- By Darwin8u on 10-31-16
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Oblivion
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness--a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity.
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Just 2 Fast & Huge & ALL Interconnected 4 Words
- By Darwin8u on 08-22-12
-
Girl with Curious Hair
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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From the eerily "real", almost holographic evocations of historical figures like Lyndon Johnson and over-televised game-show hosts and late-night comedians to the title story, in which terminal punk nihilism meets Young Republicanism, David Foster Wallace renders the incredible comprehensible, the bizarre normal, the absurd hilarious, and the familiar strange.
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This book is not NOT a Datsun!
- By Darwin8u on 04-15-12
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Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Cerveris, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 17 mins
- Highlights
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. In his exuberantly acclaimed collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, he combines hilarity and an escalating disquiet in stories that astonish, entertain, and expand our ideas of the pleasures that fiction can afford.
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This is ABRIDGED
- By Mark on 09-26-09
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The David Foster Wallace Reader
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, David Foster Wallace, Sally Foster Wallace, and others
- Length: 48 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Where do you begin with a writer as original and brilliant as David Foster Wallace? Here - with a carefully considered selection of his extraordinary body of work, chosen by a range of great writers, critics, and those who worked with him most closely. This volume presents his most dazzling, funniest, and most heartbreaking work.
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Impossible to use without Chapter Names
- By Ethan Klitzke on 12-04-21
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Infinite Jest
- By: David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 64 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.
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With footnotes!
- By George Saris on 04-25-24
By: David Foster Wallace, and others
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The Broom of the System
- A Novel
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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At the center of The Broom of the System is the betwitching (and also bewildered) heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio, which sits on the edge of a suburban wasteland-the Great Ohio Desert. Lenore works as a switchboard attendant at a publishing firm, and in addition to her mind-numbing job, she has a few other problems. Her great-grandmother, a one-time student of Wittgenstein, has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home.
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Evidence I WASTED my College years.
- By Darwin8u on 04-18-12
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David Foster Wallace: In His Own Words
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Original Recording
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Collected here for the first time are the stories and speeches of David Foster Wallace as read by the author himself. Over the course of his career, David Foster Wallace recorded a variety of his work in diverse circumstances - from studio recordings to live performances - that are finally compiled in this unique collection.
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The best book on Audible!
- By Karen Chance on 04-07-16
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Everything and More
- A Compact History of Infinity
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Part history, part philosophy, part love letter to the study of mathematics, Everything and More is an illuminating tour of infinity. With his infectious curiosity and trademark verbal pyrotechnics, David Foster Wallace takes us from Aristotle to Newton, Leibniz, Karl Weierstrass, and finally Georg Cantor and his set theory. Through it all, Wallace proves to be an ideal guide - funny, wry, and unfailingly enthusiastic. Featuring an introduction by Neal Stephenson, this edition is a perfect introduction to the beauty of mathematics and the undeniable strangeness of the infinite.
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Equations via audio are tuff
- By Brian E. on 03-08-22
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Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself
- A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace
- By: David Lipsky
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain, Danny Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In David Lipsky's view, David Foster Wallace was the best young writer in America. Wallace's pieces for Harper's magazine in the '90s were, according to Lipsky, like hearing for the first time the brain voice of everybody I knew: Here was how we all talked, experienced, thought. It was like smelling the damp in the air, seeing the first flash from a storm a mile away. You knew something gigantic was coming.
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Leapin' Over That Wall of Self
- By Darwin8u on 08-27-12
By: David Lipsky
What listeners say about Both Flesh and Not
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- PetyrBaelish
- 02-16-14
hate this format
Would you listen to Both Flesh and Not again? Why?
They pad out this book with some pedestrian definitions from DFW's notebook at the beginning of each essay. With the lame table of contents you cant find where each essay is and you have to listen to interminable reading of definitions to get to the next essay
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5 people found this helpful
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- Alan
- 10-23-15
Too bad it's padded
David Foster Wallace is my favorite writer. But in this recording, the producers decided to pad it with vocabulary. This is done by having the female narrator read words that were in Wallace's notebook, along with their definitions from the dictionary (not ever Wallace's own definitions). And these vocabulary sections precede each actual essay by Wallace, so there is no easy way to skip them. And finally, the voice of the female reader is annoying in the extreme--completely unlike the voice of Wallace himself, which you can hear (and I strongly recommend that you hear) in his collection "Consider the Lobster." What a shame that the producers felt this padding was necessary.
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- Laurel Zito
- 08-21-19
Fake English Accent ruined the whole book
Before every chapter (as punishment) Hachette Audio has a woman named Katherine Kellgren read long list of vocabulary words in the most annoying fake English Accent. I can't skip over them when I am driving in my car on mountain roads, so I have to turn the volume down and wait. The vocabulary words are not word including within the essays which are read by Robert Petkoff who has a perfect reading voice for David Foster Wallace. Why are they forcing us to learn these words when they are not included in the essays? Why were they not included a separate chapter and read by Robert Petkoff?
In the middle of the essays (any time) Katherine Kellgren interupts Robert Petkoff and reads the footnotes. She was NOT English. She was putting on a phony English Accent thinking he made her sound high class. She reads with a smug self congratulating tone as if she is very pleased with herself. I could tell right away there was something wrong with her voice. Nothing I have ever heard from Black Stone Audio ever sounded this bad. She has the worst reading voice I have ever heard on any audio book! Sadly I will exchange this Audio Book and buy the Kindle Edition. Robert Petkoff sounds fantastic as David Foster Wallace. I demand to find out who was behind this decision to not only use Katherine Kellgren but fix it so her voice can not skipped over. The only way to make this audio book work would be buy the CDs and use audio editing software to edit out Katherine Kellgren’s voice, and that is too much work as these are not the best of David Foster Wallace’s Essays. These are second string essays published after he died.
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- Anton
- 11-20-12
First Posthumous Non-Fiction From Foster Wallace
This is the first posthumous collection of David Foster Wallace's nonfiction work. It is hard to say whether or not the pieces here are of any value to non-fans of Wallace, but as someone who thoroughly enjoys both his fiction and non-fiction alike, this is a collection most definitely worth the read. The collected pieces were all previously published elsewhere, so there is nothing here that has never been seen before.
The titular piece on Federer is a great one and has been referred to by many as a masterpiece. Tennis has always been a major writing point of Wallace's with the subject featuring prominently in Infinite Jest as well as pieces focusing on the sport in "Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley" in the Supposedly Fun Thing... collection and a review of Tracy Austin's autobiography in Consider the Lobster. As a gifted writer, powerful observer and tennis aficionado (he tinkered around in the junior rankings as a teenager), Wallace make's the sport of tennis, oft not considered a major one in here in the U.S., come to life; adding beauty and grace in a manner that transfers his enthusiasm and understanding to his audience with ease.
Fictive futures may very well seem dated at first glance as it discusses authors and a sense of things from the point of view of 1987 when it was written, but carries with many universal and still true points. Wallace discusses creative writing programs, teachers, students, the role of pop culture and the roll of how said culture and entertainment is delivered. He discusses film and television and fitting true to his nature, poses insightful questions and perceptions about where the culture is and where it is going in various respects made all the more interesting by the fact that it is now a quarter century later and we now have the benefit of hindsight and comparison.
Without doing a piece by piece review, I will simply say that this is a very approachable collection with familiar and understandable topics. I will not say that is collection is easy however, as the thing I enjoy most about Wallace's subjects and style is the challenge of his writing and the topics he writes about. They are often things I would not investigate on my own, but items none the less that are much appreciated and enjoyed through David Foster Wallace's looking glass.
Highly Recommended!!
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- T. Myers
- 01-09-14
What am I missing?
Would you try another book from David Foster Wallace and/or Robert Petkoff and Katherine Kellgren ?
No
How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?
Not sure about that.
Which scene was your favorite?
N/A
Do you think Both Flesh and Not needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?
Not for me.
Any additional comments?
So I listened to this because I had heard about DFW and wanted to see what he was like. I understand he is very popular and well respected so maybe I am just missing something. He gets really obsessive about stuff that I just don't find that interesting, maybe it is just my personality but I found my mind wondering. He is obviously very smart and it is brilliantly written but the topics bored me. Highly recommended if you love literary analysis and tennis, emphasis on the tennis.
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- Jake Edwards
- 03-14-17
Both Alive and Not
This one sags a bit here and there under the weight of specificity and obsessive opposition to solipsism and her modern indulgences, but remains well worth the trouble.
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- Darwin8u
- 02-16-13
Both Perfect and Not
I loved and appreciated this book more than the four stars might suggest. I loved the way it was formated. I loved revisiting essays I had read previously in New York TImes, Salon, the Atlantic, BAE 2007. I loved the ability to again be surprised by DFW's wit, charm, inteligence, and in the last couple essays anger. Having recently lost a loved one in a rather dramatic fashion, I was also taken back those ordurous emotions I felt on September 12/13, 2008 when I heard that DFW killed himself. In the middle of this enormous banking/economic collapse, losing DFW (to others) might have seemed small. But almost 4.5 years later my 401(k) has recovered but I have yet to get over DFW killing himself. A tad dramatic? I'm sure. Anyway, back to my review of Both Flesh and Not. Part of what I loved about this series of essays was how the publisher used his definitions and usage notes as paragraph breaks. It was brilliant and insightful and actually VERY intimate.
Both Robert Petkoff and Katherine Kellgren^1 did a fantastic job with narration.
1. It does make me wonder how Katherine will put this on her resume. Does she say she was a narrator for Both Flesh and Not or a footnote narrator? Anyway, the narration worked well and showed how Hachette could have addressed the narration debacle that was Infinite Jest.
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- Stephen
- 05-01-13
Worth a read for the serious DFW fan
Is there anything you would change about this book?
I wouldn't necessarily have left all of the essays included in the book. It's piecemeal of his material for various magazines over the year and, while insightful and certainly entertaining at spots, it's overall just *ok* and I certainly don't believe Wallace would have chosen these specific essays for a collection of his material (for the most part these essays were available for him to have chosen from previously and he clearly opted not to do so).
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