Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $14.81
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
About this listen
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.
Narrators include David Foster Wallace, John Krasinski, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Cerveris, Will Forte, Malcolm Goodwin, Christopher Meloni, Chris Messina, Max Minghella, Dennis O'Hare, Lou Taylor Pucci, Ben Shenkman, Joey Slotnick, and Cory Stoll.
©2009 David Foster Wallace (P)2009 HachetteListeners also enjoyed...
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
How this differs from the other version
- By Jonathan Penley on 12-26-17
-
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
-
Overall
-
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.
-
-
Wonderful book, terrible narration!
- By Karen on 08-20-13
-
Both Flesh and Not
- Essays
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, Katherine Kellgren
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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 more.
-
-
Both Perfect and Not
- By Darwin8u on 02-16-13
-
Oblivion
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
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.
-
-
Just 2 Fast & Huge & ALL Interconnected 4 Words
- By Darwin8u on 08-22-12
-
David Foster Wallace: In His Own Words
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
The best book on Audible!
- By Karen Chance on 04-07-16
-
Everything and More
- A Compact History of Infinity
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Equations via audio are tuff
- By Brian E. on 03-08-22
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
How this differs from the other version
- By Jonathan Penley on 12-26-17
-
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
-
Overall
-
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.
-
-
Wonderful book, terrible narration!
- By Karen on 08-20-13
-
Both Flesh and Not
- Essays
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, Katherine Kellgren
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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 more.
-
-
Both Perfect and Not
- By Darwin8u on 02-16-13
-
Oblivion
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
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.
-
-
Just 2 Fast & Huge & ALL Interconnected 4 Words
- By Darwin8u on 08-22-12
-
David Foster Wallace: In His Own Words
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
The best book on Audible!
- By Karen Chance on 04-07-16
-
Everything and More
- A Compact History of Infinity
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Equations via audio are tuff
- By Brian E. on 03-08-22
-
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.
-
-
The King is dead, long live the King!
- By Darwin8u on 10-31-16
-
Girl with Curious Hair
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
This book is not NOT a Datsun!
- By Darwin8u on 04-15-12
-
The Broom of the System
- A Novel
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Evidence I WASTED my College years.
- By Darwin8u on 04-18-12
-
This Is Water: The Original David Foster Wallace Recording
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
- Length: 24 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. This is the audio recording of David Foster Wallace delivering that very address. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others.
-
-
The best 20 minutes of my life.
- By John Nosal on 10-09-12
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Impossible to use without Chapter Names
- By Ethan Klitzke on 12-04-21
-
On Tennis
- Five Essays
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the author of Infinite Jest and Consider the Lobster: A collection of five brilliant essays on tennis, from the author's own experience as a junior player to his celebrated profile of Roger Federer at the peak of his powers. A "long-time rabid fan of tennis," and a regionally ranked tennis player in his youth, David Foster Wallace wrote about the game like no one else. On Tennis presents David Foster Wallace's five essays on the sport, published between 1990 and 2006, and hailed as some of the greatest and most innovative sports writing of our time.
-
-
Inspiration, though, is contagious, and multiform
- By Darwin8u on 01-27-17
-
Slaughterhouse-Five
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: James Franco
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).
-
-
Don't Quit Your Daytime Job, James
- By Keith on 11-20-15
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Leapin' Over That Wall of Self
- By Darwin8u on 08-27-12
By: David Lipsky
-
Lolita
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Awe and exhilaration—along with heartbreak and mordant wit—abound in Lolita, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsession for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America.
-
-
An Absolutely Gorgeous Audible Experience
- By Jim on 10-26-05
By: Vladimir Nabokov
-
Purity
- A Novel
- By: Jonathan Franzen
- Narrated by: Jenna Lamia, Dylan Baker, Robert Petkoff
- Length: 25 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Young Pip Tyler doesn't know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that she's saddled with $130,000 in student debt, that she's squatting with anarchists in Oakland, and that her relationship with her mother - her only family - is hazardous. But she doesn't have a clue who her father is, why her mother chose to live as a recluse with an invented name, or how she'll ever have a normal life.
-
-
Not a case of Franzenfreude
- By Mel on 09-13-15
By: Jonathan Franzen
-
Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story
- A Life of David Foster Wallace
- By: D. T. Max
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David Foster Wallace was the leading literary light of his generation, a man who not only captivated readers with his prose but also mesmerized them with his brilliant mind. In this, the first biography of the writer, D. T. Max sets out to chart Wallace’s tormented, anguished, and often triumphant battle to succeed as a novelist as he fights off depression and addiction to emerge with his masterpiece, Infinite Jest.
-
-
Max avoids hagiography or a sycophant's biography
- By Darwin8u on 06-11-13
By: D. T. Max
-
World War Z: The Complete Edition
- An Oral History of the Zombie War
- By: Max Brooks
- Narrated by: Max Brooks, Alan Alda, John Turturro, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 9 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
World War Z: The Complete Edition features 21 additional Hollywood A-list actors and sci-fi fan favorites performing stories not included in the original edition. New narrators include Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese, Spiderman star Alfred Molina, The Walking Dead creator Frank Darabont, rapper Common, Firefly star Nathan Fillion, Shaun of the Dead’s Simon Pegg, and members of the casts of Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes and more!
-
-
Will never pre-order again
- By Ignatz on 05-18-13
By: Max Brooks
Editorial reviews
The second of David Foster Wallace's three short story collections, Brief interviews with Hideous Men is a book that is meant to be heard more than read. Many of these 23 stories are interviews, after all, and the remainder are portraits that slip easily into the realm of a big screen voiceover. Each piece is a monologue, either an interview with a hideous man where the questioner's voice is omitted, or a severely deep third-person description of a hideous man. Wallace has an uncomfortably firm grasp on this concept of "hideous". A life-long Midwestern depressive with a keen sense of adjectives and philosophy thanks to two academic parents, Wallace won many awards for his ability to translate human misery into text, including the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction for one of the pieces in this collection. These are tales of lonely, violent, desperate, very intelligent and articulate men, written by a man who would have easily counted himself among them.
There are a number of reasons why this collection's ideal form is the audiobook. Wallace himself narrates about a third of the stories with an unmistakable softness and intimacy that only the author could bestow on these undesirables. When they shout, rant, and say awful, murderous, or demeaning things, it is Wallace's gentle inflections that will coach you into a respectful ability to keep witnessing the interviewees' monstrosities. About another third of the collection is narrated by John Krasinski, of television's The Office fame. Kransinski's voice is a great foil for Wallace's, slightly less nasal and a bit more edgy, but no less compassionate. Krasinski is also very deep into this book; he adapted it into a screenplay and then directed the film as well as acted in its ensemble cast. in fact, the majority of the ensemble cast narrates the remaining third of these pieces. So the audiobook essentially contains the entire set of monologues from Krasinski's film by the actual actors in that film, minus the overarching thread they concocted to tie all of Wallace's pieces together.
There is a beauty in the simplicity of this plan that makes the text vivid in a way a film cannot. These are men explicating the very roots of their male psyche, and you will not want to know what their faces look like. These are the men who compel you to eavesdrop on them in the anonymity of a train ride to work, but you wouldn't want to get right up close and share a cab with them. You will be sickened to find yourself agreeing with some of what you overhear, but mainly, you will just be horrified by what you overhear. These are men on the edge of the abyss, with Wallace and Krasinski at their best in justifying the worst these characters have to offer. Megan Volpert
Critic reviews
"In this book he demonstrates his strengths as a stylist, humorist and thinker.... None of these stories is easy, but all display an intelligence and a swagger that make them hard to put down." ( The Wall Street Journal)
"Brilliant... bitingly funny...wildly imaginative." (Salon.com)
Featured Article: Audiobooks & Podcasts Featuring the Cast of
The Office
What’s the secret behind the success of The Office? The show's talented and diverse cast of actors, writers, and comedians plays a huge part. If you're a fan of looking for something new to check out after streaming the show for the upteenth time, you can experience the voices of the Dunder Mifflin crew in a totally new way in audio. A number of our favorite former cubicle-dwellers have either written or loaned their vocal talents to audio.
Related to this topic
-
Girl in Need of a Tourniquet
- Memoir of a Borderline Personality
- By: Merri Lisa Johnson
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An honest and compelling memoir, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet is Merri Lisa Johnson’s account of her borderline personality disorder and how it has affected her life and relationships. Johnson describes the feeling of "bleeding out" unable to tell where she stopped and where her partner began. A self-confessed "psycho girlfriend," she was influenced by many emotional factors from her past. She recalls her path through a dysfunctional, destructive relationship, while recounting the experiences that brought her to her breaking point.
-
-
Chaotic, disturbing, meaningless
- By BRB on 04-02-14
-
Fury
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Salman Rushdie
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world renowned author of The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie is a Whitbread Award winner and recipient of the Booker Prize. His first truly American novel, Fury is a metaphorically rich black comedy that reflects the pressure-cooker of modern life. Malik Solanka, irascible doll-maker and retired historian of ideas, suffers the pain of wanting without knowing exactly what it is he wants.
-
-
surprisingly good
- By David on 11-21-07
By: Salman Rushdie
-
More Die of Heartbreak
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kenneth Trachtenberg, an eccentric and witty native of Paris, travels to the Midwest to spend time with his famous American uncle, a world-renowned botanist and self-described "plant visionary". After numerous affairs and failed relationships, the restless Uncle Benn seeks a settled existence in the form of marriage - but tying the knot again opens the door to a host of new torments.
-
-
A great book
- By John A. on 03-16-22
By: Saul Bellow
-
Us
- Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship
- By: Terrence Real
- Narrated by: Terrence Real, Bruce Springsteen
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At a time when toxic individualism is rending our society at every level, bestselling author and renowned marriage counselor Terrence Real sees how it poisons intimate relationships in his therapy practice, where he works with couples on the brink of disaster. The good news: Warmer, closer, more passionate relationships are possible if you have the right tools. In his transformative new book Us, Real brilliantly observes how our winner-takes-all culture infiltrates families with devastating results.
-
-
I preferred Fierce Intimacy
- By Jose on 06-23-22
By: Terrence Real
-
A Happy Marriage
- A Novel
- By: Rafael Yglesias
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Happy Marriage is both intimate and expansive: It is the story of Enrique Sabas and his wife, Margaret, a novel that alternates between the romantic misadventures of the first weeks of their courtship and the final months of Margaret’s life as she says good-bye to her family, friends, children, and Enrique.
-
-
A Difficult Review -- A Difficult Read
- By Lulu on 06-04-12
By: Rafael Yglesias
-
Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?
- Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform
- By: Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
- Narrated by: Mark Bachman
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gay culture has become a nightmare of consumerism, whether it's an endless quest for Absolut vodka, Diesel jeans, rainbow Hummers, pec implants, or Pottery Barn. Whatever happened to sexual flamboyance and gender liberation, an end to marriage, the military, and the nuclear family? As backrooms are shut down to make way for wedding vows, and gay sexual culture morphs into “straight-acting dudes hangin’ out”, what are the possibilities for a defiant faggotry that challenges the assimilationist norms of a corporate-cozy lifestyle?
-
-
Forget the Status Quo South Beach B.S.
- By Susie on 03-14-13
-
Girl in Need of a Tourniquet
- Memoir of a Borderline Personality
- By: Merri Lisa Johnson
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An honest and compelling memoir, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet is Merri Lisa Johnson’s account of her borderline personality disorder and how it has affected her life and relationships. Johnson describes the feeling of "bleeding out" unable to tell where she stopped and where her partner began. A self-confessed "psycho girlfriend," she was influenced by many emotional factors from her past. She recalls her path through a dysfunctional, destructive relationship, while recounting the experiences that brought her to her breaking point.
-
-
Chaotic, disturbing, meaningless
- By BRB on 04-02-14
-
Fury
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Salman Rushdie
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world renowned author of The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie is a Whitbread Award winner and recipient of the Booker Prize. His first truly American novel, Fury is a metaphorically rich black comedy that reflects the pressure-cooker of modern life. Malik Solanka, irascible doll-maker and retired historian of ideas, suffers the pain of wanting without knowing exactly what it is he wants.
-
-
surprisingly good
- By David on 11-21-07
By: Salman Rushdie
-
More Die of Heartbreak
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kenneth Trachtenberg, an eccentric and witty native of Paris, travels to the Midwest to spend time with his famous American uncle, a world-renowned botanist and self-described "plant visionary". After numerous affairs and failed relationships, the restless Uncle Benn seeks a settled existence in the form of marriage - but tying the knot again opens the door to a host of new torments.
-
-
A great book
- By John A. on 03-16-22
By: Saul Bellow
-
Us
- Getting Past You & Me to Build a More Loving Relationship
- By: Terrence Real
- Narrated by: Terrence Real, Bruce Springsteen
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At a time when toxic individualism is rending our society at every level, bestselling author and renowned marriage counselor Terrence Real sees how it poisons intimate relationships in his therapy practice, where he works with couples on the brink of disaster. The good news: Warmer, closer, more passionate relationships are possible if you have the right tools. In his transformative new book Us, Real brilliantly observes how our winner-takes-all culture infiltrates families with devastating results.
-
-
I preferred Fierce Intimacy
- By Jose on 06-23-22
By: Terrence Real
-
A Happy Marriage
- A Novel
- By: Rafael Yglesias
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Happy Marriage is both intimate and expansive: It is the story of Enrique Sabas and his wife, Margaret, a novel that alternates between the romantic misadventures of the first weeks of their courtship and the final months of Margaret’s life as she says good-bye to her family, friends, children, and Enrique.
-
-
A Difficult Review -- A Difficult Read
- By Lulu on 06-04-12
By: Rafael Yglesias
-
Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?
- Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform
- By: Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
- Narrated by: Mark Bachman
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gay culture has become a nightmare of consumerism, whether it's an endless quest for Absolut vodka, Diesel jeans, rainbow Hummers, pec implants, or Pottery Barn. Whatever happened to sexual flamboyance and gender liberation, an end to marriage, the military, and the nuclear family? As backrooms are shut down to make way for wedding vows, and gay sexual culture morphs into “straight-acting dudes hangin’ out”, what are the possibilities for a defiant faggotry that challenges the assimilationist norms of a corporate-cozy lifestyle?
-
-
Forget the Status Quo South Beach B.S.
- By Susie on 03-14-13
-
Sex with Shakespeare
- Here's Much to Do with Pain, but More with Love
- By: Jillian Keenan
- Narrated by: Jillian Keenan
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Four hundred years after Shakespeare's death, Keenan's smart and passionate memoir brings new life to his work. With 14 of his plays as a springboard, she explores the many facets of love and sexuality - from desire and communication to fetish and fantasy. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Keenan unmasks Helena as a sexual masochist - like Jillian herself. In Macbeth, she examines criminalized sexual identities and the dark side of "privacy".
-
-
Innovative
- By Just Joe on 01-21-17
By: Jillian Keenan
-
Manhood for Amateurs
- The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Michael Chabon
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a devoted son, as a passionate husband, and above all as a father, Chabon's memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, are like a theme played by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor. At once dazzling, hilarious, and moving, Manhood for Amateurs is destined to become a classic.
-
-
Terrible
- By Ken on 10-14-09
By: Michael Chabon
-
The Book of Help
- A Memoir in Remedies
- By: Megan Griswold
- Narrated by: Megan Griswold
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A hilarious and heartbreaking memoir-in-remedies by a self-described "professional soul-searcher" that details a journey of self-discovery through more than 160 tonics, seminars, regimens, and transformative therapies. With a voice that is at once intimate and hilarious, Megan captures the openness and honesty necessary for people to take a new path in life. Listeners will open the audiobook with curiosity about all the different healing therapies that Megan tries, but leave with a new understanding of themselves.
-
-
Mr. Toad's Wild Ride has some serious competition!
- By Elisa R. Goodman on 02-15-19
By: Megan Griswold
-
Sophie's Choice
- By: William Styron
- Narrated by: Norman Snow
- Length: 2 hrs and 53 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this brilliant, multi-layered novel, a young Southerner, Stingo, wants to become a writer. In Brooklyn, he meets Nathan, a brilliant Jewish intellectual involved in a turbulent love-hate affair with Sophie, a beautiful Polish woman. She has a terrible wound in her past, one that impels both Sophie and Nathan toward destruction.
-
-
THIS IS ABRIDGED
- By J. Flynn on 07-25-16
By: William Styron
-
House of Meetings
- By: Martin Amis
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There were conjugal visits in the slave camps of the USSR. Valiant women would travel continental distances, over weeks and months, in the hope of spending a night with their particular enemy of the people, in the House of Meetings. The consequences of these liaisons were almost invariably tragic. House of Meetings is about one such liaison.
-
-
Martin Amis at the height of his powers; wonderous
- By Todd on 06-16-15
By: Martin Amis
-
The Golden Notebook
- By: Doris Lessing
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 27 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Author Anna Wulf attempts to overcome writer’s block by writing a comprehensive "golden notebook" that draws together the preoccupations of her life, each of which is examined in a different notebook. Anna’s struggle to unify the various strands of her life – emotional, political, and professional – amasses into a fascinating encyclopaedia of female experience in the ‘50s.
-
-
Transcendent narration of a masterpiece.
- By @vmarinelli on 07-03-12
By: Doris Lessing
-
The Night Listener
- By: Armistead Maupin
- Narrated by: Armistead Maupin
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This unprecedented audio project is as thought-provoking as it is mesmeric. The Night Listener is a meditation on the power of voices and the faith we place in them, and an extraordinary audio experience from an American literary icon.
-
-
Wheels within wheels
- By Naomi on 07-06-03
By: Armistead Maupin
-
The Men on My Couch
- True Stories of Sex, Love, and Psychotherapy
- By: Brandy Engler, David Rensin
- Narrated by: Abby Craden
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Dr. Brandy Engler opened her sex therapy practice for women in Manhattan, she got a big surprise. Most of the calls were from men. They wanted to talk about womanizing, porn addiction, impotence, prostitutes - and most of all, love.
-
-
Not what you'd expect
- By J Lee on 03-26-13
By: Brandy Engler, and others
-
Expecting Adam
- A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic
- By: Martha Beck
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the moment Martha and her husband, John, conceived their second child, all hell broke loose. They were a couple obsessed with success. After years of matching IQs and test scores with less driven peers, they had two Harvard degrees apiece and were gunning for more. But the dream had begun to disintegrate. Then, when their unborn son, Adam, was diagnosed with Down syndrome, doctors, advisers, and friends in the Harvard community warned them not to keep the baby.
-
-
True Life Fairy Tale
- By Desarae on 11-27-13
By: Martha Beck
-
Thus Bad Begins
- A Novel
- By: Javier Marias, Margaret Jull Costa
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 16 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Madrid, 1980. Juan de Vere, nearly finished with his university degree, takes a job as personal assistant to Eduardo Muriel, an eccentric, once-successful film director. Urbane, discreet, irreproachable, Muriel is an irresistible idol to the young man. But Muriel's voluptuous wife, Beatriz, inhabits their home like an unwanted ghost, and on the periphery of their lives is Dr. Jorge Van Vechten, a family friend implicated in unsavory rumors that Muriel now asks Juan to investigate.
-
-
Fascinating plot, superb performance, psychological depth
- By Doctor George on 12-05-16
By: Javier Marias, and others
-
The Ground Beneath Her Feet
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 27 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Salman Rushdie is widely considered one of a handful of truly great living writers. The internationally acclaimed, Booker Prize-winning author's storytelling shines in this epic love story, a modern retelling of the myth of Orpheus.
-
-
Okay, Salmon, We get that you're a genious already
- By Julie A Quinn on 04-23-09
By: Salman Rushdie
-
Speak
- A Novel
- By: Louisa Hall
- Narrated by: Suzan Crowley, Christopher Ashman, Adrienne Rusk, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a narrative that spans geography and time, from the Atlantic Ocean in the 17th century to a correctional institute in Texas in the near future, and told from the perspectives of five very different characters, Speak considers what it means to be human and what it means to be less than fully alive.
-
-
Like nothing else
- By Anonymous User on 06-22-17
By: Louisa Hall
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
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
-
Overall
-
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.
-
-
Wonderful book, terrible narration!
- By Karen on 08-20-13
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
How this differs from the other version
- By Jonathan Penley on 12-26-17
-
Oblivion
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
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.
-
-
Just 2 Fast & Huge & ALL Interconnected 4 Words
- By Darwin8u on 08-22-12
-
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.
-
-
The King is dead, long live the King!
- By Darwin8u on 10-31-16
-
Girl with Curious Hair
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
This book is not NOT a Datsun!
- By Darwin8u on 04-15-12
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Impossible to use without Chapter Names
- By Ethan Klitzke on 12-04-21
-
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
-
Overall
-
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.
-
-
Wonderful book, terrible narration!
- By Karen on 08-20-13
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
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.
-
-
How this differs from the other version
- By Jonathan Penley on 12-26-17
-
Oblivion
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
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.
-
-
Just 2 Fast & Huge & ALL Interconnected 4 Words
- By Darwin8u on 08-22-12
-
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.
-
-
The King is dead, long live the King!
- By Darwin8u on 10-31-16
-
Girl with Curious Hair
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
This book is not NOT a Datsun!
- By Darwin8u on 04-15-12
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Impossible to use without Chapter Names
- By Ethan Klitzke on 12-04-21
-
The Broom of the System
- A Novel
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Evidence I WASTED my College years.
- By Darwin8u on 04-18-12
-
David Foster Wallace: In His Own Words
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
The best book on Audible!
- By Karen Chance on 04-07-16
-
Everything and More
- A Compact History of Infinity
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Equations via audio are tuff
- By Brian E. on 03-08-22
-
On Tennis
- Five Essays
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the author of Infinite Jest and Consider the Lobster: A collection of five brilliant essays on tennis, from the author's own experience as a junior player to his celebrated profile of Roger Federer at the peak of his powers. A "long-time rabid fan of tennis," and a regionally ranked tennis player in his youth, David Foster Wallace wrote about the game like no one else. On Tennis presents David Foster Wallace's five essays on the sport, published between 1990 and 2006, and hailed as some of the greatest and most innovative sports writing of our time.
-
-
Inspiration, though, is contagious, and multiform
- By Darwin8u on 01-27-17
-
Infinite Jest
- By: David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 64 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
With footnotes!
- By George Saris on 04-25-24
By: David Foster Wallace, and others
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Leapin' Over That Wall of Self
- By Darwin8u on 08-27-12
By: David Lipsky
-
This Is Water
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Amy Wallace-Havens
- Length: 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? This audiobook version of a David Foster Wallace commencement speech, read by his sister, Amy Wallace-Havens, captures his electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend.
-
-
Too short for what you pay for!
- By Adryan on 05-14-09
-
Both Flesh and Not
- Essays
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, Katherine Kellgren
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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 more.
-
-
Both Perfect and Not
- By Darwin8u on 02-16-13
-
Consider the Lobster (A Story from Consider the Lobster)
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
- Length: 3 hrs and 48 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long renowned as one of the smartest writers on the loose, David Foster Wallace reveals himself in Consider the Lobster to be also one of the funniest. In this program, he ranges far and farther in his search for the original, the curious, or the merely mystifying. He discovers the World's Largest Lobster Cooker at the Maine Lobster Festival and confronts the inevitable question just beyond the butter-or-cocktail-sauce quandary.
-
-
David Foster Wallace...a good place to start
- By Rick on 11-25-08
-
Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story
- A Life of David Foster Wallace
- By: D. T. Max
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David Foster Wallace was the leading literary light of his generation, a man who not only captivated readers with his prose but also mesmerized them with his brilliant mind. In this, the first biography of the writer, D. T. Max sets out to chart Wallace’s tormented, anguished, and often triumphant battle to succeed as a novelist as he fights off depression and addiction to emerge with his masterpiece, Infinite Jest.
-
-
Max avoids hagiography or a sycophant's biography
- By Darwin8u on 06-11-13
By: D. T. Max
-
This Is Water: The Original David Foster Wallace Recording
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
- Length: 24 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. This is the audio recording of David Foster Wallace delivering that very address. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others.
-
-
The best 20 minutes of my life.
- By John Nosal on 10-09-12
-
Jesus' Son
- By: Denis Johnson
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 2 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Denis Johnson's now classic story collection Jesus' Son chronicles a wild netherworld of addicts and lost souls, a violent and disordered landscape that encompasses every extreme of American culture. These are stories of transcendence and spiraling grief, of hallucinations and glories, of getting lost and found and lost again. The insights and careening energy in Jesus' Son have earned the book a place of its own among the classics of twentieth-century American literature.
-
-
Some books are better read.
- By dngold77 on 09-02-18
By: Denis Johnson
What listeners say about Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
- Kindle Customer
- 09-11-20
Typical Wallace
I am glad this was a fairly short read. It will probably not become my favorite DFW book but I am gad to have read it just to be a completist. He highlights many usually unnoticed details in these brief interviews with men you probably know but would not want to spend much time with if you REALLY knew them. Most of these men have a view of women that women would not be at all pleased about. This men are modern primitives. So listening to four hours of this material has not been all joy. But there have been moments of great insight as there always is in his books and essays. Great performances by the voice cast as well!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Tom
- 05-05-24
The Spectrum of Strangeness in the Interviews
I didn’t know what to expect from this book. My exposure to Wallace’s work was mostly limited to Reviews and Obituaries. The variety of the styles and characters in the interviews was interesting, some downright repulsive, others, quite bland. The last interview, with the raped woman, seemed the most revealing of the Writer’s own perspective. The others seemed figments of his imagination.
The final entry, while the briefest, was a dazzling display of Wallace’s renowned writing gifts and worth the price of admission to his World. The whole experience was worth Four Stars. ****
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- wolffw1056
- 06-08-15
....and what if I said that happened to Me?
This interview is very much intended for people who've only ever picked up one or two books by David Foster Wallace, as I am in that same category.
It's a funny feeling - seeing a movie based on a book before actually reading the book. I definitely fall into the camp of movie goers that need to read the book before seeing the film, using my insider knowledge to compare and contrast the differences, seeing it as almost a guided insight into why the filmmakers made the choices that they did. And for the longest time I felt I was better off leaving my experience with this material at the movie theater.
I didn't bother with reading "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men" because of everything I've heard of David Foster Wallace up until this point. Words like brilliant, introspective, and thought-provoking would get tossed around. Sure, it's all mounting evidence that points to the fact that I should be reading his stuff, but then other phrases like "not for everyone" and "you might not get it" would be added in for good measure. I'm not saying I hate to be challenged by a writer's material, but I'm going to need more to it's defense than "you just don't get IT". In these conversations, does anyone ever really know what IT is?
Happy to report, all my fears about tackling the deep introspection of David Foster Wallace's damaged characters was not an exercise in tedium. It was just the opposite.
I never intended on reading this book, even after my (apparently isolated) glowing reviewing of the John Krasinski movie of the same name. And then one day, randomly flipping through the dramatic fiction section on Audible, I came across the voice cast of the audiobook for "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men". Bobby Cannavale, Will Forte, Malcolm Goodwin, John Krasinski, Christopher Meloni, Chris Messina, Max Minghella, and Dennis O'Hare, with additional narration from the book's author. It was almost too good not to listen.
But I did, and I'm glad for it. First off, the material, whose complexity scared me away for so long, was anything but egotistical or out of the realm of understanding. What we have here are a series of shorts (vintages in the film adaption) that all share a unifying theme of sex, attraction, lust, envy, and the idea of selfishness disguised so ingenuously as selflessness. Characters big and small, confident and inadequate, old and young - they all share with each other or with themselves what it takes to grow up, the make it in a relationship, what sex means to them, what it means to their partners.
David Foster Wallace mixes and mingles between a million different perspectives and is somehow able to capture the emotions and motivations so accurately that it's scary. He hops from one story that so deftly describes the mind of an adolescent, experiencing the piercing thrust into adult hood via a wet dream, before changing course in another story about a full grown man explaining, quite convincingly, why it's selfish to refuse blowjobs. It's no joke, he captures, in my limited experience on the subject, every facet on sexual relationships.
I kind of want to read the book just to see how much of my interest was gauged on performance (it feels more like an audio performance rather than an audiobook if that makes any sense) and how much on the material itself, although I'd be surprised if the written material alone didn't give me the same reaction I had while listening to the audiobook.
Not to mention all of the other books in David Foster Wallace's bibliography I plan to read.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
12 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 05-22-21
Not my favorite DFW...
DFW's genius shows through even here and although this wasn't my favorite book of his that I've experienced, there was enough to get out of it to make this worth the listen.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sean Stapleton
- 01-16-15
actors help
I thought this was a great audiobook because of the dramatic readings. the performances really brought the story to the ears with added life.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Grant
- 11-17-21
Abridged ...Really an Audiobook of the Movie
Huge, staggeringly good cast (obviously, since it's the cast from the movie adaptation) & super strong, typically haunting readings from DFW, but really only covers the vignettes from the movie + "Forever Overhead," so it's only about 50% of the original book. Unfortunately doesn't include Adult World I & II, Octet, Signifying Nothing or the Depressed Person.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- David
- 04-27-16
David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace. And John Krasinski, even. Nuf said.
My Audible app says that any significant review must contain twenty words. Jesus wept.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Elisabeth
- 06-26-12
In progress - enjoying it, but narration style?
I've enjoyed many of these stories, but have found some of them unlistenable due to repeated utterings by the readers -- usually "cue" and sometimes "return to text." If I had the paper version in front of me, I might get a clue as to why, but right now it's annoying as hell.
Gem of Note: Interview 71 (the one referencing Bewitched)... hilarious.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
- C
- 08-24-10
Brief Audio with Hideous Editing
After the first two stories (dull sketches, read stiltedly) I almost gave up but there were enough plums in what was left that I was glad i stuck it out. He has a great ear for dialogue and for the little self-deceptions and manipulations that pepper his protagonists' dialogues. There are numerous readers and most of them are really good. This is the tragedy though: I read the review on amazon and some of the stories that didn't make the cut sound really interesting, so why did they get dropped in favour of what sounded like padding? Ach, I'll have to buy the papery version and read it myself I think.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
8 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- awhit333
- 03-06-10
Excellent
David Foster Wallace is an amazing writer, and this team of narrators does justice to his characters. I highly recommend reading or listening to this.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
5 people found this helpful