Fire in the Belly
The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz
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Narrated by:
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Cynthia Barrett
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By:
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Cynthia Carr
About this listen
David Wojnarowicz was an abused child, a teen runaway who barely finished high school, but he emerged as one of the most important voices of his generation. He found his tribe in New York’s East Village, a neighborhood noted in the 1970s and ’80s for drugs, blight, and a burgeoning art scene. His creativity spilled out in paintings, photographs, films, texts, installations, and in his life and its recounting - creating a sort of mythos around himself. His circle of East Village artists moved into the national spotlight just as the AIDS plague began its devastating advance, and as right-wing culture warriors reared their heads. As Wojnarowicz’s reputation as an artist grew, so did his reputation as an agitator - because he dealt so openly with his homosexuality, so angrily with his circumstances as a Person With AIDS, and so fiercely with his would-be censors.
Fire in the Belly is the untold story of a polarizing figure at a pivotal moment in American culture - and one of the most highly acclaimed biographies of the year.
©2012 Cynthia Carr (P)2013 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Bear
- The Life and Times of Augustus Owsley Stanley III
- By: Robert Greenfield
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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The creator of the dancing bear logo and designer of the Wall of Sound for the Grateful Dead, Augustus Owsley Stanley III, better known by his nickname, Bear, was one of the most iconic figures in the cultural revolution that changed both America and the world during the 1960s. Owsley's high octane rocket fuel enabled Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters to put on the Acid Tests. It also powered much of what happened on stage at Monterey Pop.
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wow
- By Brian Harnois on 10-12-20
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The Night Ocean
- By: Paul La Farge
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears.
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Frustratingly Uneven Due to Clumsy Plot Structure
- By Adam on 06-15-17
By: Paul La Farge
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Salinger
- By: David Shields, Shane Salerno
- Narrated by: Peter Friedman, January LaVoy, Robert Petkoff, and others
- Length: 19 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Shields and Salerno illuminate most brightly the last 56 years of Salinger’s life: a period that, until now, had remained completely dark to biographers. Provided unprecedented access to diaries, letters, legal records, and secret documents, listeners will feel they have, for the first time, gotten beyond Salinger’s meticulously built-up wall. The result is the definitive portrait of one of the most fascinating figures of the 20th century.
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Ingenious novel or biography? Hard to tell....
- By Melinda on 09-05-13
By: David Shields, and others
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Here's the Story
- Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice
- By: Maureen McCormick
- Narrated by: Maureen McCormick
- Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
- Abridged
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Marcia Brady, eldest daughter on television's The Brady Bunch, had it all. But what viewers didn't know about the always sunny, perfect Marcia was that offscreen, her real-life counterpart, Maureen McCormick was living a very different - and not so wonderful - life. Maureen tells the shocking and inspirational true story of the beloved teen and the woman she became.
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Gripping
- By Chris on 08-12-14
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The Pursuit of Happyness (Abridged)
- By: Chris Gardner
- Narrated by: Andre Blake
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Abridged
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At the age of 20, Chris Gardner arrived in San Francisco to pursue a promising career in medicine. However, he surprised everyone and himself by setting his sights on the competitive world of high finance. Yet no sooner had he landed an entry-level position at a prestigious firm, Gardner found himself caught in a web of incredibly challenging circumstances that left him part of the city's working homeless with his toddler son.
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Very Good Story!
- By Lito Da Critic on 06-02-06
By: Chris Gardner
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This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Ann Patchett
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Blending literature and memoir, Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder and Bel Canto examines her deepest commitments: to writing, family, friends, dogs, books, and her husband in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. Together, these essays, previously published in The Atlantic, Harper, Vogue, and The Washington Post, form a resonant portrait of a life lived with loyalty and with love.
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Entertaining, engrossing, and elucidative essays
- By Bonny on 01-07-14
By: Ann Patchett
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Last Evenings on Earth
- By: Roberto Bolano, Chris Andrews - translator
- Narrated by: David Crommett
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The first short-story collection in English by the acclaimed Chilean author Roberto Bolano. Winner of a 2005 PEN Translation Fund Award. "The melancholy folklore of exile", as Roberto Bolano once put it, pervades these 14 haunting stories. Bolano's narrators are usually writers grappling with private (and generally unlucky) quests, who typically speak in the first person, as if giving a deposition, like witnesses to a crime.
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Solid Character based Stories
- By Michael on 06-06-24
By: Roberto Bolano, and others
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Rebel
- My Life Outside the Lines
- By: Nick Nolte
- Narrated by: Nick Nolte, Christian Baskous
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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In a career spanning five decades, Nick Nolte has endured the rites of Hollywood celebrity. Rising from obscurity to leading roles and Oscar nominations, he has been both celebrated and vilified in the media; survived marriages, divorces, and a string of romances; was named the "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine; and suffered public humiliation over his drug and alcohol issues, including a drug-fueled trip down a "long road of nothingness" that ended in arrest.
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Great read! No fooling.
- By Action Joe on 05-31-18
By: Nick Nolte
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The Unspeakable
- And Other Subjects of Discussion
- By: Meghan Daum
- Narrated by: Meghan Daum
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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It's a report tempered by hard times. In "Matricide", Daum unflinchingly describes a parent's death and the uncomfortable emotions it provokes; and in "Diary of a Coma" she relates her own journey to the twilight of the mind. But Daum also operates in a comic register. With perfect precision, she reveals the absurdities of the marriage-industrial complex, of the New Age dating market, and of the peculiar habits of the young and digital.
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Complaining about her dead mom.
- By Erik Hermansen on 11-23-14
By: Meghan Daum
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BRAVE
- By: Rose McGowan
- Narrated by: Rose McGowan
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In a strange world where Rose McGowan was continually on display, stardom soon became a personal nightmare of constant exposure and sexualization. Rose escaped into the world of her mind, something she had done as a child, and into high-profile relationships. Every detail of her personal life became public, and the realities of an inherently sexist industry emerged with every script, role, public appearance, and magazine cover. The Hollywood machine packaged her as a sexualized bombshell, hijacking her image and identity and marketing them.
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I always wondered what it was like to be Rose
- By Bobbie J Daniel on 03-01-18
By: Rose McGowan
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Digging Up Mother
- A Love Story
- By: Johnny Depp - foreword, Doug Stanhope
- Narrated by: Doug Stanhope and Friends
- Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Doug Stanhope is one of the most critically acclaimed and stridently unrepentant comedians of his generation. What will surprise some is that he owes so much of his dark and sometimes uncomfortably honest sense of humor to his mother, Bonnie.
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Not my thing.
- By J. Harral on 01-27-18
By: Johnny Depp - foreword, and others
What listeners say about Fire in the Belly
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- SBG
- 03-27-15
So glad this was available on Audible!
If you could sum up Fire in the Belly in three words, what would they be?
I'll be forever thankful to Cynthia Carr for this incredibly comprehensive, evocative, thoroughly researched and atmospheric account of a fascinating and underrated East Village artist--from his harrowing childhood to his premature death from AIDS. It's a biography not only of the man but of an era. It made me wistful and nostalgic, and brought me back to a long-gone NYC when things were raw, exciting, gritty, and full of possibilities, even at a time of plague.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Fire in the Belly?
Very hard to say. The book is like an incredible tapestry of intricately interwoven events and observations. It would be hard to isolate one as a standout moment, especially given that this is a biographical work.
Did Cynthia Barrett do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?
Question does not really apply to this book, which is a biography.
Ms Barrett does have a nice, even, clear voice that is very easy to listen to (even though she does tend to over-enunciate at times).
HOWEVER-- I was kind of appalled that she didn't know how to pronounce an alarming number of words and names. And she completely demolished every French word she pronounced. I don't expect perfect, prissy language but an Audible reader should be able to pronounce fairly common terms, names, and places, especially for a book filled with cultural references like this one. "Basquiat," for instance, was uttered in every conceivable way except the correct one. "Oeuvre" was occasionally pronounced as "oorf" and any European artwork or artist names were mangled to the point of farce.
Ms. Carr's text deserved better than this.
I actually dreaded passages in which David W. was heading back to France because I knew that I'd be subjected to more hideous mispronunciations. But aside from such considerable distractions, she read beautifully. I wish she could go back and record over the gaffes, though this would take a considerable amount of painstaking work.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes, although that would have been one extraordinarily long sitting!
Any additional comments?
Loved it. One of the best artist biographies I have ever read.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Brandon
- 07-08-17
Amazing
This is an amazing book about an extraordinary artist and of the time of gay liberation thru aids.
Only bad thing, the narrator mispronounced a smattering of art world names and terms.
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- oldmanwagner
- 11-13-14
The Most Fascinating Artist you've Never Heard Of
What did you love best about Fire in the Belly?
The honest beauty of it. It didn't just chronicle a person, it catalogued a time.
Who was your favorite character and why?
That doesn't really apply here. But aside from the title "character" I loved learning about Peter Hujar.
Have you listened to any of Cynthia Barrett’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
No, so I have no clue.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
Not without cause.
Any additional comments?
If you are art all interested in the art scene in NYC in the early 80s beyond Basquiat et al, read this.
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- acacia coleman
- 09-14-24
fantastic love letter
The author has written an incredibly detailed, deeply moving warts and all love letter to their friend. By the end of this book, I was in tears. I'm so happy I gave this one a chance - I'd never known anything about the artist before picking this up, but I was intrigued after reading the author's book on Candy Darling.
As many others have noted, the narrator seems to struggle with pronouncing things - to an embarrassing degree. She said Frida Kahlo's name like KAY-lo and pronounced "zines" (as in, underground pamplets made and handed out in the art scene) as ZAInes. How chronically uncool and under-educated about the subject you're narrating do you have to be to make such simple mistakes?
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- ILAN COHEN
- 04-30-15
An absolute must !
Terrific on all front,
Truly a masterpiece account of the life and times
Of David W.
Prob one of the best book on Art, New York and east village
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- Wendell Ricketts
- 12-11-18
Why did they let this person read?
Commenting on the audio book: the reader not only has the worst possible voice and diction for this book, it looks like she didn’t do much preparation. She pronounces “Basquiat” at least three different ways, and that’s not the only thing she gets wrong. Meanwhile: excellent book, impressive research. Where there were discrepant versions of an event, I was struck by the technique of letting all the voices speak rather than trying to pick “the true” version. She also lets Wojnarowicz be as angsty, self-involved, and melodramatic as he apparently was, without taking away from his art, his words, and his significance.
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- Daniel
- 05-26-23
Wrong narrator, sounds like a 2nd grade phonics teacher
Fantastic biography. Truly. Blew through this 600p tome in 4 days thanks to Carr’s expert cadence and firsthand experience of the events.
The narrator is completely wrong for the topic. Multiple, head-scratching mispronunciations distract from an otherwise heavy hitting work. Narrator routinely bungles Carr’s spare, purposeful sentences depicting the AIDS crisis with the song-song vapidity of a second grade phonics teacher.
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