
Humboldt's Gift
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Narrated by:
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Christopher Hurt
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By:
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Saul Bellow
About this listen
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Story
Born in 1905, Daisy Goodwill Flett drifts through the chapters of childhood, marriage, widowhood, remarriage, motherhood, and old age, bewildered by her inability to understand her own role in the unsettled decades of the twentieth century. At last, reflecting on her unobserved and unconventional life, Daisy attempts to find a way to tell her story within a novel that is itself about the limitations of autobiography.
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Excellent Narrative
- By Deborah H. Holloway on 03-10-24
By: Carol Shields, and others
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More Die of Heartbreak
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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A great book
- By John A. on 03-16-22
By: Saul Bellow
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To Jerusalem and Back
- A Personal Account
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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This extraordinary book is the result of Saul Bellow’s sojourn in Israel in 1975. A personal record of his stay—his experiences and impressions—as well as a meditation, it crackles with wit and controversy on America’s relationship with this embattled country.
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Remarkable in its relevance 40 years later
- By The Mindfulness Guru on 09-07-20
By: Saul Bellow
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The Dean's December
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Albert Corde is a professor of journalism and dean of students at a Chicago university. He and his wife, Minna, travel to Bucharest, Romania, where Minna's mother has suffered a stroke and is lying semiconscious in the local state hospital. As Corde tries to adapt to life in his mother-in-law's small apartment and cope with her relations and friends, news filters through to him of problems he left behind in Chicago: one of his students has been murdered.
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Slow, but enjoyable (once)
- By Michael on 06-11-21
By: Saul Bellow
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House Made of Dawn
- A Novel
- By: N. Scott Momaday
- Narrated by: N. Scott Momaday, Darrell Dennis
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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A young Native American, Abel has come home from war to find himself caught between two worlds. The first is the world of his father’s, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons, the harsh beauty of the land, and the ancient rites and traditions of his people. But the other world - modern, industrial America - pulls at Abel, demanding his loyalty, trying to claim his soul, and goading him into a destructive, compulsive cycle of depravity and disgust.
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Novel great, reader not so much.
- By Marcia on 05-17-20
By: N. Scott Momaday
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Sabbath’s Theater
- By: Philip Roth
- Narrated by: John Turturro
- Length: 18 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Once an inventive puppeteer, Sabbath at sixty-four is still defiantly antagonistic and exceedingly libidinous. But after the death of his longtime mistress—an erotic free spirit whose adulterous daring surpassed even his own—Sabbath, bereft and grieving and besieged by the ghosts of those who loved and hated him most, contrives a succession of farcical disasters that take him to the brink of madness and extinction.
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Great stand alone Roth novel.
- By Gabriel Jones Roxas on 02-06-25
By: Philip Roth
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Angle of Repose
- By: Wallace Stegner
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 22 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Wallace Stegner's uniquely American classic centers on Lyman Ward, a noted historian who relates a fictionalized biography of his pioneer grandparents at a time when he has become estranged from his own family. Through a combination of research, memory, and exaggeration, Ward voices ideas concerning the relationship between history and the present, art and life, parents and children, and husbands and wives.
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The Quest for Balance
- By Mel on 01-24-13
By: Wallace Stegner
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The Ghost Writer
- The Nathan Zuckerman Series, Book 1
- By: Philip Roth
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The Ghost Writer introduces Nathan Zuckerman in the 1950s, a budding writer infatuated with the great books, discovering the contradictory claims of literature and experience while an overnight guest in the secluded New England farmhouse of his idol, E. I. Lonoff. At Lonoff's, Zuckerman meets Amy Bellette, a haunting young woman of indeterminate foreign background who turns out to be a former student of Lonoff's and who may also have been his mistress.
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Turning Sentences Around
- By Darwin8u on 01-28-17
By: Philip Roth
What listeners say about Humboldt's Gift
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 05-21-18
Christopher Hurt
The narrator, in an otherwise excellent performance, tends to swallow his words occasionally and therefore a word here and there becomes inaudible.
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1 person found this helpful
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- James
- 09-27-11
#1 Classic
Wait... you do know who wrote this right? This is Saul Bellow. There's no way you're not going to read this, even if it IS with your ears.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Pip
- 02-11-13
That fellow Bellow
Where does Humboldt's Gift rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
In terms of the quality of the reader, very good, but the book is long winded and repetitive.
What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)
An elegant conclusion left a feeling of satisfaction.
What about Christopher Hurt’s performance did you like?
He had a pleasant voice which suited the narrator.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
Navel gazing galore!
Any additional comments?
Bellow's hero is a mid twentieth century author not too dissimilar from himself. His quest for truth requires introspection rather than action, but a glorious list of writers and philosophers are bit players in the story.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Paul Stevenson
- 04-24-25
What's the point?
I have now listened to a number of books by Saul Bellow. Honestly, I don't see the appeal. They are rambling narratives about slightly odd characters. Why this book was considered worthy of a prize is quite beyond me.
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Overall
- R. Bellerose
- 03-31-08
Masterful language
Thickly spread with self-reflection, this story seems to move slowly, but each aside engrosses the reader and moves the story along. Filled with social commentary that will sparkle for decades.
The reader is tireless and without error. He renders the first-person Charlie in a believable and consistent voice.
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Jordan Gaines
- 05-06-09
Humbolt's Gift, Saul Bellow
The pace of this book is pedestrian at best with the main character rather self absorbed and brooding. The relationships tend to be self serving and hedonistic. I found the reading experiance left me depressed and hollow. While the main character, Charlie, had many redeeming qualities he seemed to have no spiritual foundation or sense of where these moral imperatives came from. Even with all his introspective broodings he was clueless about why he acted the way he did or was offended by the actions of the other characters when they crossed certain moral boundries.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Scott
- 05-10-08
Great Book, Great Reader
This is a wonderful and compelling reading of a very good book: one that would be very easy to ruin with an unintelligent interpretation.
No, there is not a lot of "plot" per se and it is highly discursive: welcome to Bellow's world! There's a passage of several pages where Charlie considers the subject of productive inactivity from every possible angle, which struck me as almost a manifesto for the technique of the novel itself. Events in the outside world mainly serve to prompt ruminating, reflecting, and reminiscing.
But make no mistake: there is in fact a story, it features great, colorful characters, it's told in beautiful language, and it's very entertaining all the way through. It made me laugh out loud all the time. And finally, countless little plot threads that have meandered through the text for hours all get neatly tied up into a satisfying screwball ending.
But the book is not really about the destination. It's about the journey. The book is drenched with warm-hearted nostalgia, and a comprehensive generosity of spirit that is hard to find anywhere in the world, at any time. Charlie Citrine makes the world a bigger and friendlier place to be.
And again, this reader is probably the best possible reader they could have chosen for the part. I plan to give this book a second and third listen in the future. This definitely ranks up there with Ron Silver's reading of American Pastoral, George Guidall's reading of Zorba the Greek, and Donal Donelly's reading of Dubliners as one of the best audiobook performances I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing.
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22 people found this helpful
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Overall
- John
- 08-23-08
Not so great.
This is one of the very few aduiobooks I haven't enjoyed. I nearly stopped partway through, because the story is so tedious. I'm surprised it's so highly regarded. I found it indulgent and pompous. The reader, as I recall -- it's been some time now since I read it -- was neither great nor terrible, just sort of okay. One recognizes the erudition of the author, but wishes he had reined it in some to develop characters we could care more about.
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Overall
- Eric Miller
- 01-25-15
Some people write in a way that is captivating
I really enjoyed this book. Journey into his mind. Much to digest over time. The writing was truly mesmerizing, no matter what he was talking about, no matter how gross or how lofty, I was captivated.
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2 people found this helpful
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- The idiot
- 05-26-15
A thought provoking work of art
Brilliant, moving and epic!
A masterpiece and read to perfection!
A book that I read because it was the one both my parents agreed was great...
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1 person found this helpful