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Inherent Vice
- Narrated by: Ron McLarty
- Length: 14 hrs and 31 mins
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Publisher's summary
Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon - Private eye Doc Sportello surfaces, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era.
In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre that is at once exciting and accessible, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the '60s, you weren't there.
It's been a while since Doc Sportello has seen his ex-girlfriend. Suddenly she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. It's the tail end of the psychedelic '60s in LA, and Doc knows that "love" is another of those words going around at the moment, like "trip" or "groovy", except that this one usually leads to trouble. Undeniably one of the most influential writers at work today, Pynchon has penned another unforgettable book.
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brilliant!
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Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.
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..everybody's a hero at least once...
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What the hell just happened?
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Good book, Average recording
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Ron McLarty?
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brilliant!
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Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.
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"Time to touch the person next to you"
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Ron McLarty?
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Breakfast of Champions (1973) provides frantic, scattershot satire and a collage of Vonnegut's obsessions. His recurring cast of characters and American landscape was perhaps the most controversial of his canon; it was felt by many at the time to be a disappointing successor to Slaughterhouse-Five, which had made Vonnegut's literary reputation.
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Performance
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Zack Lightman has never much cared for reality. He vastly prefers the countless science-fiction movies, books, and videogames he's spent his life consuming. And too often, he catches himself wishing that some fantastic, impossible, world-altering event could arrive to whisk him off on a grand spacefaring adventure.
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I loved Ready Player One. Hated Armada
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Editorial reviews
This book is a classic Pynchon novel except that it's completely accessible, unlike his actual classic, Gravity's Rainbow. Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield titled his review of Inherent Vice "The Bigger Lebowski", and this is absolutely the truth, convincingly supported by the fact that Ron McLarty's voice work here could easily be mistaken for Jeff Bridges. Pynchon's hippie hero is Larry "Doc" Sportello, a private dick whose skills of detection are not so much hard-boiled as drug-addled. McLarty's low, gritty tones are a perfect fit for Doc's pot-smoked antics in this filmic noir.
When Sportello's ex-girlfriend turns to him for help in anticipation of her billionaire boyfriend's future kidnapping, things quickly and naturally get complicated in the winter of 1970. Let's just say it involves a motley crew of surfers, strippers, junkies, scammers, hippies, and loonies, a shady posse known as the Golden Fang that are either mafioso or dentists, 20 kilos of heroin, and a coffin full of funny money with Nixon's face on it. Of course, the Sherlock Holmes to Doc's Watson and also the perpetual rain on his parade is straight-laced cop cowboy Bigfoot Bjornsen. Bigfoot and Doc's fundamentally different worldviews put them in constant conflict on the same case, leaning on one another while stepping on each other's toes. McLarty doesn't miss a beat in his portrayal of their hilarious and timeless debate between authoritarianism and communalism.
There are trademark Pynchon motifs throughout the story that devotees of the author will be glad to see. The Southern California setting is where Pynchon is at his very best, and his deep knowledge of music is definitely in evidence. McLarty is even forced to sing several surf rock tunes, which he does with surprising alacrity. There is the author's usual consideration of race wars and imperialism, where McLarty does convincing Hispanic and Asia-Pacific accents of various kinds common to the region. There is the extensive set of acronyms and anagrams, where McLarty somehow manages not to laugh while referring to things like the hippy-busting cop squad known as "P-DIDdies", short for "Public Disorder Intelligence Division".
This is Pynchon at his most readable, and he sticks to driving the plot with relatively few digressions. Still, this is also Pynchon at his most recognizable. Though the tale is finely tuned to resemble such cult gems as The Big Lebowski, no other author could have cranked it out quite so colorfully. Thomas Pynchon isn't taking any easy outs with this one. He took a beloved story and crafted a fleshy parallel, which Ron McLarty lovingly gives voice to a style that will not disappoint even the most die-hard fans of either Pynchon or Lebowski. Megan Volpert
Critic reviews
"What he does, and brilliantly, is open windows onto a universe where we're all in custody, but we're none of us sure who put on the cuffs...entertainment of a high order.” (TIME)
"An enjoyable book by a writer whose work can be daunting.” (John Powers, Fresh Air on NPR)
“With whip-smart, psychedelic-bright language, Pynchon manages to convey the Sixties - except the Sixties were never really like this. This is Pynchon's world, and it's brilliant. The resolution is as crisp as Doc is laid-back. Highly recommended.” (The Library Journal)
Featured Article: 45+ Quotes to Help You Make Peace with—and Take Charge of—Change
Reeling from change? Or ready to make some changes in your life? These wise words from authors just might give you the comfort or boost you need. Their words reflect the nature of change and the swirl of feelings surrounding it—from fear to exhilaration. In this collection, you'll find gentle reminders that change will keep happening and reassurance that you can handle it. When you face it and embrace it, change can enrich your life in unexpected ways.
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Four bodies, each with a single bullet wound in the back of the head, stacked like cordwood in a weed-choked vacant lot: That's the front-page news facing Carter Ross, investigative reporter with the Newark Eagle-Examiner. Immediately dispatched to the scene, Carter learns that the four victims - an exotic dancer, a drug dealer, a hustler, and a mama's boy - came from different parts of the city and didn't seem to know one another.
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Wish Brad Parks were more prolific!!!!
- By shelley on 02-16-18
By: Brad Parks
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Burn
- By: Sean Doolittle
- Narrated by: Basil Sands
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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It's the middle of a sweltering late-summer heat wave in Los Angeles. In the nearby mountains, a seasonal wildfire burns out of control. If not for this fire, authorities might never have discovered wreckage of an Alfa Romeo convertible - or the body of the car's driver - in the dense underbrush at the bottom of Topanga Canyon. But when firefighters happen across the crash site while battling the nearby blaze, it's only a matter of time and basic forensics before the apparent accident is upgraded to homicide.
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Narrator
- By Coby on 06-16-21
By: Sean Doolittle
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Big City, Bad Blood
- By: Sean Chercover
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Disillusioned newspaper reporter-turned-private detective Ray Dudgeon doesn't want to save the world; he just wants to do an honest job well. But when doing an honest job threatens society's most powerful and corrupt, Ray's odds of survival make for a sucker's bet.
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Quintessentially Chicago
- By Eva Gannon on 09-21-09
By: Sean Chercover
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Baltimore Blues
- Tess Monaghan, Book 1
- By: Laura Lippman
- Narrated by: Deborah Hazlett
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
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Overall
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Unemployed at 29, Tess Monaghan is willing to take any freelance job to pay the rent—including a bit of unorthodox snooping for her rowing buddy, Darryl "Rock" Paxton. In a city where someone is murdered almost every day, attorney Michael Abramowitz's death should be just another statistic. But the slain lawyer's notoriety—and his noontime trysts with Rock's fiancée—make the case front page news...and point to Rock as the likely murderer. But trying to prove her friend's innocence could prove costly to Tess.
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I'm on #8 - This series is almost unique
- By connie on 02-19-12
By: Laura Lippman
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Short Squeeze
- By: Chris Knopf
- Narrated by: Deanna Hurst
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Meet smart-aleck Southampton attorney Jackie Swaitkowski. Her business relies on constant movement of Hamptons' real estate market. After making an odd request to evict his sister-in-law from his home, one of her clients turns up dead. Jackie would have expected that to be the end of it, but an envelope found on the corpse contains an item so unusual that she finds herself working on something bigger, and more dangerous, than real estate.
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Great Listen - Good Series
- By Patricia on 02-15-10
By: Chris Knopf
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Hard Spell
- Occult Crimes Unit Investigations, Book 1
- By: Justin Gustainis
- Narrated by: Peter Brook
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Scranton, the strangest city on earth has an uneasy “live and let unlive” relationship with the supernatural. But when a vamp puts the bite on an unwilling victim, or some witch casts the wrong kind of spell, that’s when they call me. “My name’s Markowski, a Detective Sergeant on the Scranton PD’s Supernatural Crimes Investigation Unit. I carry a badge. Also, a crucifix, some wooden stakes, a big vial of holy water, and a 9mm Beretta loaded with silver bullets.”
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Predictable and Flat
- By Madeleine on 03-29-14
By: Justin Gustainis
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The Dawn Patrol
- By: Don Winslow
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Every morning Boone Daniels is out with the Dawn Patrol: four men and one woman as single-minded about surfing as he is, or nearly. They have real jobs; Boone works as a P.I. just enough to keep himself in fish tacos and in the water. But Boone is also obsessed with the unsolved case of a young girl named Rain who was abducted while he was with the San Diego police.
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Don Winslow always surprises me
- By Hannah Coale on 09-08-15
By: Don Winslow
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The Ritual Bath
- The First Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus Novel
- By: Faye Kellerman
- Narrated by: Mitchell Greenberg
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Detective Peter Decker of the LAPD is stunned when he gets the report. Someone has shattered the sanctuary of a remote yeshiva community in the California hills with an unimaginable crime. One of the women was brutally raped as she returned from the mikvah, the bathhouse where the cleansing ritual is performed.
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Good Read
- By Eva Gannon on 08-21-08
By: Faye Kellerman
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Supervolcano
- Eruption
- By: Harry Turtledove
- Narrated by: Jim Frangione
- Length: 15 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A supervolcanic eruption in Yellowstone Park sends lava and mud flowing toward populated areas, and clouds of ash drifting across the country. The fallout destroys crops and livestock, clogs machinery, and makes cities uninhabitable. Those who survive find themselves caught in an apocalyptic catastrophe in which humanity has no choice but to rise from the ashes and recreate the world.
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Jerky horrible narration.
- By Ann on 04-23-12
By: Harry Turtledove
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The Deep Blue Good-By
- A Travis McGee Novel, Book 1
- By: John D. MacDonald
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
He's a self-described beach bum who won his houseboat in a card game. He's also a knight errant who's wary of credit cards, retirement benefits, political parties, mortgages, and television. He only works when his cash runs out, and his rule is simple: he'll help you find whatever was taken from you, as long as he can keep half.
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Before the A-Team, there was Travis McGee
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 11-12-16
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The Winter of Frankie Machine
- By: Don Winslow
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Frank Machianno is a late-middle-aged ex-surf bum who runs a bait shack on the San Diego waterfront. An affable Italian with a love of people and life, he's a stand-up businessman, devoted father, and a beloved fixture in the community. He's also a hit man - specifically, a retired hit man. Back in the day when he was one of the most feared members of the West Coast Mafia, he was known as Frankie Machine.
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Five stars straight across the board
- By Eric Taylor on 06-28-12
By: Don Winslow
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The Tin Collectors
- By: Stephen J. Cannell
- Narrated by: Robert Lawrence
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
L.A. police detective Shane Scully comes under investigation by Internal Affairs (derisively known as "the tin collectors") after he kills his ex-partner who was one of the mayor's bodyguards. Temporarily reassigned, so that he can remain under the department's watchful eye, Scully finds that more than his badge is at stake when he is set up to take the rap in a deadly plot of corruption and conspiracy that reaches to the highest levels of the LAPD.
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Police Procedural Gone Bad
- By Chip Atkinson on 02-21-18
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Cat Chaser
- By: Elmore Leonard
- Narrated by: Frank Muller
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The hero of Cat Chaser, George Moran, isn't looking for trouble but finds it anyway when he winds up in bed with the wife of a drug-dealing mob-connected Dominican cop - vicious, macho and ready to follow George to the ends of the earth, which in this case means Miami.
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Elmore Leonard and Frank Muller: Unbeatable.
- By Richard Delman on 04-20-12
By: Elmore Leonard
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Dead Irish
- Dismas Hardy, Book 1
- By: John Lescroart
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In his new life as a bartender at the Little Shamrock, Dismas Hardy is just hoping for a little peace. He's left both the police force and his law career behind. Unfortunately it's not as easy to leave behind the memory of a shattering personal loss - but for the time being, he can always take the edge off with a stiff drink and a round of darts.
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Soap-opera thrillers?
- By Snoodely on 01-27-10
By: John Lescroart
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brilliant!
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Good book, Average recording
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With footnotes!
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With The Barbarian Nurseries, Héctor Tobar gives our most misunderstood metropolis its great contemporary novel, taking us beyond the glimmer of Hollywood and deeper than camera-ready crime stories to reveal Southern California life as it really is, across its vast, sunshiny sprawl of classes, languages, dreams, and ambitions.
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Loved this book!
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Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself
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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
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What listeners say about Inherent Vice
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Overall
- Amazon fan
- 09-13-09
Really funny
By far the most accessible of Pynchon's books and really funny. The author has a great ear for the hippy dippy speech of the 70's and the narrator nails it perfectly.
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- C. Daniels
- 06-08-20
Funny, nostalgic, weird, and dark
I first read this book a few days after it was published. At the time I thought it was a bit too easy to read for a Thomas Pynchon novel. Now I’ve been through it a few times picking up new details with every reread. It just keeps getting better. And listening to Ron McLarty as a Doc Sportello just makes it that much better.
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- Andrew Cohen
- 06-30-22
Terrible audio book of a GREAT novel & film
I love this crime fiction novel by Thomas Pynchon, but the audio book is so bad I cannot give it a five star review on Audible.
The narrator takes odd liberties with the characters & the actual verbiage, to a point where I can't help myself from wondering what got in the way of this narrator from making a wonderful audible version of this incredible work fo whodunnit stoner fiction, and how/why did the creators and publishers accept this result?! It's just terrible. His caricature of Tariq Khalil is inaccurate and ignorant; his Doc Sportello is dimensionless and void; his female voices are mostly one note, save for Jade who is made to sound pretentious and ignorant, again inaccurate for either the novel or the movie.
I wonder is this narrator trying add his own subtle interpretations? The characters all strike me as desperately improvised and the reading as a whole is completely disjointed from the five interconnecting plot lines of the actual story. This narrator is incapable of appreciating the intelligence of anyone in the story besides the cops, with whom he imbues an extra amount of hefty force which lands like a thud against the otherwise colorful cast of characters caught in the bog of Gordita Beach. This narrator is caught in a bog someplace very far away from CA in the 70s...
The story doesn't even come through well because the way this guy reads it, the lurking zeitgeist of the whole novel is completely obliterated when the characters such a poor reading with liberties taken by the narrator, further undermining the subtleties of Pynchon.
I am picky for narrators, and this one I do not pick. I am a teacher and I am literally telling you I would rather you start with the film as a true to the novel interpretation, as opposed to the audiobook which may make you hate the entire world of IV.
One favorite part of reading the novel for me were the songs. Pynchon is great at crafting in these song lyrics that may or may not mean anything relative to the plot, characters, or sometimes they're just Macguffins. But in the audiobook, we have to listen to this clown sing the song lyrics every time, void of context, and he drones on through with a fragile, clearly non-singer's voice, and we are subjected to this for whole songs in a few cases. If I hadn't read and seen it on my own first, I would be so heavily annoyed by these renditions that I would return the title on Audible.
TL;DNR: This is my favorite novel and the audiobook is not up to par in my opinion. I highly recommend reading the actual novel and seeing the film if you have the option to do so.
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-18-09
Martin Cruz Smith on acid
I thought it was brilliant and pitch-perfect. But I guess I'm in the minority. Think Martin Cruz Smith's parade of Muscovites, not on vodka, but blue cheer.
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- DVF
- 05-22-23
loved it and very good
great story and loved the setting and time in which it took place. Doc sportello is probably one of my favorite characters as well as being one of the most annoying and sometimes so duuuuh from being stoned it's frustrating but it never effects the story. at times it's almost as if he's doing a stoner Columbo before Columbo was even a show on tv lol. but I loved the not so chill undertones from doc when Shasta is around despite is hippie all the time vibes. thought Bigfoot was an interesting character, and at the same time you wanna hate him, he knows doc isn't as dumb as he seems despite all he says to the contrary. but a very interesting and well written story that I was a little unsure of buying at first but this is one of those times I tool a chance and was rewarded with a great piece of material. loved the story, thought the performance and overall way the narrator tells the story and speaks as the characters was great too. definitely highly recommend this one.
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- Tommy M.
- 10-29-09
It's like the 60's man!
An excellant recreation of a time that's hard to believe unless you lived through it. A good story is told with a great sense of humour!
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- PickyPicky
- 11-30-12
Great protagonist, Dude!
Surprising that the pothead PI is so timely. Very enjoyable character, who at bottom is a straight arrow while accepting of every kind of person, crook or cop, in his inimitable laid-back weed-softened way.
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- Jane Doe
- 11-25-18
Ron McLarty is perfect for this book
Love Pynchon. Loved this book. Ron McLarty is the perfect narrator for this book. He makes the characters come alive and really sets the scene/pace. I wish he did more of Pynchon's work (as some of the narrators are rather wretched). If you like Pynchon, then this is a no-brainer. If you don't know who Pynchon is but you do like clever writing with real characters who mess up just as much as you do in your own life--then you need to read this book (or at least have it read to you by the masterful Ron McLarty).
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-05-21
My favorite Pynchon novel rendered beautifully
I've listened to this performance twice now. Ron Mclarty does a wonderful job narrating and singing, bringing Pynchon's zany characters and universe to hazy life.
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- Molly
- 05-05-10
Great, despite a slow start
This is a great book; would love to read it now that I have listened to it. A word of warning, however: the beginning is slow and it takes a little while to get into it. But have patience! It is well worth it.
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