
Jerusalem
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Narrated by:
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Simon Vance
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By:
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Alan Moore
Winner, 2017 APA Audie Awards - Best Male Narrator
Fierce in its imagining and stupefying in its scope, Jerusalem is the tale of everything, told from a vanished gutter.
In the epic novel Jerusalem, Alan Moore channels both the ecstatic visions of William Blake and the theoretical physics of Albert Einstein through the hardscrabble streets and alleys of his hometown of Northampton, UK. In the half a square mile of decay and demolition that was England's Saxon capital, eternity is loitering between the firetrap housing projects. Embedded in the grubby amber of the district's narrative, among its saints, kings, prostitutes, and derelicts, a different kind of human time is happening, a soiled simultaneity that does not differentiate between the petrol-colored puddles and the fractured dreams of those who navigate them.
Employing a kaleidoscope of literary forms and styles that range from brutal social realism to extravagant children's fantasy, from modern stage drama to the extremes of science fiction, Jerusalem's dizzyingly rich cast of characters includes the living, the dead, the celestial, and the infernal in an intricately woven tapestry that presents a vision of an absolute and timeless human reality in all of its exquisite, comical, and heartbreaking splendor.
In these minutes lurk demons from the second-century Book of Tobit and angels with golden blood who reduce fate to a snooker tournament. Vagrants, prostitutes, and ghosts rub shoulders with Oliver Cromwell; Samuel Beckett; James Joyce's tragic daughter, Lucia; and Buffalo Bill, among many others. There is a conversation in the thunderstruck dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, childbirth on the cobblestones of Lambeth Walk, an estranged couple sitting all night on the cold steps of a Gothic church front, and an infant choking on a cough drop for 11 chapters. An art exhibition is in preparation, and above the world a naked old man and a beautiful dead baby race along the Attics of the Breath toward the heat death of the universe.
An opulent mythology for those without a pot to piss in, through the labyrinthine streets and minutes of Jerusalem tread ghosts that sing of wealth, poverty, and our threadbare millennium. They discuss English as a visionary language from John Bunyan to James Joyce, hold forth on the illusion of mortality post-Einstein, and insist upon the meanest slum as Blake's eternal holy city.
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As always, Simon Vance's narration is a treat. His accents are fluid and consistent, giving us memorable characters.
Moore's story unfolds with layer after layer, rewarding you with some of the most playful text since David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest." Wonder what the text would sound like as a play? There's a section for that. Wonder how you could tell the story in rhyme? There's a section for that. Wonder if you could still communicate the story in the glossolalia of word and sound replacement? There's a section for that.
The divine and the mundane mix it up in a holy and profane long, slow kiss with grease under the fingernails. I love this book and, as with other long, slow kisses like works by DFW, Pynchon or Joyce, if you give it a shot, it'll love you back.
A Gravity's Rainbow for the current generation
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Dive in. You won't shake it loose for a while
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Amazing book, must be heard, not read
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Rather than decry the loss, Alan Moore has managed to draw a fantastical and beautiful picture of the neighborhood, moving around through its incomprehensibly long history from the ancient Celtic myth and Roman occupation to the present day and into the future, even venturing beyond the death of the sun.
Simon Vance does an extraordinary job capturing this oversized epic, maintaining an engaging performance throughout. Around the mid section there are a few bits of shoddy editing with repeated takes but who can blame them? It's 50 hours of editing.
Expect long trails of consciousness and unanswered questions. The hardest parts for me were the explicit descriptions of sexual assault which occur later in the book. Moments that I wouldn't remove from the book but that were extremely difficult to listen to.
You need to be patient to listen to the book and it doesn't end with a finali that will be satisfying to the questions the book raises but taken in its totality, the work is an enormous accomplishment that I hope will be immortalized as a portrait of the loss so many are feeling right now.
A mythology memorializing a neighborhood
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Moore don’t need no stinkin’ pictures
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grand guignol. now, must sleep.
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imaginative genius
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Never Gets Old
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I made it through the whole thing. I enjoyed large parts of it. There were sections I didn't understand and parts that I didn't think we're necessary. As a whole I found it unsatisfying. In bits and pieces I thought it was really interesting and well done. I'm glad that I listen to it, but I imagine I will never revisit it.
A Mixed-Bag of Brilliant and Baffling Storytelling
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epic
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