The Destiny Thief
Essays on Writing, Writers and Life
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Narrated by:
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Richard Russo
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By:
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Richard Russo
About this listen
"It turns out that Russo the nonfiction writer is a lot like Russo the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. He is affably disagreeable, wry, idiosyncratic, vulnerably bighearted, a craftsman of lubricated sentences." (Jay Fielden, New York Times Book Review)
A master of the novel, short story, and memoir, the best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Everybody's Fool now gives us his very first collection of personal essays, ranging throughout writing and reading and living.
In these nine essays, Richard Russo provides insight into his life as a writer, teacher, friend, and reader. From a commencement speech he gave at Colby College, to the story of how an oddly placed toilet made him reevaluate the purpose of humor in art and life, to a comprehensive analysis of Mark Twain's value, to his harrowing journey accompanying a dear friend as she pursued gender-reassignment surgery, The Destiny Thief reflects the broad interests and experiences of one of America's most beloved authors. Warm, funny, wise, and poignant, the essays included here traverse Russo's writing life, expanding our understanding of who he is and how his singular, incredibly generous mind works. An utter joy to listen to, they give deep insight into the creative process from the prospective of one of our greatest writers.
©2018 Richard Russo (P)2018 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Frank 4
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The Braindead Megaphone
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Performance
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Critic reviews
"Russo's timing, wit, and delivery animate this memoir.... Fans and emerging writers will find much to appreciate in his perspectives." (AudioFile)
"Readers who come to this book in search of the storyteller they know from Russo's fiction will be well-rewarded.... [He] proves to be a familiar presence - thoughtful, funny, endearing - and surprising, as well.... Russo delivers the cozy intelligence and comic savvy that readers have come to admire." (Joan Silverman, Portland Press Herald)
"Captivating...generous-hearted essays on writing and life [that] fully display Russo's trademark warmth and wit, and are marked by a fair dose of unpretentious wisdom and a genuineness that sometimes borders on self-effacement.... The Destiny Thief puzzles with the mysteries of what good writing is and what good living is." (Robert Weibezahl, BookPage)
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Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favorite novels, she describes the unexpected journey that led her to become an American citizen after first dreaming of America as a young girl in Tehran and coming to know the country through its fiction. She urges us to rediscover the America of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and challenges us to be truer to the words and spirit of the Founding Fathers, who understood that their democratic experiment would never thrive or survive unless they could foster a democratic imagination.
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Love
- By Rebecca on 05-29-16
By: Azar Nafisi
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City Boy
- My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s
- By: Edmund White
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In the New York of the 1970s, in the wake of Stonewall and in the midst of economic collapse, you might find the likes of Jasper Johns and William Burroughs at the next cocktail party, and you were as likely to be caught arguing Marx at the New York City Ballet as cruising for sex in the warehouses and parked trucks along the Hudson. This is the New York that Edmund White portrays in City Boy: a place of enormous intrigue and artistic tumult.
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Pretense upon pretense.
- By Shalin Desai on 06-01-15
By: Edmund White
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Butterfly in the Typewriter
- The Tragic Life of John Kennedy Toole and the Remarkable Story of a Confederacy of Dunces
- By: Cory MacLauchlin
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The saga of John Kennedy Toole is one of the greatest stories of American literary history. In Butterfly in the Typewriter, Cory MacLauchlin draws on scores of new interviews with friends, family, and colleagues as well as full access to the extensive Toole archive at Tulane University, capturing his upbringing in New Orleans, his years in New York City, his frenzy of writing in Puerto Rico, his return to his beloved city, and his descent into paranoia and depression.
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Worth it! Good biography. Informative.
- By French Quarter on 07-09-13
By: Cory MacLauchlin
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In the Light of What We Know
- By: Zia Haider Rahman
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 21 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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One September morning in 2008, an investment banker approaching forty, his career in collapse and his marriage unraveling, receives a surprise visitor at his West London townhouse. In the disheveled figure of a South Asian male carrying a backpack the banker recognizes a long-lost friend, a mathematics prodigy who disappeared years earlier under mysterious circumstances. The friend has resurfaced to make a confession of unsettling power.
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dreadful
- By sam on 06-05-15
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The Voice is All
- The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac
- By: Joyce Johnson
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Voice Is All, Joyce Johnson - coauthor of the classic memoir Door Wide Open, about her relationship with Jack Kerouac - brilliantly peels away layers of the Kerouac legend to show how, caught between two cultures and two languages, he forged a voice to contain his dualities. Looking more deeply than previous biographers into how Kerouac's French Canadian background enriched his prose and gave him a unique outsider's vision of America, she tracks his development from boyhood through the phenomenal breakthroughs of 1951 that resulted in the composition of On the Road.
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Kerouac's Voice
- By Robert L. Stofel on 09-26-12
By: Joyce Johnson
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Gumption
- Relighting the Torch of Freedom with America's Gutsiest Troublemakers
- By: Nick Offerman
- Narrated by: Nick Offerman
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The star of Parks and Recreation and author of the New York Times best seller Paddle Your Own Canoe returns with a second book that humorously highlights 21 figures from our nation’s history, from her inception to present day - Nick’s personal pantheon of “great Americans". After the great success of his autobiography, Paddle Your Own Canoe, Offerman now focuses on the lives of those who inspired him. From George Washington to Willie Nelson, he describes 21 heroic figures and why they inspire in him such great meaning.
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Swagger and mirth
- By Tamara Shope on 09-14-15
By: Nick Offerman
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Empire of Self
- A Life of Gore Vidal
- By: Jay Parini
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 16 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The product of 30 years of friendship and conversation, Jay Parini's Empire of Self probes behind the glittering surface of Gore Vidal's colorful life to reveal the complex emotional and sexual truth underlying his celebrity-strewn life. But there is plenty of glittering surface as well - a virtual who's who of the American Century, from Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart through the Kennedys, Princess Margaret, and the creme de la creme of Hollywood.
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Well done!
- By Christopher on 03-22-16
By: Jay Parini
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Ayn Rand and the World She Made
- By: Anne C. Heller
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 19 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Ayn Rand is the author of two phenomenally best-selling ideological novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, which have sold over 12 million copies in the United States alone. Through them, she built a right-wing cult following in the late 1950s and became the guiding light of Libertarianism and of White House economic policy in the 1960s and '70s. Her defenses of radical individualism and of selfishness as a "capitalist virtue" have permanently altered the American cultural landscape.
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Great history of both Rand and her era
- By Mark on 08-07-10
By: Anne C. Heller
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Where the Past Begins
- A Writer's Memoir
- By: Amy Tan
- Narrated by: Amy Tan
- Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Moving from her childhood in Oakland and growing up with her Chinese parents through her success as a novelist, Amy Tan delves into her creative interests in music, the paralysis of beginning a new project, journal writing, and travelling. Where the Past Begins chronicles the making of a writer. With characteristic humor and poignant observation, Tan weaves a nontraditional introspective narrative that is as complex and vibrant as this beloved American novelist's fiction.
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Narration Issues
- By Sara on 12-14-17
By: Amy Tan
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You Are Not Special
- ...And Other Encouragements
- By: David McCullough Jr.
- Narrated by: David McCullough Jr.
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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A profound expansion of David McCullough, Jr.’s popular commencement speech - a call to arms against a prevailing, narrow, conception of success viewed by millions on YouTube - You Are Not Special is a love letter to students and parents as well as a guide to a truly fulfilling, happy life. By acknowledging that the world is indifferent to them, McCullough takes pressure off of students to be extraordinary achievers and instead exhorts them to roll up their sleeves and do something useful with their advantages.
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The Teacher is Wise
- By E. Pearson on 09-22-16
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Manifesto
- On Never Giving Up
- By: Bernardine Evaristo
- Narrated by: Bernardine Evaristo
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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From the best-selling and Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other, Bernardine Evaristo’s memoir of her own life and writing, and her manifesto on unstoppability, creativity, and activism.
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Glorious performance and inspiring story
- By Maggi Morehouse on 01-25-22
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American Philosophy
- A Love Story
- By: John Kaag
- Narrated by: Josh Bloomberg
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In American Philosophy, John Kaag - a disillusioned philosopher at sea in his marriage and career - stumbles upon a treasure trove of rare books on an old estate in the hinterlands of New Hampshire that once belonged to the Harvard philosopher William Ernest Hocking. The library includes notes from Whitman, inscriptions from Frost, and first editions of Hobbes, Descartes, and Kant. As he begins to catalog and preserve these priceless books, Kaag rediscovers the very tenets of American philosophy.
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Awesome Book! But..
- By Kye Sonne on 04-02-17
By: John Kaag
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Fifth Business
- The Deptford Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Robertson Davies
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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This first novel in The Deptford Trilogy introduces Ramsay, a man who returns from World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross but who is destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As we hear Ramsey tell his story, we begin to realize that, from childhood, he has influenced those around him in a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious way.
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Been waiting for this
- By Vinity on 12-10-11
By: Robertson Davies
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Wonderful Book Fabulous Narrator
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Chances Are...
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What listeners say about The Destiny Thief
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Zakir L. Henson
- 01-26-23
Could Be A Primer For Readers
Though this is a memoir of writing and the writer, it is an excellent study for readers.
If I write, it is private and for me. Even so, writing well is hard work. Instead of going into things like active vs passive voice, Russo talks about what the writer is trying to say. That, in and of itself is often a mystery that only gets revealed in failure and re-starting. His effort reveals insight that wasn’t there at the beginning of his work.
He uses Dickens as an illustration of a writer becoming an author. There is, to my thinking m, a huge chasm between the two. This book looks into that chasm without staring into the abyss.
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- dave petrenka
- 11-08-20
Required (reading), listening!
Being a life long frustrated storyteller I constantly search how to find my voice. The Destiny Thief is a wonderful picture window into the stories of the author. Richard Russo explains the reason he voiced his characters in the way he chose. In addition he talks about who influenced him as a writer. All In all a wonderful book I’m sure I’ll read again.
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- Doggy Bird
- 05-21-23
As good as his novels, highly recommend!
I was blown away by how much these essays moved me. I only began reading Richard Russo’s books a few weeks ago but I have been binge listening since I started listening to Nobody’s Fool last week. This series of essays really nailed it for me, and read in his own voice it’s even more touching. I highly recommend these for all readers, and even would be writers. Very insightful and very moving to be let inside his own life and motivations so generously.
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- anne
- 08-22-18
The Destiny Thief
I couldn't get enough. At the end I broke down and sobbed, too. Not in Bulgaria but in Portland, Maine. When you read the words of Springsteen my mind floated on a visual of our country today. Our beautiful country enduring the eroding of a vile president. Once when visiting in Austin, Tex. I went to a Congregational Church and heard the song Finlandia. I am reminded of that right now as I finished reading this book. Achingly sad. Our country being split by ego and evil. Okay. I get it. Anyone reading my review right now might ask what this has to do with the book. Russo, you write constructively and helpfully and with personal passion. I burst out laughing at parts. I contemplated deeply at others. Most of all, the book inspired. I'll leave it at that.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Sara T.
- 01-14-19
Richard Russo cannot write a bad book
Richard Russo is incapable of writing a bad book. I have read all of his.... the risk pool and nobody's fool being my favorites. It turns out he does non-fiction just as well as he does fiction. he's an excellent narrator too.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Dr. Paula C. Kliger
- 06-19-18
Russo's realm
A very compelling collection of memoirs about a variety of topics - most important of which are the "simple" truths about being human. Wonderful auto-biographical bits added to my comfort with his words, stories, humor, and straight-forward observations, humility and humanity. As with his novels, I finished feeling that I wanted more.
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- Wendy
- 12-29-22
HE MADE THE RIGHT MOVE
Richard Russo was right to leave NYPD BLUE when he did even if his movie career flopped. He is clearly a better writer than he ever was an actor.
I read and loved EMPIRE FALLS and Everybody's Fool but had no idea this was the same Richard Russo. Although I am not generally a fan of authors reading their own work, I have to say Mr. Russo's acting chops came into play here as his narration was superb. He sounded as if he was reading someone elses work, not his own.
Fans of CSI MIAMI will appreciate how little Mr. Russo mentions that show or NYPD BLUE. It shows his confidence as a writer has peaked. He does not have to dig up his past acting credits to stir the listener. He relies, instead, on his writing talent to share his insights on a craft he has so tightly honed on his days away from the acting spotlight.
Bravo, Mr. Russo. Bravo!
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1 person found this helpful