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The Haunted Life
- And Other Writings
- Narrated by: Liev Schreiber, Luke Daniels
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
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Publisher's summary
Jack Kerouac wrote The Haunted Life in 1944 when he was 22 years old and attending Columbia University. Originally intended as a three-part novel, only this first 20,000-word section was ever finished. Upon its completion, Kerouac promptly lost his only hand-written final draft in a New York taxi cab, remaining unknown to the public until its appearance at Christies about ten years ago.
Kerouac’s family has now decided to share this manuscript with the world.
While the entirety of the novel remained unfinished, the surviving manuscript successfully works alone as a novella with a satisfying, if open-ended, conclusion. It features a scaled-down version of the Martin family and is set in Lowell, Massachusetts, as was Kerouac’s first novel The Town and The City. Kerouac had planned on writing a cycle of novels tentatively titled An American Passed Here, which was to be set primarily in the fictional town of Galloway (based on Lowell). That cycle was to contain The Haunted Life and The Sea is My Brother, tracing the story of the Martin family throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Eventually Kerouac’s plans for his Martin cycle materialized into his first novel, The Town and the City, shortly before he moved on to compose his iconic On the Road.
Todd Tietchen, the editor of the project and the Jack Kerouac/Beat Scholar in residence at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, has assembled a number of archival documents to thicken out the context of this lost novella, documents that attest to the level of intention and care that went into Kerouac’s writing projects.
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- By Dan Harlow on 07-07-13
By: John Steinbeck
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Raintree County
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- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 43 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout a single day in 1892, John Shawnessy recalls the great moments of his life - from the battles of the Civil War to the politics of the Gilded Age, from the love affairs of his youth in Indiana to his homecoming as schoolteacher, husband, and father.
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A great American novel, seriously!
- By Kirk McElhearn on 02-04-09
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Galilee
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- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
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- Unabridged
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The Barbarossa family’s roots are far more ancient and ethereal, but they are bound to the Gearys by a shared history of murder, insanity, and adultery. When Rachel Geary and Galilee, the seductive prince of the Barbarossa clan, fall in love, they unleash powerful enmities that could destroy both dynasties. Shorter and more conventional than some of Barker’s other work, this novel is especially rich with complex, passionate, three-dimensional characters, lush settings, and elegant language.
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An Audiophile's Dream
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By: Clive Barker
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Manhood for Amateurs
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- Narrated by: Michael Chabon
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- Unabridged
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As a devoted son, as a passionate husband, and above all as a father, Chabon's memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, are like a theme played by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor. At once dazzling, hilarious, and moving, Manhood for Amateurs is destined to become a classic.
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Terrible
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By: Michael Chabon
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Welcome to the Monkey House
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- Unabridged
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Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.
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Classic Vonnegut
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By: Kurt Vonnegut
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The Golden Notebook
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- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
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- Unabridged
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Author Anna Wulf attempts to overcome writer’s block by writing a comprehensive "golden notebook" that draws together the preoccupations of her life, each of which is examined in a different notebook. Anna’s struggle to unify the various strands of her life – emotional, political, and professional – amasses into a fascinating encyclopaedia of female experience in the ‘50s.
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Transcendent narration of a masterpiece.
- By @vmarinelli on 07-03-12
By: Doris Lessing
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A Fraction of the Whole
- By: Steve Toltz
- Narrated by: Colin McPhillamy, Craig Baldwin
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- Unabridged
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Stewing in an Australian prison, Jasper Dean reflects on his relationship with his dead father and recounts the many zany adventures they shared together.
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A Funny and Thought-provoking Tale of Human Nature
- By Asha Ember on 01-27-10
By: Steve Toltz
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Main Street
- By: Sinclair Lewis
- Narrated by: Barbara Caruso
- Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Widely hailed as a milestone in American literature, Sinclair Lewis' Main Street vividly describes a country on the verge of massive change, with traditional values being threatened by progress. The novel's heroine, Carol Milford, is a highly educated, ambitious woman who plans to join a newly enlightened society. But after marrying a small-town doctor, she finds herself trapped in the role of a dutiful wife. Carol's desires for social change conflict with the security of her comfortable married life, as she struggles to understand the cost of conformity...and rebellion. As relevant today as it was upon its 1920 publication, Main Street is both a masterful piece of writing and a fascinating microcosm of America's social evolution.
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Delightful reading of an excellent book
- By Steve Bird on 06-14-05
By: Sinclair Lewis
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Seize the Day
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 3 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Fading charmer Tommy Wilhelm has reached his day of reckoning and is scared. In his forties, he still retains a boyish impetuousness that has brought him to the brink of chaos: he is separated from his wife and children; at odds with his vain, successful father; failed in his acting career (a Hollywood agent once placed him as “the type that loses the girl”); and in a financial mess.
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Why?
- By Ashraf Abaza on 05-16-19
By: Saul Bellow
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What listeners say about The Haunted Life
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- Asmarranda
- 04-21-21
Liev Schreiber should read more
The book is better than I thought it would be. Liev Schreiber should read more.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Carl A. Gallozzi
- 03-21-19
Early Kerouac - Lowell, Ma. - shows brilliance
Disclaimer: "The Haunted Life" is the first work by Jack Kerouac that I've ever read - much less reviewed.
Commentary:
Galloway is Lowell, Ma.
A simple, yet rich & complex story about "growing up (and out)" from Lowell, Ma - right before WW II. The characters each represent different life and political philosophies. The father represents the very Conservative voices of the time (Novel written in 1944 - but published in 2014) represented by the view of Father Charles Coughlin. In the Father's introductory monologue - many of the ideas mentioned resonate today with those who are politically Conservative - and through the appropriatea Conservative news outlets.
Other characters represent wanderlust - getting out of Lowell, Ma. and ...."seeing the world as a romantic artist and adventurer with the U.S. Army.
The title comes from the idea that two of Kerouac's friends were killed in WWII - and that their loss - has "haunted" Kerouac.
A theme is also how WW II has transformed nearly everyone and everything - and this transformation was just becoming visible.
This is an "early Kerouac" work - it seems to indicate that his (Kerouac's) concerns to be expressed during his "beat era" - had their beginnings during the Great Depression and WW II.
Great writing - dealing with the "tensions of the day" - a harbinger of the greater writing yet to come.
Carl Gallozzi
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Gary Ghirardi
- 01-23-22
An honest man is a failure by most measures.
This book seems more like a montage of images that mirror the times we are experiencing now in 2022, maybe all times, struggling to define what it means to be an American, at least the imperious ones.
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