-
The Life of William Faulkner
- The Past Is Never Dead, 1897-1934
- Narrated by: Philip J. Rodrigue
- Length: 20 hrs and 26 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $29.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
William Faulkner emerged from the ravaged South - half backwoods, half defeated empire - transforming his corner of Mississippi into the fictional Yoknapatawpha County and bestowing on the world some of the most revolutionary and enduring literature of the 20th century. The personal story behind the work has fascinated readers nearly as much as the great novels, but Faulkner has remained elusive despite numerous biographies that have attempted to decipher his private life and his wild genius. In an ambitious biography that will encompass two volumes, Carl Rollyson has created a life of Faulkner for the new millennium.
Rollyson has drawn on an unprecedented amount of material to present the richest rendering of Faulkner yet published. In addition to his own extensive interviews, Rollyson consults the complete - and never fully shared - research of pioneering Faulkner biographer Joseph Blotner, who discarded from his authorized biography substantial findings in order to protect the Faulkner family. Rollyson also had unrivaled access to the work of Carvel Collins, whose decades-long inquiry produced one of the greatest troves of primary source material in American letters.
This first volume follows Faulkner from his formative years through his introduction to Hollywood. Rollyson sheds light on Faulkner’s unpromising, even bewildering youth, including a gift for tall tales that blossomed into the greatest of literary creativity. He provides the fullest portrait yet of Faulkner’s family life, in particular his enigmatic marriage, and offers invaluable new insight into the ways in which Faulkner’s long career as a screenwriter influenced his iconic novels.
Integrating Faulkner’s screenplays, fiction, and life, Rollyson argues that the novelist deserves to be reread not just as a literary figure but as a still-relevant force, especially in relation to issues of race, sexuality, and equality. The culmination of years of research in archives that have been largely ignored by previous biographers, The Life of William Faulkner offers a significant challenge and an essential contribution to Faulkner scholarship.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Sound and the Fury
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
-
-
Hang in
- By W.Denis on 07-11-05
By: William Faulkner
-
Becoming Faulkner
- The Art and Life of William Faulker
- By: Philip Weinstein
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
William Faulkner was the greatest American novelist of the 20th century, yet he lived a life marked by a pervasive sense of failure. Throughout his career, he remained haunted by his inability to master a series of personal and professional challenges: his less-than-heroic military career; the loss of his brother in an airplane crash; a disappointing stint as a Hollywood screenwriter; and a destructive bout with alcoholism.
-
-
Miss.'s BCS-Bundren.Compson.Snopes/Sutpen/Sartoris
- By W Perry Hall on 05-01-14
By: Philip Weinstein
-
The Saddest Words
- William Faulkner's Civil War
- By: Michael Gorra
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Should we still read William Faulkner in this new century? What can his works tell us about the legacy of slavery and the Civil War, that central quarrel in our nation's history? These are the provocative questions that Michael Gorra asks in this historic portrait of the novelist and his world.
-
-
Fabulous
- By Ernest Suarez on 09-13-24
By: Michael Gorra
-
Absalom, Absalom!
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Absalom, Absalom! tells the story of Thomas Sutpen, the enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson township in the early 1830s. With a French architect and a band of wild Haitians, he wrung a fabulous plantation out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. Sutpen was a man, Faulker said, "who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him". His tragedy left its impress not only on his contemporaries but also on men who came after, men like Quentin Compson, haunted even into the 20th century by Sutpen's legacy.
-
-
A long, enjoyable listen
- By pilot on 01-08-09
By: William Faulkner
-
Battle Cry of Freedom
- The Civil War Era
- By: James M. McPherson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 39 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Battle Cry of Freedom vividly traces how a new nation was forged when a war both sides were sure would amount to little dragged for four years and cost more American lives than all other wars combined. Narrator Jonathan Davis powerful reading brings to life the many voices of the Civil War.
-
-
Excellent Book
- By J. Weston on 12-11-20
-
As I Lay Dying
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman, Robertson Dean, Lina Patel, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of William Faulkner’s finest novels, As I Lay Dying, originally published in 1930, remains a captivating and stylistically innovative work. The story revolves around a grim yet darkly humorous pilgrimage, as Addie Bundren’s family sets out to fulfill her last wish: to be buried in her native Jefferson, Mississippi, far from the miserable backwater surroundings of her married life.
-
-
Faulkner's As I Lay Dying review
- By Kristina on 11-12-08
By: William Faulkner
-
The Sound and the Fury
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
-
-
Hang in
- By W.Denis on 07-11-05
By: William Faulkner
-
Becoming Faulkner
- The Art and Life of William Faulker
- By: Philip Weinstein
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
William Faulkner was the greatest American novelist of the 20th century, yet he lived a life marked by a pervasive sense of failure. Throughout his career, he remained haunted by his inability to master a series of personal and professional challenges: his less-than-heroic military career; the loss of his brother in an airplane crash; a disappointing stint as a Hollywood screenwriter; and a destructive bout with alcoholism.
-
-
Miss.'s BCS-Bundren.Compson.Snopes/Sutpen/Sartoris
- By W Perry Hall on 05-01-14
By: Philip Weinstein
-
The Saddest Words
- William Faulkner's Civil War
- By: Michael Gorra
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Should we still read William Faulkner in this new century? What can his works tell us about the legacy of slavery and the Civil War, that central quarrel in our nation's history? These are the provocative questions that Michael Gorra asks in this historic portrait of the novelist and his world.
-
-
Fabulous
- By Ernest Suarez on 09-13-24
By: Michael Gorra
-
Absalom, Absalom!
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Absalom, Absalom! tells the story of Thomas Sutpen, the enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson township in the early 1830s. With a French architect and a band of wild Haitians, he wrung a fabulous plantation out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. Sutpen was a man, Faulker said, "who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him". His tragedy left its impress not only on his contemporaries but also on men who came after, men like Quentin Compson, haunted even into the 20th century by Sutpen's legacy.
-
-
A long, enjoyable listen
- By pilot on 01-08-09
By: William Faulkner
-
Battle Cry of Freedom
- The Civil War Era
- By: James M. McPherson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 39 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Battle Cry of Freedom vividly traces how a new nation was forged when a war both sides were sure would amount to little dragged for four years and cost more American lives than all other wars combined. Narrator Jonathan Davis powerful reading brings to life the many voices of the Civil War.
-
-
Excellent Book
- By J. Weston on 12-11-20
-
As I Lay Dying
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman, Robertson Dean, Lina Patel, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of William Faulkner’s finest novels, As I Lay Dying, originally published in 1930, remains a captivating and stylistically innovative work. The story revolves around a grim yet darkly humorous pilgrimage, as Addie Bundren’s family sets out to fulfill her last wish: to be buried in her native Jefferson, Mississippi, far from the miserable backwater surroundings of her married life.
-
-
Faulkner's As I Lay Dying review
- By Kristina on 11-12-08
By: William Faulkner
-
The Big Goodbye
- Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood
- By: Sam Wasson
- Narrated by: Sam Wasson
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Chinatown is the Holy Grail of 1970s cinema. Its twist ending is the most notorious in American film and its closing line of dialogue the most haunting. Here for the first time is the incredible true story of its making. In Sam Wasson's telling, it becomes the defining story of the most colorful characters in the most colorful period of Hollywood history. Here is Jack Nicholson at the height of his powers, as compelling a movie star as there has ever been, embarking on his great, doomed love affair with Anjelica Huston.
-
-
This book is cursed
- By Dobbs on 04-13-20
By: Sam Wasson
-
Larry McMurtry
- A Life
- By: Tracy Daugherty
- Narrated by: Matt Godfrey
- Length: 20 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In over forty books, in a career that spanned over sixty years, Larry McMurtry staked his claim as a superior chronicler of the American West, and as the Great Plains’ keenest witness since Willa Cather and Wallace Stegner. Larry McMurtry: A Life traces his origins as one of the last American writers who had direct contact with this country’s pioneer traditions. It follows his astonishing career as bestselling novelist, Pulitzer-Prize winner, author of the beloved Lonesome Dove, Academy-Award winning screenwriter, public intellectual, and passionate bookseller.
-
-
The great book about a great contemporary American writer
- By Mike Carroll on 10-05-23
By: Tracy Daugherty
-
A Confederacy of Dunces
- By: John Kennedy Toole
- Narrated by: Barrett Whitener
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The hero of John Kennedy Toole's incomparable, Pultizer Prize–winning comic classic is one Ignatius J. Reilly, an obese, self-absorbed, hapless Don Quixote of the French Quarter, whose half-hearted attempts at employment lead to a series of wacky adventures among the lower denizens of New Orleans.
-
-
Well Done
- By Jon on 09-18-05
-
Light in August
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 15 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An Oprah's Book Club Selection regarded as one of Faulkner's greatest and most accessible novels, Light in August is a timeless and riveting story of determination, tragedy, and hope. In Faulkner's iconic Yoknapatawpha County, race, sex, and religion collide around three memorable characters searching desperately for human connection and their own identities.
-
-
so large, so powerful, so conflicted
- By Darwin8u on 09-17-17
By: William Faulkner
-
Hollywood: The Oral History
- By: Jeanine Basinger, Sam Wasson
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon, Marni Penning
- Length: 28 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the archives of the American Film Institute comes a unique picture of what it was like to work in Hollywood from its beginnings to its present day. Gleaned from nearly three thousand interviews, involving four hundred voices from the industry, Hollywood: The Oral History, lets a listener “listen in” on candid remarks from the biggest names in front of the camera—Bette Davis, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Harold Lloyd—to the biggest behind it—Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Jordan Peele, as well as the lesser known individuals that shaped what was heard and seen on screen.
-
-
Picky, Picky!
- By Patrick on 12-22-22
By: Jeanine Basinger, and others
-
Something in the Blood
- The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula
- By: David J. Skal
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 21 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bram Stoker, despite having a name nearly as famous as his legendary undead count, has remained a puzzling enigma. Now, in this psychological and cultural portrait, David J. Skal exhumes the inner world and strange genius of the writer who conjured an undying cultural icon.
-
-
Fascinating portrait of author and his world
- By Neil Sarver on 10-31-16
By: David J. Skal
-
Red Comet
- The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
- By: Heather Clark
- Narrated by: Laura Jennings
- Length: 45 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With a wealth of never-before-accessed materials, Heather Clark brings to life the brilliant Sylvia Plath, who had precocious poetic ambition and was an accomplished published writer even before she became a star at Smith College. Refusing to read Plath’s work as if her every act was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Clark considers the sociopolitical context as she thoroughly explores Plath’s world.
-
-
Amazing!
- By Blurryface on 10-28-20
By: Heather Clark
-
The Bright Book of Life
- Novels to Read and Reread
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Stephen Mendel
- Length: 22 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this valedictory volume, Yale professor Harold Bloom — who for more than half a century was regarded as America's most daringly original and controversial literary critic — gives us his only book devoted entirely to the art of the novel. With his hallmark percipience, remarkable scholarship, and extraordinary devotion to sublimity, Bloom offers meditations on 48 essential works spanning the Western canon.
-
-
Classic Bloom, but a curious reading of him
- By J. J. Kuzma on 09-10-21
By: Harold Bloom
-
Updike
- By: Adam Begley
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 20 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A masterful, much-anticipated biography of one of the most celebrated figures in American literature: Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Updike - a candid, intimate, and richly detailed look at his life and work. In this magisterial biography, Adam Begley offers an illuminating portrait of John Updike, the acclaimed novelist, poet, short-story writer, and critic who saw himself as a literary spy in small-town and suburban America.
-
-
Literary biography at its best
- By Laurene on 04-05-15
By: Adam Begley
-
The Awakening
- By: Kate Chopin
- Narrated by: Susie Berneis
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Unsatisfied with the expectations of Creole society and unhappy with her family life, Edna Pontellier begins to fall in love with the dapper Robert Lebrun. Lebrun's flirtations, along with the lifestyle of renowned musician Mademoiselle Reisz, rejuvenates Edna's sense of freedom and independence. However, an affair with the womanizer Alcee Arobin provides Edna with a taste of the danger that comes with living outside of social convention.
-
-
Good story, great reading.
- By Donald on 03-14-17
By: Kate Chopin
-
The Contender
- The Story of Marlon Brando
- By: William J. Mann
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 21 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The award-winning film biographer presents a deeply-textured, ambitious, and definitive portrait of the greatest movie actor of the 20th century, the elusive Marlon Brando, bringing his extraordinarily complex life into view as never before. The most influential movie actor of his era, Marlon Brando changed the way other actors perceived their craft. His approach was natural, honest, and deeply personal, resulting in performances - most notably in A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront - that are without parallel.
-
-
Psychobabble run amok
- By Dr. Susan Tice-Alicke on 06-07-20
By: William J. Mann
-
Capote
- A Biography
- By: Gerald Clarke
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 25 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 1988 - just four years after Capote's death - Clarke paints a vivid behind-the-scenes picture of the author's life, based on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with the man himself and the people close to him. From the glittering heights of notoriety and parties with the rich and famous to his later struggles with addiction, Capote emerges as a richly multidimensional person - both brilliant and flawed.
-
-
the brightest stars can self destruct
- By Placeholder on 09-22-21
By: Gerald Clarke
Related to this topic
-
Isak Dinesen
- The Life of a Storyteller
- By: Judith Thurman
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 21 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Isak Dinesen earned international fame for Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa, and other stories that skillfully combine elements of fable, social conflict, and psychological drama. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize. Yet the story of her life - her travels, affairs, and friendships - remains the greatest story of all.
-
-
over-written
- By Jacqui Good on 10-19-18
By: Judith Thurman
-
Philip Roth
- The Biography
- By: Blake Bailey
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 31 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"I don't want you to rehabilitate me," Philip Roth said to his only authorized biographer, Blake Bailey. "Just make me interesting." Granted complete independence and access, Bailey spent almost 10 years poring over Roth's personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers, and colleagues, and listening to Roth's own breathtakingly candid confessions. Tracing Roth's path from realism to farce to metafiction to the tragic masterpieces of the American Trilogy, Bailey explores Roth's engagement with nearly every aspect of postwar American culture.
-
-
moved
- By Michael on 08-18-21
By: Blake Bailey
-
Becoming Faulkner
- The Art and Life of William Faulker
- By: Philip Weinstein
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
William Faulkner was the greatest American novelist of the 20th century, yet he lived a life marked by a pervasive sense of failure. Throughout his career, he remained haunted by his inability to master a series of personal and professional challenges: his less-than-heroic military career; the loss of his brother in an airplane crash; a disappointing stint as a Hollywood screenwriter; and a destructive bout with alcoholism.
-
-
Miss.'s BCS-Bundren.Compson.Snopes/Sutpen/Sartoris
- By W Perry Hall on 05-01-14
By: Philip Weinstein
-
The Man in the Red Coat
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Saul Reichlin
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' intellectual shopping: a prince, a count, and a commoner with an Italian name. In time, each of these men would achieve a certain level of renown, but who were they then and what was the significance of their sojourn to England? Answering these questions, Julian Barnes unfurls the stories of their lives which play out against the backdrop of the Belle Epoque in Paris. Our guide through this world is Samuel Pozzi, the society doctor, free-thinker, and man of science with a famously complicated private life....
-
-
Pathetic narration makes this title unbearable
- By Chris Quigg on 02-27-20
By: Julian Barnes
-
Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Colm Toibin
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Elegant, profound, and riveting, Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know illuminates not only the complex relationships between three of the greatest writers in the English language and their fathers, but also illustrates the surprising ways these men surface in their work. Through these stories of fathers and sons, Tóibín recounts the resistance to English cultural domination, the birth of modern Irish cultural identity, and the extraordinary contributions of these complex and masterful authors.
-
-
Eminently re-readable
- By Ellen-A on 01-02-19
By: Colm Toibin
-
Looking for Lorraine
- The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry
- By: Imani Perry
- Narrated by: LisaGay Hamilton
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lorraine Hansberry, who died at thirty-four, was by all accounts a force of nature. Although best-known for her work A Raisin in the Sun, her short life was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements, and she had an unflinching commitment to social justice, which brought her under FBI surveillance when she was barely in her twenties. While her close friends and contemporaries, like James Baldwin and Nina Simone, have been rightly celebrated, her story has been diminished and relegated to one work—until now.
-
-
Radiant
- By Rose Brookins on 03-20-19
By: Imani Perry
-
Isak Dinesen
- The Life of a Storyteller
- By: Judith Thurman
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 21 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Isak Dinesen earned international fame for Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa, and other stories that skillfully combine elements of fable, social conflict, and psychological drama. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize. Yet the story of her life - her travels, affairs, and friendships - remains the greatest story of all.
-
-
over-written
- By Jacqui Good on 10-19-18
By: Judith Thurman
-
Philip Roth
- The Biography
- By: Blake Bailey
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 31 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"I don't want you to rehabilitate me," Philip Roth said to his only authorized biographer, Blake Bailey. "Just make me interesting." Granted complete independence and access, Bailey spent almost 10 years poring over Roth's personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers, and colleagues, and listening to Roth's own breathtakingly candid confessions. Tracing Roth's path from realism to farce to metafiction to the tragic masterpieces of the American Trilogy, Bailey explores Roth's engagement with nearly every aspect of postwar American culture.
-
-
moved
- By Michael on 08-18-21
By: Blake Bailey
-
Becoming Faulkner
- The Art and Life of William Faulker
- By: Philip Weinstein
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
William Faulkner was the greatest American novelist of the 20th century, yet he lived a life marked by a pervasive sense of failure. Throughout his career, he remained haunted by his inability to master a series of personal and professional challenges: his less-than-heroic military career; the loss of his brother in an airplane crash; a disappointing stint as a Hollywood screenwriter; and a destructive bout with alcoholism.
-
-
Miss.'s BCS-Bundren.Compson.Snopes/Sutpen/Sartoris
- By W Perry Hall on 05-01-14
By: Philip Weinstein
-
The Man in the Red Coat
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Saul Reichlin
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' intellectual shopping: a prince, a count, and a commoner with an Italian name. In time, each of these men would achieve a certain level of renown, but who were they then and what was the significance of their sojourn to England? Answering these questions, Julian Barnes unfurls the stories of their lives which play out against the backdrop of the Belle Epoque in Paris. Our guide through this world is Samuel Pozzi, the society doctor, free-thinker, and man of science with a famously complicated private life....
-
-
Pathetic narration makes this title unbearable
- By Chris Quigg on 02-27-20
By: Julian Barnes
-
Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Colm Toibin
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Elegant, profound, and riveting, Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know illuminates not only the complex relationships between three of the greatest writers in the English language and their fathers, but also illustrates the surprising ways these men surface in their work. Through these stories of fathers and sons, Tóibín recounts the resistance to English cultural domination, the birth of modern Irish cultural identity, and the extraordinary contributions of these complex and masterful authors.
-
-
Eminently re-readable
- By Ellen-A on 01-02-19
By: Colm Toibin
-
Looking for Lorraine
- The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry
- By: Imani Perry
- Narrated by: LisaGay Hamilton
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lorraine Hansberry, who died at thirty-four, was by all accounts a force of nature. Although best-known for her work A Raisin in the Sun, her short life was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements, and she had an unflinching commitment to social justice, which brought her under FBI surveillance when she was barely in her twenties. While her close friends and contemporaries, like James Baldwin and Nina Simone, have been rightly celebrated, her story has been diminished and relegated to one work—until now.
-
-
Radiant
- By Rose Brookins on 03-20-19
By: Imani Perry
-
Mark Twain
- A Life
- By: Ron Powers
- Narrated by: Ron Powers
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mark Twain founded the American voice. His works are a living national treasury: taught, quoted, and reprinted more than those of any writer except Shakespeare. His awestruck contemporaries saw him as the representative figure of his times, and his influence has deeply flavored the 20th and 21st centuries.
-
-
Buy the Book
- By W.Denis on 10-22-05
By: Ron Powers
-
Sontag
- Her Life and Work
- By: Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No writer is as emblematic of the American 20th century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture.
-
-
Cloying voice
- By Suzanne on 11-02-19
By: Benjamin Moser
-
Empire of Self
- A Life of Gore Vidal
- By: Jay Parini
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 16 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Well done!
- By Christopher on 03-22-16
By: Jay Parini
-
The Last Love Song
- A Biography of Joan Didion
- By: Tracy Daugherty
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 26 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joan Didion lived a life in the public and private eye with her late husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, whom she met while the two were working in New York City, when Didion was at Vogue and Dunne was writing for Time. They became wildly successful writing partners when they moved to Los Angeles and cowrote screenplays and adaptations together. Didion is well known for her literary journalistic style in both fiction and nonfiction.
-
-
Riveted for 1591 miles
- By Kaysi12 on 04-11-16
By: Tracy Daugherty
-
Zelda Fitzgerald
- The Tragic, Meticulously Researched Biography of the Jazz Age's High Priestess
- By: Sally Cline
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Zelda Fitzgerald was the mythical American Dream Girl of the Roaring Twenties who became, in the words of her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, "the first American flapper." Their romance transformed a symbol of glamour and spectacle of the Jazz Age. When Zelda cracked up, not long after the stock market crash of 1929, Scott remained loyal to her through a nightmare of later breakdowns and final madness.
-
-
The Beautiful and the Bungled
- By Silverthorne on 12-08-17
By: Sally Cline
-
The Awakening
- By: Kate Chopin
- Narrated by: Susie Berneis
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Unsatisfied with the expectations of Creole society and unhappy with her family life, Edna Pontellier begins to fall in love with the dapper Robert Lebrun. Lebrun's flirtations, along with the lifestyle of renowned musician Mademoiselle Reisz, rejuvenates Edna's sense of freedom and independence. However, an affair with the womanizer Alcee Arobin provides Edna with a taste of the danger that comes with living outside of social convention.
-
-
Good story, great reading.
- By Donald on 03-14-17
By: Kate Chopin
-
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life
- By: Gerald Martin
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 22 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In his novels and short stories, Gabriel García Márquez has transformed the particulars of his own life and the lives of his fellow Colombians into wondrous fiction. While telling the story of the sloppily dressed, skinny young man who rose from obscurity as a provincial journalist to international fame as the progenitor of a new literature, Gerald Martin also considers the tensions in García Márquez's life between celebrity and the personal quest for literary quality, between politics and writing, and between the seductions of power, solitude, and love.
-
-
Great content, somewhat disappointing narrator.
- By Paola Herrington on 01-08-13
By: Gerald Martin
-
Melville in Love
- The Secret Life of Herman Melville and the Muse of Moby-Dick
- By: Michael Shelden
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Herman Melville's epic novel, Moby-Dick, was a spectacular failure when it was published in 1851, effectively ending its author's rise to literary fame. Because he was neglected by academics for so long, and because he made little effort to preserve his legacy, we know very little about Melville, and even less about what he called his "wicked book". Scholars still puzzle over what drove Melville to invent Captain Ahab's mad pursuit of the great white whale.
-
-
intriguing
- By Jean on 06-18-16
By: Michael Shelden
-
The Voice is All
- The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac
- By: Joyce Johnson
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Kerouac's Voice
- By Robert L. Stofel on 09-26-12
By: Joyce Johnson
-
Genius & Anxiety
- How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947
- By: Norman Lebrecht
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 18 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Norman Lebrecht has devoted half of his life to pondering and researching the mindset of the Jewish intellectuals, writers, scientists, and thinkers who turned the tides of history and shaped the world today as we know it. In Genius & Anxiety, Lebrecht begins with the Communist Manifesto in 1847 and ends in 1947, when Israel was founded. This robust, magnificent volume, beautifully designed, is an urgent and necessary celebration of Jewish genius and contribution.
-
-
Post-anxiety
- By Amaze on 03-27-20
By: Norman Lebrecht
-
So We Read On
- How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures
- By: Maureen Corrigan
- Narrated by: Maureen Corrigan
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Conceived nearly a century ago by a man who died believing himself a failure, it's now a revered classic and a rite of passage in the reading lives of millions. But how well do we really know The Great Gatsby? As Maureen Corrigan, Gatsby lover extraordinaire, points out, while Fitzgerald's masterpiece may be one of the most popular novels in America, many of us first read it when we were too young to fully comprehend its power.
-
-
Reading Gatsby as an adult reveals its greatness!
- By Mark on 10-06-14
By: Maureen Corrigan
-
The Republic of Imagination
- America in Three Books
- By: Azar Nafisi
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Love
- By Rebecca on 05-29-16
By: Azar Nafisi
What listeners say about The Life of William Faulkner
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Claudia
- 01-28-23
OMG where is the Director or Author
I finally had to give up. While there is very good and new information, I was left wondering who edited this?! The structure is so confusing, so disorganized and disjointed. It's virtually impossible to follow. The narration is so bad, so bad I was struck wondering where is the Director or Author. A monotone delivery with no breath taken for punctuation and almost all of Faulker titles and characters mispronounced has really left me wanting a refund... FOR BOTH VOLUMES!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Joe
- 04-01-22
Narrator needs to do some prep
This is a Faulkner biography. One would think that the narrator would have researched the proper pronunciation of Faulkner novels and short stories etc. Not being able to pronounce Yoknapatawpha should automatically be disqualification
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful