The Lonely City
Adventures in the Art of Being Alone
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 $17.90
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Susan Lyons
-
By:
-
Olivia Laing
About this listen
An expertly crafted work of reportage, memoir, and biography on the subject of loneliness told through the lives of six iconic artists, by the acclaimed author of The Trip to Echo Spring. You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavor to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by thousands of strangers. The Lonely City is a roving cultural history of urban loneliness, centered on the ultimate city: Manhattan, that teeming island of gneiss, concrete, and glass.
What does it mean to be lonely? How do we live if we're not intimately involved with another human being? How do we connect with other people, particularly if our sexuality or physical body is considered deviant or damaged? Does technology draw us closer together or trap us behind screens?
Olivia Laing explores these questions by traveling deep into the work and lives of some of the century's most original artists, among them Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, Edward Hopper, Henry Darger, and Klaus Nomi. Part memoir, part biography, part dazzling work of cultural criticism, The Lonely City is not just a map, but a celebration of the state of loneliness. It's a voyage out to a strange and sometimes lovely island, adrift from the larger continent of human experience, but visited by many - millions, say - of souls.
©2016 Olivia Laing (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Everybody
- A Book About Freedom
- By: Olivia Laing
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Sastre
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The body is a source of pleasure and of pain, at once hopelessly vulnerable and radiant with power. In her ambitious, brilliant sixth book, Olivia Laing charts an electrifying course through the long struggle for bodily freedom, using the life of the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to explore gay rights and sexual liberation, feminism, and the civil rights movement.
-
-
Evocative and Thought-Provoking
- By Annelena L. on 07-13-21
By: Olivia Laing
-
On Freedom
- Four Songs of Care and Constraint
- By: Maggie Nelson
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
So often deployed as a jingoistic, even menacing rallying cry, or limited by a focus on passing moments of liberation, the rhetoric of freedom both rouses and repels. Does it remain key to our autonomy, justice, and well-being, or is freedom's long star turn coming to a close? Does a continued obsession with the term enliven and emancipate, or reflect a deepening nihilism (or both)? On Freedom examines such questions by tracing the concept's complexities in four distinct realms: art, sex, drugs, and climate.
-
-
Just great
- By Kristi Strong on 12-14-21
By: Maggie Nelson
-
Art Is Life
- Icons and Iconoclasts, Visionaries and Vigilantes, and Flashes of Hope in the Night
- By: Jerry Saltz
- Narrated by: Jerry Saltz, Mark Bramhall
- Length: 16 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jerry Saltz is one of our most-watched writers about art and artists and a passionate champion of the importance of art in our shared cultural life. Since the 1990s he has been an indispensable cultural voice: Witty and provocative, he has attracted contemporary listeners to fine art as few critics have.
-
-
WRONG for audio program
- By Karen Lehrer on 11-07-22
By: Jerry Saltz
-
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate; she works an easy job at a hip art gallery and lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?
-
-
I love it...
- By Claudia Gallegos on 07-12-18
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
-
How to Be Alone
- If You Want to, and Even If You Don't
- By: Lane Moore
- Narrated by: Lane Moore
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lane Moore is a rare performer who is as impressive onstage - whether hosting her iconic show Tinder Live or being the enigmatic front woman of It Was Romance - as she is on the page, as both a former writer for The Onion and an award-winning sex and relationships editor for Cosmopolitan. But her story has had its obstacles, including being her own parent, living in her car as a teenager, and moving to New York City to pursue her dreams. Through it all, she looked to movies, TV, and music as the family and support systems she never had.
-
-
Not a good book
- By Brooke on 08-15-19
By: Lane Moore
-
Every Man for Himself and God Against All
- A Memoir
- By: Werner Herzog, Michael Hofmann - translator
- Narrated by: Werner Herzog
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Werner Herzog was born in September 1942 in Munich, Germany, at a turning point in the Second World War. Soon Germany would be defeated and a new world would have to be made out the rubble and horrors of the war. Fleeing the Allied bombing raids, Herzog’s mother took him and his older brother to a remote, rustic part of Bavaria where he would spend much of his childhood hungry, without running water, in deep poverty. It was there, as the new postwar order was emerging, that one of the most visionary filmmakers of the next seven decades was formed.
-
-
Absolutely incredible, memoir of the year
- By Susie Bright on 10-16-23
By: Werner Herzog, and others
-
Everybody
- A Book About Freedom
- By: Olivia Laing
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Sastre
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The body is a source of pleasure and of pain, at once hopelessly vulnerable and radiant with power. In her ambitious, brilliant sixth book, Olivia Laing charts an electrifying course through the long struggle for bodily freedom, using the life of the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to explore gay rights and sexual liberation, feminism, and the civil rights movement.
-
-
Evocative and Thought-Provoking
- By Annelena L. on 07-13-21
By: Olivia Laing
-
On Freedom
- Four Songs of Care and Constraint
- By: Maggie Nelson
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
So often deployed as a jingoistic, even menacing rallying cry, or limited by a focus on passing moments of liberation, the rhetoric of freedom both rouses and repels. Does it remain key to our autonomy, justice, and well-being, or is freedom's long star turn coming to a close? Does a continued obsession with the term enliven and emancipate, or reflect a deepening nihilism (or both)? On Freedom examines such questions by tracing the concept's complexities in four distinct realms: art, sex, drugs, and climate.
-
-
Just great
- By Kristi Strong on 12-14-21
By: Maggie Nelson
-
Art Is Life
- Icons and Iconoclasts, Visionaries and Vigilantes, and Flashes of Hope in the Night
- By: Jerry Saltz
- Narrated by: Jerry Saltz, Mark Bramhall
- Length: 16 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jerry Saltz is one of our most-watched writers about art and artists and a passionate champion of the importance of art in our shared cultural life. Since the 1990s he has been an indispensable cultural voice: Witty and provocative, he has attracted contemporary listeners to fine art as few critics have.
-
-
WRONG for audio program
- By Karen Lehrer on 11-07-22
By: Jerry Saltz
-
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate; she works an easy job at a hip art gallery and lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?
-
-
I love it...
- By Claudia Gallegos on 07-12-18
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
-
How to Be Alone
- If You Want to, and Even If You Don't
- By: Lane Moore
- Narrated by: Lane Moore
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lane Moore is a rare performer who is as impressive onstage - whether hosting her iconic show Tinder Live or being the enigmatic front woman of It Was Romance - as she is on the page, as both a former writer for The Onion and an award-winning sex and relationships editor for Cosmopolitan. But her story has had its obstacles, including being her own parent, living in her car as a teenager, and moving to New York City to pursue her dreams. Through it all, she looked to movies, TV, and music as the family and support systems she never had.
-
-
Not a good book
- By Brooke on 08-15-19
By: Lane Moore
-
Every Man for Himself and God Against All
- A Memoir
- By: Werner Herzog, Michael Hofmann - translator
- Narrated by: Werner Herzog
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Werner Herzog was born in September 1942 in Munich, Germany, at a turning point in the Second World War. Soon Germany would be defeated and a new world would have to be made out the rubble and horrors of the war. Fleeing the Allied bombing raids, Herzog’s mother took him and his older brother to a remote, rustic part of Bavaria where he would spend much of his childhood hungry, without running water, in deep poverty. It was there, as the new postwar order was emerging, that one of the most visionary filmmakers of the next seven decades was formed.
-
-
Absolutely incredible, memoir of the year
- By Susie Bright on 10-16-23
By: Werner Herzog, and others
-
Doppelganger
- A Trip into the Mirror World
- By: Naomi Klein
- Narrated by: Naomi Klein
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if you woke up one morning and found you’d acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you’d devoted your life to fighting against? Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience—she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who.
-
-
Elite Psychobabble
- By A Reviewer on 09-30-23
By: Naomi Klein
-
Walk Through Walls
- A Memoir
- By: Marina Abramovic
- Narrated by: Marina Abramovic
- Length: 14 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2010 more than 750,000 people stood in line at Marina Abramović's MoMA retrospective for the chance to sit across from her and communicate with her nonverbally in an unprecedented durational performance that lasted more than 700 hours. This celebration of nearly 50 years of groundbreaking performance art demonstrated once again that Marina Abramović is truly a force of nature.
-
-
Fascinating read
- By V. Ledovsky on 11-20-16
By: Marina Abramovic
-
Pure Colour
- A Novel
- By: Sheila Heti
- Narrated by: Sheila Heti
- Length: 3 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this first draft of the world, a woman named Mira leaves home to study. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira’s chest like a portal—to what, she doesn’t know. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and his spirit passes into her.
-
-
Nothing else like it
- By Teri Kline on 03-20-22
By: Sheila Heti
-
The Slip
- The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever
- By: Prudence Peiffer
- Narrated by: Melissa Redmond
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For just over a decade, from 1956 to 1967, a collection of dilapidated former sail-making warehouses clustered at the lower tip of Manhattan became the quiet epicenter of the art world.
-
-
The narrator mis-pronounces everones name
- By Stephanie Laffont on 12-26-23
By: Prudence Peiffer
-
The Story of Art Without Men
- By: Katy Hessel
- Narrated by: Katy Hessel
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How many women artists do you know? Who makes art history? Did women even work as artists before the twentieth century? And what is the Baroque anyway? Guided by Katy Hessel, art historian and founder of @thegreatwomenartists, discover the glittering paintings by Sofonisba Anguissola of the Renaissance, the radical work of Harriet Powers in the nineteenth-century United States, and the artist who really invented the "readymade." Explore the Dutch Golden Age, the astonishing work of postwar artists in Latin America, and the women defining art in the 2020s.
-
-
Great book, no pdf?
- By Amazon Customer on 08-11-24
By: Katy Hessel
-
Just Kids
- By: Patti Smith
- Narrated by: Patti Smith
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late 60s and 70s and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame.
-
-
Darkly Self Centered & Narrow View
- By Sara on 10-05-15
By: Patti Smith
-
How to Be an Artist
- By: Jerry Saltz
- Narrated by: Jerry Saltz
- Length: 2 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Art has the power to change our lives. For many, becoming an artist is a lifelong dream. But how to make it happen? In How to Be an Artist, Jerry Saltz, one of the art world’s most celebrated and passionate voices, offers an indispensable handbook for creative people of all kinds. From the first sparks of inspiration - and how to pursue them without giving in to self-doubt - Saltz offers invaluable insight into what really matters to emerging artists: originality, persistence, a balance between knowledge and intuition, and that most precious of qualities, self-belief.
-
-
Terrible Book Waste of Money
- By Classic on 04-22-20
By: Jerry Saltz
-
A Short History of Nearly Everything
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Richard Matthews
- Length: 18 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bill Bryson has been an enormously popular author both for his travel books and for his books on the English language. Now, this beloved comic genius turns his attention to science. Although he doesn't know anything about the subject (at first), he is eager to learn, and takes information that he gets from the world's leading experts and explains it to us in a way that makes it exciting and relevant.
-
-
The Only Book I reread imediatley after reading
- By Andrew on 11-09-09
By: Bill Bryson
-
The Life of Abraham Lincoln
- By: Henry Ketcham
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In his introduction to The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Henry Ketcham notes that there has been so much written about Lincoln that the legend has begun to obscure, if not to efface, the man. “In this biography the single purpose has been to present the living man with such distinctness of outline that the reader may have a sort of feeling of being acquainted with him.”
-
-
Good overview of Lincoln's life
- By Charly on 02-04-13
By: Henry Ketcham
-
The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
-
-
Mixed Feelings
- By Elin VanD on 05-10-20
By: Annie Ernaux
-
Let Me Tell You What I Mean
- An Essay Collection
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr, Hilton Als
- Length: 4 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From one of our most iconic and influential writers, the award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking: a timeless collection of mostly early pieces that reveal what would become Joan Didion's subjects, including the press, politics, California robber barons, women, and her own self-doubt. With a forward by Hilton Als, these 12 pieces from 1968 to 2000, never before gathered together, offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary figure.
-
-
Didion deserves a better narrator
- By Pamela on 02-03-21
By: Joan Didion
-
Moonwalking with Einstein
- The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
- By: Joshua Foer
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An instant best seller that is poised to become a classic, Moonwalking with Einstein recounts Joshua Foer's yearlong quest to improve his memory under the tutelage of top "mental athletes". He draws on cutting-edge research, a surprising cultural history of remembering, and venerable tricks of the mentalist's trade to transform our understanding of human memory. From the United States Memory Championship to deep within the author's own mind, this is an electrifying work of journalism that reminds us that, in every way that matters, we are the sum of our memories.
-
-
Got the Ball Rolling
- By Christopher on 03-17-11
By: Joshua Foer
Related to this topic
-
Fire in the Belly
- The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz
- By: Cynthia Carr
- Narrated by: Cynthia Barrett
- Length: 25 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David Wojnarowicz was an abused child, a teen runaway who barely finished high school, but he emerged as one of the most important voices of his generation. His circle of East Village artists moved into the national spotlight just as the AIDS plague began its devastating advance, and as right-wing culture warriors reared their heads. Fire in the Belly is the untold story of a polarizing figure at a pivotal moment in American culture - and one of the most highly acclaimed biographies of the year.
-
-
Why did they let this person read?
- By Wendell Ricketts on 12-11-18
By: Cynthia Carr
-
Known and Strange Things
- Essays
- By: Teju Cole
- Narrated by: Peter Jay Fernandez
- Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With this collection of more than 50 pieces on politics, photography, travel, history, and literature, Teju Cole solidifies his place as one of today's most powerful and original voices. Minute after minute, deploying prose dense with beauty and ideas, he finds fresh and potent ways to interpret art, people, and historical moments, taking in subjects from Virginia Woolf, Shakespeare, and W. G. Sebald to Instagram, Barack Obama, and Boko Haram.
-
-
A Book that Teaches and Shares
- By Carolyn J. on 10-08-17
By: Teju Cole
-
This Close to Happy
- A Reckoning with Depression
- By: Daphne Merkin
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This Close to Happy is the rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression, written from a woman's perspective and informed by an acute understanding of the implications of this disease over a lifetime. Taking off from essays on depression she has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine, Daphne Merkin casts her eye back to her beginnings to try to sort out the root causes of her affliction.
-
-
I should be the last person to recommend this book
- By Mariaposa on 03-04-17
By: Daphne Merkin
-
10:04
- By: Ben Lerner
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the last year, the narrator of 10:04 has enjoyed unexpected literary success, has been diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart condition, and has been asked by his best friend to help her conceive a child, despite his dating a rising star in the visual arts. In a New York of increasingly frequent super storms and political unrest, he must reckon with his biological mortality, the possibility of a literary afterlife, and the prospect of (unconventional) fatherhood in a city that might soon be under water.
-
-
A novel worth reading
- By Bradley Paul Valentine on 01-29-15
By: Ben Lerner
-
The Art of Rivalry
- Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art
- By: Sebastian Smee
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rivalry is at the heart of some of the most famous and fruitful relationships in history. The Art of Rivalry follows eight celebrated artists, each linked to a counterpart by friendship, admiration, envy, and ambition. All eight are household names today. But to achieve what they did, each needed the influence of a contemporary - one who was equally ambitious but who possessed sharply contrasting strengths and weaknesses.
-
-
Death by bob souer
- By SKWAD on 01-18-18
By: Sebastian Smee
-
Manhood for Amateurs
- The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Michael Chabon
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Terrible
- By Ken on 10-14-09
By: Michael Chabon
-
Fire in the Belly
- The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz
- By: Cynthia Carr
- Narrated by: Cynthia Barrett
- Length: 25 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David Wojnarowicz was an abused child, a teen runaway who barely finished high school, but he emerged as one of the most important voices of his generation. His circle of East Village artists moved into the national spotlight just as the AIDS plague began its devastating advance, and as right-wing culture warriors reared their heads. Fire in the Belly is the untold story of a polarizing figure at a pivotal moment in American culture - and one of the most highly acclaimed biographies of the year.
-
-
Why did they let this person read?
- By Wendell Ricketts on 12-11-18
By: Cynthia Carr
-
Known and Strange Things
- Essays
- By: Teju Cole
- Narrated by: Peter Jay Fernandez
- Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With this collection of more than 50 pieces on politics, photography, travel, history, and literature, Teju Cole solidifies his place as one of today's most powerful and original voices. Minute after minute, deploying prose dense with beauty and ideas, he finds fresh and potent ways to interpret art, people, and historical moments, taking in subjects from Virginia Woolf, Shakespeare, and W. G. Sebald to Instagram, Barack Obama, and Boko Haram.
-
-
A Book that Teaches and Shares
- By Carolyn J. on 10-08-17
By: Teju Cole
-
This Close to Happy
- A Reckoning with Depression
- By: Daphne Merkin
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This Close to Happy is the rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression, written from a woman's perspective and informed by an acute understanding of the implications of this disease over a lifetime. Taking off from essays on depression she has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine, Daphne Merkin casts her eye back to her beginnings to try to sort out the root causes of her affliction.
-
-
I should be the last person to recommend this book
- By Mariaposa on 03-04-17
By: Daphne Merkin
-
10:04
- By: Ben Lerner
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the last year, the narrator of 10:04 has enjoyed unexpected literary success, has been diagnosed with a potentially fatal heart condition, and has been asked by his best friend to help her conceive a child, despite his dating a rising star in the visual arts. In a New York of increasingly frequent super storms and political unrest, he must reckon with his biological mortality, the possibility of a literary afterlife, and the prospect of (unconventional) fatherhood in a city that might soon be under water.
-
-
A novel worth reading
- By Bradley Paul Valentine on 01-29-15
By: Ben Lerner
-
The Art of Rivalry
- Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art
- By: Sebastian Smee
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rivalry is at the heart of some of the most famous and fruitful relationships in history. The Art of Rivalry follows eight celebrated artists, each linked to a counterpart by friendship, admiration, envy, and ambition. All eight are household names today. But to achieve what they did, each needed the influence of a contemporary - one who was equally ambitious but who possessed sharply contrasting strengths and weaknesses.
-
-
Death by bob souer
- By SKWAD on 01-18-18
By: Sebastian Smee
-
Manhood for Amateurs
- The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Michael Chabon
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Terrible
- By Ken on 10-14-09
By: Michael Chabon
-
So Much Longing in So Little Space
- The Art of Edvard Munch
- By: Karl Ove Knausgaard
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In So Much Longing in So Little Space, Karl Ove Knausgaard sets out to understand the enduring and awesome power of Edvard Munch's work by training his gaze on the landscapes that inspired Munch and speaking firsthand with other contemporary artists, including Anselm Kiefer, for whom Munch's legacy looms large. Bringing together art history, biography, and memoir, Knausgaard tells a passionate, freewheeling, and pensive story about not just one of history's most significant painters, but the very meaning of choosing the artist's life, as he himself has done.
-
-
not just for Munch fans
- By Alexander on 08-19-24
-
Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?
- Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform
- By: Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
- Narrated by: Mark Bachman
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gay culture has become a nightmare of consumerism, whether it's an endless quest for Absolut vodka, Diesel jeans, rainbow Hummers, pec implants, or Pottery Barn. Whatever happened to sexual flamboyance and gender liberation, an end to marriage, the military, and the nuclear family? As backrooms are shut down to make way for wedding vows, and gay sexual culture morphs into “straight-acting dudes hangin’ out”, what are the possibilities for a defiant faggotry that challenges the assimilationist norms of a corporate-cozy lifestyle?
-
-
Forget the Status Quo South Beach B.S.
- By Susie on 03-14-13
-
Istanbul
- Memories and the City
- By: Orhan Pamuk
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world’s great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy—or hüzün—that all Istanbullus share.
-
-
Terrible pronunciation
- By K. Jaynes on 02-25-18
By: Orhan Pamuk
-
Fury
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Salman Rushdie
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world renowned author of The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie is a Whitbread Award winner and recipient of the Booker Prize. His first truly American novel, Fury is a metaphorically rich black comedy that reflects the pressure-cooker of modern life. Malik Solanka, irascible doll-maker and retired historian of ideas, suffers the pain of wanting without knowing exactly what it is he wants.
-
-
surprisingly good
- By David on 11-21-07
By: Salman Rushdie
-
Girl in Need of a Tourniquet
- Memoir of a Borderline Personality
- By: Merri Lisa Johnson
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An honest and compelling memoir, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet is Merri Lisa Johnson’s account of her borderline personality disorder and how it has affected her life and relationships. Johnson describes the feeling of "bleeding out" unable to tell where she stopped and where her partner began. A self-confessed "psycho girlfriend," she was influenced by many emotional factors from her past. She recalls her path through a dysfunctional, destructive relationship, while recounting the experiences that brought her to her breaking point.
-
-
Chaotic, disturbing, meaningless
- By BRB on 04-02-14
-
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
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Pretense upon pretense.
- By Shalin Desai on 06-01-15
By: Edmund White
-
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
-
At the Existentialist Café
- Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
- By: Sarah Bakewell
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Paris, 1933: Three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow philosopher who raves to them about a new conceptual framework from Berlin called phenomenology. "You see," he says, "if you are a phenomenologist, you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!"
-
-
Consistent look at incoherent philosophy
- By Gary on 06-19-16
By: Sarah Bakewell
-
The Trip to Echo Spring
- On Writers and Drinking
- By: Olivia Laing
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six of America's finest writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. All six of these men were alcoholics, and the subject of drinking surfaces in some of their finest work, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to A Moveable Feast.
-
-
Great Narration!!!!!! Great story about 20 Century make writer who suffer with alcoholism. If you like this topic and want more
- By Pamela Abbey on 04-25-21
By: Olivia Laing
-
The Fire This Time
- A New Generation Speaks About Race
- By: Jesmyn Ward
- Narrated by: Cherise Boothe, Michael Early, Kevin R. Free, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping-off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time.
-
-
Delusion shattering
- By Matthew A. Burnett on 06-12-20
By: Jesmyn Ward
-
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
-
Speak
- A Novel
- By: Louisa Hall
- Narrated by: Suzan Crowley, Christopher Ashman, Adrienne Rusk, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a narrative that spans geography and time, from the Atlantic Ocean in the 17th century to a correctional institute in Texas in the near future, and told from the perspectives of five very different characters, Speak considers what it means to be human and what it means to be less than fully alive.
-
-
Like nothing else
- By Anonymous User on 06-22-17
By: Louisa Hall
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
To the River
- A Journey Beneath the Surface
- By: Olivia Laing
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over 60 years after Virginia Woolf drowned in the River Ouse, Olivia Laing set out one midsummer morning to walk its banks, from source to sea. Along the way, she explores the roles that rivers play in human lives, tracing their intricate flow through literature, mythology, and folklore. Lyrical and stirring, To the River is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscape - and how ghosts never quite leave the places they love.
-
-
Virginia Woolf Serves as a Walking Companion
- By Bobbe Nunes on 09-04-20
By: Olivia Laing
-
The Garden Against Time
- In Search of a Common Paradise
- By: Olivia Laing
- Narrated by: Olivia Laing
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2020, Olivia Laing began to restore an eighteenth century walled garden in Suffolk, an overgrown Eden of unusual plants. The work brought to light a crucial question for our age: Who gets to live in paradise, and how can we share it while there's still time? Moving between real and imagined gardens, from Milton's Paradise Lost to John Clare's enclosure elegies, from a wartime sanctuary in Italy to a grotesque aristocratic pleasure ground funded by slavery, Laing interrogates the sometimes shocking cost of making paradise on earth.
-
-
A thrill of discovery
- By JGE on 09-14-24
By: Olivia Laing
-
Funny Weather
- Art in an Emergency
- By: Olivia Laing
- Narrated by: Sophie Aldred
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the age of Trump and Brexit, every crisis is instantly overridden by the next. The turbulent political weather of the 21st century generates anxiety and makes it difficult to know how to react. Laing makes an inspiring case for why art matters more than ever, as a force of both resistance and repair. Art, she argues, changes how we see the world. It gives us X-ray vision. It reveals inequalities and offers fertile new ways of living. Funny Weather brings together a career's worth of Laing's writing about art and culture, and their role in our political and emotional lives.
-
-
Wonderful text/ very irritating narration
- By Sara C on 06-21-20
By: Olivia Laing
-
Slowing
- Discover Wonder, Beauty, and Creativity Through Slow Living
- By: Rachel Schwartzmann
- Narrated by: Rachel Schwartzmann
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For author and Slow Stories podcast host Rachel Schwartzmann, slowing down has changed her story in ways she could have never imagined. In this poignant and timely collection, she invites us to step away from the turmoil of daily life and awaken to the pleasures of living and creating with intention.
-
-
Didn't deliver
- By kimberly on 11-14-24
-
Everybody
- A Book About Freedom
- By: Olivia Laing
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Sastre
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The body is a source of pleasure and of pain, at once hopelessly vulnerable and radiant with power. In her ambitious, brilliant sixth book, Olivia Laing charts an electrifying course through the long struggle for bodily freedom, using the life of the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to explore gay rights and sexual liberation, feminism, and the civil rights movement.
-
-
Evocative and Thought-Provoking
- By Annelena L. on 07-13-21
By: Olivia Laing
-
The Trip to Echo Spring
- On Writers and Drinking
- By: Olivia Laing
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six of America's finest writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. All six of these men were alcoholics, and the subject of drinking surfaces in some of their finest work, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to A Moveable Feast.
-
-
Great Narration!!!!!! Great story about 20 Century make writer who suffer with alcoholism. If you like this topic and want more
- By Pamela Abbey on 04-25-21
By: Olivia Laing
-
To the River
- A Journey Beneath the Surface
- By: Olivia Laing
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over 60 years after Virginia Woolf drowned in the River Ouse, Olivia Laing set out one midsummer morning to walk its banks, from source to sea. Along the way, she explores the roles that rivers play in human lives, tracing their intricate flow through literature, mythology, and folklore. Lyrical and stirring, To the River is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscape - and how ghosts never quite leave the places they love.
-
-
Virginia Woolf Serves as a Walking Companion
- By Bobbe Nunes on 09-04-20
By: Olivia Laing
-
The Garden Against Time
- In Search of a Common Paradise
- By: Olivia Laing
- Narrated by: Olivia Laing
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2020, Olivia Laing began to restore an eighteenth century walled garden in Suffolk, an overgrown Eden of unusual plants. The work brought to light a crucial question for our age: Who gets to live in paradise, and how can we share it while there's still time? Moving between real and imagined gardens, from Milton's Paradise Lost to John Clare's enclosure elegies, from a wartime sanctuary in Italy to a grotesque aristocratic pleasure ground funded by slavery, Laing interrogates the sometimes shocking cost of making paradise on earth.
-
-
A thrill of discovery
- By JGE on 09-14-24
By: Olivia Laing
-
Funny Weather
- Art in an Emergency
- By: Olivia Laing
- Narrated by: Sophie Aldred
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the age of Trump and Brexit, every crisis is instantly overridden by the next. The turbulent political weather of the 21st century generates anxiety and makes it difficult to know how to react. Laing makes an inspiring case for why art matters more than ever, as a force of both resistance and repair. Art, she argues, changes how we see the world. It gives us X-ray vision. It reveals inequalities and offers fertile new ways of living. Funny Weather brings together a career's worth of Laing's writing about art and culture, and their role in our political and emotional lives.
-
-
Wonderful text/ very irritating narration
- By Sara C on 06-21-20
By: Olivia Laing
-
Slowing
- Discover Wonder, Beauty, and Creativity Through Slow Living
- By: Rachel Schwartzmann
- Narrated by: Rachel Schwartzmann
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For author and Slow Stories podcast host Rachel Schwartzmann, slowing down has changed her story in ways she could have never imagined. In this poignant and timely collection, she invites us to step away from the turmoil of daily life and awaken to the pleasures of living and creating with intention.
-
-
Didn't deliver
- By kimberly on 11-14-24
-
Everybody
- A Book About Freedom
- By: Olivia Laing
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Sastre
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The body is a source of pleasure and of pain, at once hopelessly vulnerable and radiant with power. In her ambitious, brilliant sixth book, Olivia Laing charts an electrifying course through the long struggle for bodily freedom, using the life of the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to explore gay rights and sexual liberation, feminism, and the civil rights movement.
-
-
Evocative and Thought-Provoking
- By Annelena L. on 07-13-21
By: Olivia Laing
-
The Trip to Echo Spring
- On Writers and Drinking
- By: Olivia Laing
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six of America's finest writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. All six of these men were alcoholics, and the subject of drinking surfaces in some of their finest work, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to A Moveable Feast.
-
-
Great Narration!!!!!! Great story about 20 Century make writer who suffer with alcoholism. If you like this topic and want more
- By Pamela Abbey on 04-25-21
By: Olivia Laing
-
No Judgment
- Essays
- By: Lauren Oyler
- Narrated by: Lauren Oyler
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her writing for Harper’s, the London Review of Books, The New Yorker, and elsewhere, Lauren Oyler has emerged as one of the most trenchant and influential critics of her generation, a talent whose judgments on works of literature—whether celebratory or scarily harsh—have become notorious. But what is the significance of being a critic and consumer of media in today’s fraught environment?
By: Lauren Oyler
-
I Know What's Best for You
- Stories on Reproductive Freedom
- By: Shelly Oria - editor
- Narrated by: Hayden Bishop, Janina Edwards
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Edited by Shelly Oria—author and editor of Indelible in the Hippocampus—this explosive, intersectional collection of essays, fiction, poems, plays, and more, explores the universality of human reproductive experiences, as well as their distinct individuality.
-
Trick Mirror
- Reflections on Self-Delusion
- By: Jia Tolentino
- Narrated by: Jia Tolentino
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time. Now, in this dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays, written with a rare combination of give and sharpness, wit and fearlessness, she delves into the forces that warp our vision, demonstrating an unparalleled stylistic potency and critical dexterity.
-
-
Couldn’t stop listening
- By Alice on 08-25-19
By: Jia Tolentino
-
Walk Through Walls
- A Memoir
- By: Marina Abramovic
- Narrated by: Marina Abramovic
- Length: 14 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2010 more than 750,000 people stood in line at Marina Abramović's MoMA retrospective for the chance to sit across from her and communicate with her nonverbally in an unprecedented durational performance that lasted more than 700 hours. This celebration of nearly 50 years of groundbreaking performance art demonstrated once again that Marina Abramović is truly a force of nature.
-
-
Fascinating read
- By V. Ledovsky on 11-20-16
By: Marina Abramovic
-
Dept. of Speculation
- By: Jenny Offill
- Narrated by: Jenny Offill
- Length: 3 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jenny Offill’s heroine, referred to in these pages as simply “the wife”, once exchanged love letters with her husband postmarked Dept. of Speculation, their code name for all the uncertainty that inheres in life and in the strangely fluid confines of a long relationship. As they confront an array of common catastrophes - a colicky baby, a faltering marriage, stalled ambitions - the wife analyzes her predicament, invoking everything from Keats and Kafka to the thought experiments of the Stoics to the lessons of doomed Russian cosmonauts.
-
-
Bourgeois whining
- By electricfool on 06-17-23
By: Jenny Offill
-
The Cherry Robbers
- By: Sarai Walker
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Iris Chapel and her five elegant sisters, all of them heiresses to the Chapel firearms fortune, live cloistered in a lavish Victorian mansion. Neglected by both a distant, workaholic father and a mentally troubled mother—who believes their home is haunted by the victims of Chapel weapons—the sisters have grown up with only each other for company. They long to escape the eerie fairy tale of their childhood and move forward into the modern world, but for young women in 1950s Connecticut, the only way out is through marriage.
-
-
Intregure till the end...then disapointed
- By 2xmary on 07-20-22
By: Sarai Walker
-
A Field Guide to Getting Lost
- By: Rebecca Solnit
- Narrated by: Rebecca Solnit
- Length: 4 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Field Guide to Getting Lost draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Solnit's own life to explore issues of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown. The result is a distinctive, stimulating, and poignant voyage of discovery.
-
-
meditation on the 'other' side of life
- By Audy Meadow Davison LMT on 09-05-16
By: Rebecca Solnit
-
I Feel Bad About My Neck
- And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
- By: Nora Ephron
- Narrated by: Nora Ephron
- Length: 3 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With her disarming, intimate, completely accessible voice, and dry sense of humor, Nora Ephron shares with us her ups and downs in I Feel Bad About My Neck, a candid, hilarious look at women who are getting older and dealing with the tribulations of maintenance, menopause, empty nests, and life itself.
-
-
Don't make me get out of the car...
- By Kestrel on 10-09-06
By: Nora Ephron
-
Journal of a Solitude
- By: May Sarton
- Narrated by: Donna Postel
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
May Sarton's parrot chatters away as Sarton looks out the window at the rain and contemplates returning to her "real" life - not friends, not even love, but writing. In her bravest and most revealing memoir, Sarton casts her keenly observant eye on both the interior and exterior worlds. She shares insights about everyday life in the quiet New Hampshire village of Nelson, the desire for friends, and need for solitude - both an exhilarating and terrifying state.
-
-
Perfect!
- By Kathryn on 08-07-20
By: May Sarton
-
Autumn
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Melody Grove
- Length: 5 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fusing Keatsian mists and mellow fruitfulness with the vitality, the immediacy, and the color hit of Pop Art, Autumn is a witty excavation of the present by the past. The novel is a stripped-branches take on popular culture and a meditation, in a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, what harvest means.
-
-
Incredible use of language
- By Mary on 03-06-17
By: Ali Smith
-
A Manual for Cleaning Women
- Selected Stories
- By: Lucia Berlin
- Narrated by: Thom Rivera, Dawn Harvey, Carol Monda, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy all her own, Berlin crafts miracles from the everyday, uncovering moments of grace in the laundromats and halfway houses of the American Southwest, in the homes of the Bay Area upper class, among switchboard operators and struggling mothers, hitchhikers, and bad Christians.
-
-
Exquisite writing, lopsided performances
- By Sazafrass on 03-02-16
By: Lucia Berlin
-
The Rothschilds
- A Family Portrait
- By: Frederic Morton
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No family in the past two centuries has been as constantly at the center of Europe's great events, has featured such varied and spectacular personalities, has had anything close to the wealth of the Rothschilds. To this day they remain one of the most powerful and wealthy families in the world. In Frederic Morton's classic tale, the family is brought vividly to life.
-
-
Engaging read but dubious sentiment
- By T.G. on 04-23-20
By: Frederic Morton
What listeners say about The Lonely City
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kentuckian
- 02-12-19
Biography of NY Artists
Lonely City is a well-written, poetic account of loneliness and it's affect on the artists Edward Hopper, Henry Darger, Dave Wojnarowicz, and Andy Warhol. More biography than memoir.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Yvonne@Windlullaby
- 07-25-17
Unexpected and somewhat graphic
The Lonely City was an unexpected and not totally welcomed expose of the lives of several famous artists and writers who predominately lived in New York City from the 1960s-1980s. The stories are told by the author who
researches the darker sides of these people in her attempt to understand her own loneliness. The narrative is extremely intimate and graphic at times. An interesting side story that weaves around these lives is a look at the ways technology impacts humans. Unfortunately, this is somewhat depressing as well, but a brutal look at the secondary impacts that result from the variety of devices that are touted as great aides to humans. The various themes of social isolation, prejudices, depression, and of course loneliness make this book difficult to finish. However, it is worth the task for those who are willing to suffer a bit and learn more about the things that are not discussed by most people.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Tamara
- 04-15-20
Disappointed
Started out as an interesting story with good information about different artists.AIDS facts drags on and on . This is basically a documentary.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Lis
- 01-31-17
Thorough interesting research, average story
I enjoyed the accounts of the artists in this book, and I found myself looking them and their art up throughout the book out of curiosity. Which that's what this book did - perked my curiosity. I liked the art history lesson, which you can tell Olivia Laing has done some very thorough research and I thought her own personal story and how it intertwined with the artists was cool. But at times the narration got old and dry, and I wasn't dying to listen to it everyday. Written beautifully, but not always profound.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Swannee
- 11-13-23
Thank you
I immediately re listened I wanted to absorb as much as I could while still open
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 05-07-24
Famous people lonely
The author waxes poetic about her own loneliness and of celebrities. The parts that hit for me are about Andy Warhol as I only know his art and had no idea about his personal life.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- JSTAR
- 10-10-18
Read This Book
Olivia Laing is simply a brilliant thinker. Listening to The Lonely City, I felt like I was walking around NYC having a captivating, in-depth, magical conversation with my smartest friend about Artists and culture and the sad (sometimes wondrous) baggage that comes with humanity. So good.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Christina
- 03-10-17
Beautifully Written, Engaging, Informative
What made the experience of listening to The Lonely City the most enjoyable?
Olivia Laing's writing was on point. This is a great book to read/listen to if you are or have ever been lonely, if you are or have ever been an artist, if you are interested in art or art history or New York City, or if you are interested in the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s. I downloaded the book in a fit of acute loneliness, and it was comforting. I did not expect it to be so satisfying personally, politically, intellectually, and artistically. It's one of my top five audiobooks ever.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes! But it's too dense to absorb all at once. I immediately started it from the beginning after I finished it, and wrote out several quotes so that I could go back to reference them later.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Vly Summit
- 09-22-21
Remarkable and fascinating
An account of the author saving herself by learning, learning and expressing all she could about the city in which she lived temporarily and some remarkable artists had lived, worked, and died. New York and art, and the redemptive quality of the painful emotion of loneliness--these are some of the subjects of this wonderful book. Beautifully performed!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Chris
- 01-31-17
Highly relatable, unexpectedly personal.
I read the description not quite knowing what to expect. This novel forced me to look inward, forcing me, not reluctantly, to empathize with many of the individuals that were discussed.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful