Narrator Robert Petkoff gives voice to the edgy, eclectic, and energetic ideas of National Book Award winner Jonathan Franzen. Petkoff hits the difficult balance between being ironic and earnest that is so characteristic of the author's essays. Petkoff races through the complicated, interesting sentences while at the same making sure that we keep track of their meaning with precise enunciation. Listeners are treated to an intellectual persona that sounds like one would expect of Franzen himself. For fans of his fiction and nonfiction alike, this is a title one can dip in and out of on long walks or slow Sunday afternoons. Petkoff makes sure this is an entertaining, as well as contemplative, experience. M.R. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
This program has been updated with a new epilogue written and read by the author.
A sharp and provocative new essay collection from the award-winning author of Freedom and The Corrections
The essayist, Jonathan Franzen writes, is like “a fire-fighter, whose job, while everyone else is fleeing the flames of shame, is to run straight into them.” For the past twenty-five years, even as his novels have earned him worldwide acclaim, Franzen has led a second life as a risk-taking essayist. Now, at a moment when technology has inflamed tribal hatreds and the planet is beset by unnatural calamities, he is back with a new collection of essays that recall us to more humane ways of being in the world.
Franzen's great loves are literature and birds, and The End of the End of the Earth is a passionate argument for both. Where the new media tend to confirm one's prejudices, he writes, literature “invites you to ask whether you might be somewhat wrong, maybe even entirely wrong, and to imagine why someone else might hate you.” Whatever his subject, Franzen's essays are always skeptical of received opinion, steeped in irony, and frank about his own failings. He's frank about birds, too (they kill “everything imaginable”), but his reporting and reflections on them-on seabirds in New Zealand, warblers in East Africa, penguins in Antarctica-are both a moving celebration of their beauty and resilience and a call to action to save what we love.
Calm, poignant, carefully argued, full of wit, The End of the End of the Earth provides a welcome breath of hope and reason.
This program has been updated with a new epilogue written and read by the author.
A sharp and provocative new essay collection from the award-winning author of Freedom and The Corrections
The essayist, Jonathan Franzen writes, is like “a fire-fighter, whose job, while everyone else is fleeing the flames of shame, is to run straight into them.” For the past twenty-five years, even as his novels have earned him worldwide acclaim, Franzen has led a second life as a risk-taking essayist. Now, at a moment when technology has inflamed tribal hatreds and the planet is beset by unnatural calamities, he is back with a new collection of essays that recall us to more humane ways of being in the world.
Franzen's great loves are literature and birds, and The End of the End of the Earth is a passionate argument for both. Where the new media tend to confirm one's prejudices, he writes, literature “invites you to ask whether you might be somewhat wrong, maybe even entirely wrong, and to imagine why someone else might hate you.” Whatever his subject, Franzen's essays are always skeptical of received opinion, steeped in irony, and frank about his own failings. He's frank about birds, too (they kill “everything imaginable”), but his reporting and reflections on them-on seabirds in New Zealand, warblers in East Africa, penguins in Antarctica-are both a moving celebration of their beauty and resilience and a call to action to save what we love.
Calm, poignant, carefully argued, full of wit, The End of the End of the Earth provides a welcome breath of hope and reason.
The End of the End of the Earth: Essays
The End of the End of the Earth: Essays
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Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940169227314 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Macmillan Audio |
| Publication date: | 11/13/2018 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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