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Herzog
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
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Publisher's summary
Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness.
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Herzog is primarily a novel of redemption. For all of its innovative techniques and brilliant comedy, it tells one of the oldest of stories. Like The Divine Comedy or the dark night of the soul of St. John of the Cross, it progresses from darkness to light, from ignorance to enlightenment. Today it is still considered one of the greatest literary expressions of postwar America.
Critic reviews
"A masterpiece." (New York Times Book Review)
"Herzog has the range, depth, intensity, verbal brilliance, and imaginative fullness - the mind and heart - which we may expect only of a novel that is unmistakably destined to last." (Newsweek)
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Though it's hard to argue with Merriam-Webster, we all know that life means something more than the standard dictionary definition—or, at least, we want it to. If you're searching for insights into the meaning of life, or words of inspiration to make your life more meaningful, there's no better source than authors of great works of literature. From Shakespeare to Alice Walker, from Jane Austen to Saul Bellow, iconic authors have a lot to say about life.
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Story
The murderee is Nicola Six, a "black hole" of sex and self-loathing who is intent on orchestrating her own extinction. The murderer may be Keith Talent, a violent lowlife whose only passions are pornography and darts; or the rich, honorable, and dimly romantic Guy Clinch. As Nicola leads her suitors towards the precipice, London--and, indeed, the whole world--seems to shamble after them in a corrosively funny novel of complexity and morality.
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Big chewy novel, excellent narration
- By Sand on 08-21-14
By: Martin Amis
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Peyton Place
- By: Grace Metalious
- Narrated by: Tim O'Connor
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1956, when this novel was first published, communities all over New England snapped up copies to see if they were the town portrayed in the book. Peyton Place is the story of a repressive New England town known for its high standards of public morality, and the steamy sexual activities that take place behind its bedroom doors.
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Best book I've read to date!
- By Crusader on 11-07-11
By: Grace Metalious
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The Vine of Desire
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Anju and Sudha formed an astounding, almost psychic connection during their childhood in India. When Anju invites Sudha, a single mother in Calcutta, to come live with her and her husband, Sunil, in California, Sudha foolishly accepts, knowing full well that Sunil has long desired her. As Sunil's attraction rises to the surface, the trio must struggle to make sense of the freedoms of America - and of the ties that bind them to India and to one another.
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Vine of desire
- By Mz Shantay on 03-27-21
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An American Dream
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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As Stephen Rojack, a decorated war hero and former congressman who murders his wife in a fashionable New York City high-rise, runs amok through the city in which he was once a privileged citizen, author Norman Mailer peels away the layers of our social norms to reveal a world of pure appetite and relentless cruelty. One part Nietzsche, one part de Sade, and one part Charlie Parker, An American Dream grabs the listener by the throat and refuses to let go.
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Mailers Immodest masterpiece
- By W C Woods on 07-02-20
By: Norman Mailer
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Miss Lonelyhearts
- By: Nathanael West
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser, Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 2 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Miss Lonelyhearts is an unnamed male newspaper columnist writing an advice column, which is viewed by the newspaper as a joke. As "Miss Lonelyhearts" reads letters from desperate New Yorkers, he feels terribly burdened and falls into a cycle of deep depression, accompanied by heavy drinking and occasional barfights. The novel is essentially a black comedy and is characterized by an extremely dark but clever sense of humor and irony.
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Charged with Meaning, and Far Leftist Leaning
- By W Perry Hall on 01-27-16
By: Nathanael West
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Lolita
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Awe and exhilaration—along with heartbreak and mordant wit—abound in Lolita, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsession for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America.
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An Absolutely Gorgeous Audible Experience
- By Jim on 10-26-05
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Paradise
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In Paradise - her first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - Toni Morrison gives us a bravura performance. As the book begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain", assault the nearby Convent and the women in it. From the town's ancestral origins in 1890 to the fateful day of the assault, Paradise tells the story of a people ever mindful of the relationship between their spectacular history and a void.
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MORRISON AT HER MOST COMPLEX
- By Kennedi Hill on 11-07-19
By: Toni Morrison
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Mr. Fox
- A Novel
- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Carol Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
- By James A. Dittes on 08-13-16
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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The Yiddish Policemen's Union
- A Novel
- By: Michael Chabon
- Narrated by: Peter Riegert
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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For 60 years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the federal district of Sitka, a temporary safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the district is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.
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Didn't finish...
- By Ann E O'Connor on 10-16-17
By: Michael Chabon
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The Plague of Doves
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James, Kathleen McInerney
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.
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Avoid this Plague
- By Andre on 05-16-08
By: Louise Erdrich
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Funny and Powerful
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Why?
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The Adventures of Augie March
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Augie is a poor but exuberant boy growing up in Chicago during the Depression. While his friends all settle into chosen professions, Augie demands a special destiny. He tests out a wild succession of occupations, proudly rejecting each as too limiting - until he tangles with the glamorous perfectionist Thea.
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Mr. Artur Sammler is, above all, a man who has lasted, from the civilized pleasures of English life in the 1920s and 30s through the war and death camps in Poland. Moving now through the chaotic and dangerous streets of New York's Upper West Side, Mr. Sammler is attentive to everything, and appalled by nothing. He brings the same dispassionate curiosity to the activities of a black pickpocket on an uptown bus, the details of his niece Angela's sex life, and his daughter's lunacy as he does to the extraordinary theories of one Dr. V. Govinda Lal on the use we are to make of the moon.
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ASTONISHING
- By madeline grunbaum on 01-25-22
By: Saul Bellow
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Collected Stories
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Here, collected in one volume and chosen by the author himself, are favorites such as "What Kind of Day Did You Have?", "Leaving the Yellow House", and a previously uncollected piece, "By the St. Lawrence". With his larger-than-life characters, irony, wisdom, and unique humor, Bellow presents a sharp, rich, and funny world that is infinitely surprising. With a preface by Janice Bellow and an introduction by James Wood, this is a collection to treasure for longtime Saul Bellow fans and an excellent introduction for new listeners.
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Didn't love this collection
- By Michael on 05-03-21
By: Saul Bellow, and others
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Dangling Man
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Expecting to be inducted into the army during World War II, Joseph has given up his job and carefully prepared for his departure to the battlefront. When a series of mix-ups delays his induction, he finds himself facing a year of idleness. Written in diary format, Bellow’s first novel documents Joseph’s psychological reaction to his inactivity while war rages around him and his uneasy insights into the nature of freedom and choice.
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Sentimental
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This extraordinary book is the result of Saul Bellow’s sojourn in Israel in 1975. A personal record of his stay—his experiences and impressions—as well as a meditation, it crackles with wit and controversy on America’s relationship with this embattled country.
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Remarkable in its relevance 40 years later
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By: Saul Bellow
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More Die of Heartbreak
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Kenneth Trachtenberg, an eccentric and witty native of Paris, travels to the Midwest to spend time with his famous American uncle, a world-renowned botanist and self-described "plant visionary". After numerous affairs and failed relationships, the restless Uncle Benn seeks a settled existence in the form of marriage - but tying the knot again opens the door to a host of new torments.
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A great book
- By John A. on 03-16-22
By: Saul Bellow
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The Dean's December
- By: Saul Bellow
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- Unabridged
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Albert Corde is a professor of journalism and dean of students at a Chicago university. He and his wife, Minna, travel to Bucharest, Romania, where Minna's mother has suffered a stroke and is lying semiconscious in the local state hospital. As Corde tries to adapt to life in his mother-in-law's small apartment and cope with her relations and friends, news filters through to him of problems he left behind in Chicago: one of his students has been murdered.
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Slow, but enjoyable (once)
- By Michael on 06-11-21
By: Saul Bellow
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The Victim
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- Unabridged
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Asa Leventhal, a temporary bachelor with his wife away on a visit to her mother, attempts to find relief from a Gotham heat wave only to be accosted in the park by a down-at-the-heels stranger who accuses Leventhal of ruining his life. Unable to shake the stranger, Leventhal is led by his own self-doubts and suspicions into a nightmare of paranoia and fear.
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Deep but tedious.
- By Alex on 02-19-24
By: Saul Bellow
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The Assistant
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Bernard Malamud's second novel, originally published in 1957, is the story of Morris Bober, a grocer in postwar Brooklyn, who "wants better" for himself and his family. First two robbers appear and hold him up; then things take a turn for the better when broken-nosed Frank Alpine becomes his assistant. But there are complications: Frank, whose reaction to Jews is ambivalent, falls in love with Helen Bober; at the same time he begins to steal from the store.
By: Bernard Malamud
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Dog Soldiers
- By: Robert Stone
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- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In Saigon during the waning days of the Vietnam War, a small-time journalist named John Converse thinks he'll find action - and profit - by getting involved in a big-time drug deal. But back in the States, things go horribly wrong for him. Dog Soldiers perfectly captures the underground mood of America in the 1970s, when amateur drug dealers and hippies encountered profiteering cops and professional killers - and the price of survival was dangerously high.
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intense narrative of a dark and complex time
- By gnudung on 05-05-12
By: Robert Stone
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The Wapshot Chronicle
- By: John Cheever
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- Unabridged
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Based in part on Cheever's adolescence in New England, the novel follows the destinies of the impecunious and wildly eccentric Wapshots of St. Botolphs, a quintessential Massachusetts fishing village. Here are the stories of Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea dog and would-be suicide; of his licentious older son, Moses; and of Moses' adoring and errant younger brother, Coverly.
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Beautiful 1950s Great Expectations-like Novel
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By: John Cheever
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The Actual
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Harry Trellman doesn't belong. Not in the Chicago orphanage where he is sent by his mother, not in high school (too brainy), not even on the streets. Human attachments? Yes, he has them, but they are like everything else in his life, singular and irregular. People who know him say that he "drowns his feelings in his face", and that he has a Mongolian "masked look". But though Harry stands apart, he has always been a most keen observer, listener, recorder, and interpreter, and none of this is lost on the Chicago billionaire, Sigmund Adletsky, who takes Harry into his "brain trust".
By: Saul Bellow
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Ada, or Ardor
- A Family Chronicle
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 20 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Published two weeks after Vladimir Nabokov’s seventieth birthday, Ada, or Ardor is one of his greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist. It tells a love story troubled by incest, but it is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue. Ada, or Ardor is no less than the supreme work of an imagination at white heat. This is the first American edition to include the extensive and ingeniously sardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom.
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Incest, a game the Whole Family Can Play
- By Darwin8u on 08-12-13
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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Nights at the Circus
- By: Angela Carter
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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This Audible Exclusive recording of Angela Carter's iconic novel, Nights at the Circus, is brought to you by celebrated actress and voice artist, Adjoa Andoh. It is described by Carter herself as a 'psychedelic Dickens.' A compelling and thought provoking novel which heralds a new age, we're introduced to the unique and mesmerizing character of Sophi Fevvers and her illustrious wings....
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acid trip
- By Adrienne Lewis on 04-19-21
By: Angela Carter
What listeners say about Herzog
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Chris Reich
- 08-06-11
Grows Within You
As I rolled through this listen I kept waiting for for the profundity to hit. Surely there must some great, self-shaking thought just around the corner or maybe somewhere in Chicago. But everyday seemingly regular people, especially our mildly eccentric hero, never do anything really unexpected or extraordinary. Then it begins to sink in. This isn't about the extraordinary. It really is about the common, ordinary life of one man struggling with things we [all] struggle with.
The writing is like yeast added to water and that to flour. At first you don't really notice anything. But given time, it begins to grow. The thoughts on relationships are sad and funny at the same time. Why do we make bad choices? We just do.
I would add this book to a "must read" list.
The narration is perfect for the material and not overdone in the least.
Highly recommend if you like books above the level of the trashy novel but want something easier than Dickens!
Chris Reich
TeachU
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27 people found this helpful
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- Joe Kraus
- 03-26-13
Stuck in Your Head
Any additional comments?
I spend a lot of time arguing that you can get as much from an audiobook as from a paper book, but Bellow tests that claim. This is a powerful book about a man who has a hard time pulling himself out of the texts of his life and into his real life. It's slow -- slow in the sense that not that many things happen -- but it's also raging in the way we're in and out of Herzog's mind. His imaginary letters (some real) show him trying to get traction in the real world as he flees to the world of writing.
As a result, it's sometimes hard to listen to a novel that's so much about the business of writing. I often wanted to stop and re-read a sentence -- Bellow is a master of the sentence -- and I missed a sense of the textual nature of Herzog's various letters. Hillgartner can signal that we're into a new letter, but I don't think he can get across the effect of seeing the heading and recognizing the deterioration or recovery of Herzog's mind. And that's a crucial distinction because I think there are ways in which Herzog's mind (as caught in the text) is a different character from Herzog himself (as caught in his own story).
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9 people found this helpful
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- James Rogerson
- 03-03-18
Best read audiobook I've ever heard
The narrator is outstanding, simply remarkable in a text that uses a variety of languages.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Michael
- 05-03-21
Not my favorite Bellow
In some ways Herzog is like many of Bellow's protagonists, yet I found Herzog less interesting (as I did the protagonist in The Dangling Man). Herzog is more philosophical and less active. There was some humor but most didn't resonate with me. I preferred The Adventures of Augie March, Henderson the Rain King, and Ravelstein.
The narration was fine, but did not add much.
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- Jose
- 01-31-21
Whiny as hell. When will the whining stop. Never
This is an extremely whiny book. I think it's perfect for dudes that like to feel sorry for themselves. Won a Nobel Prize! Ha! This is Terrible!
There is nothing respectable about Moses Hezog. He has a sedentary job, sloppy life, clucked, and does not raise his kids. Dude even has a therapist. Weak. Sad. Whiny.
But the real problem is that the story is terrible. It's boring. It's obsessive.
But there is an audience for this stuff. If you are An-Army-of-One and solve your own problems, don't read this book. This is a book for the other people.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Joshua
- 09-18-12
Rambling and pointless
Holy hell. My wife recommended this book to me, in what I can only assume was some cruel practical joke.
I listened for an hour and NOTHING AT ALL had happened.
I'll return to it again because my wife wants me to read it, but for all of you out there who have free will, run for the hills.
I'll update my review if I ever hate myself enough to finish the book.
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7 people found this helpful
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- ITtraveller
- 09-16-18
Forgettable
The lead character is self destructive & neurotic.
An unpleasant story about an unloveable character.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Jay Quintana
- 07-04-16
Not everyone should be the subject of a book
There must be a sub textual level to this novel that I just missed. Taking it at face value, I found it a boring account of an uninteresting person. Sure, Herzog has trouble with life and love, but who doesn't? He's a well-educated, middle-class guy with two ex-wives, a kid he's not as close to as he'd like to be, and many girlfriends. I just found him and his plight quotidian. I forced myself to finish this. While I didn't think Seize the Day and Henderson the Rain King -- the only other Bellow works I've read -- were masterpieces, I thought they were good reads. This one left me scratching my head as to why it's so highly acclaimed.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Phillip
- 08-17-11
Dull dull dull
So I really tried.....I got through about 5 hours but I just couldn't continue - nothing happens
I liked the idea of a main character who spends most of his time writing letters, the style and narration are good but don't say you were not warned. It is so incredibly dull.
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2 people found this helpful
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Story
- Daniel J. Howarth
- 03-02-18
Midlife crisis
Struggled to finish; midlife crisis on both sides. Surprise revelation, but relevant? not so sure....
Read it for a book club, don't understand thd choice......
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1 person found this helpful