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The Material
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Megan Tusing
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
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Publisher's summary
“A novel about an MFA program for stand-up comics better be damned funny, and The Material is definitely that. It’s also profound, deeply engrossing, dark, and generous, a great novel about humans making art right now.”—Sam Lipsyte, author of No One Left to Come Looking for You
“Brilliance is on display here.”—Percival Everett, author of James and The Trees
Can comedy be taught? Someone, at some point, seemed to think so. The Chicago Stand-Up MFA program has enrolled young comedians for nearly a decade.
Its teachers and students all know how bits work—in theory, at least. They know that there’s a line between sharp and cruel, that sad becomes funny at the right angle, that the worst is the best, the truth is the worst, and any moment of your life that isn’t a punch line will either get you to a punch line or force you to be one.
They’re all afraid to be one.
Artie may be too handsome for standup, Olivia too reluctant to examine her own life, and Phil too afraid to cause harm. Kruger may be too vanilla to command his students’ respect, Ashbee too detached. And then we have Dorothy—the only woman on the program’s faculty—who though preparing to launch a comeback tour can’t tell if she’s too abiding, too ambitious, or too ambivalent.
Whether a visiting professor—the high-profile, controversy-steeped comedian Manny Reinhardt—will do more to help or harm their cause remains to be seen. But he’s on his way. He’ll be arriving sooner than anyone thinks.
Riffing keenly across a diverse array of precision-cut perspectives, The Material examines life through the eyes of a reluctantly assembled ensemble, a band of outsiders bound together by the need to laugh and the longing to make others laugh even harder.
Critic reviews
“This novel is so smart. Camille Bordas has exposed the ‘material’ of stand-up by making stand-up her material. Writing comedy is difficult enough, but writing comedy bits that fail and comedy bits that succeed requires some brilliance. That brilliance is on display here.”—Percival Everett, author of James and The Trees
“Camille Bordas’s novel is wryly funny and painfully awkward, populated by an irresistible cast of overthinkers and second-guessers. It’s a deep and illuminating pleasure, full of insights about stand-up comedy, group dynamics, and the inner lives of artists.”—Tom Perrotta, author of Tracy Flick Can’t Win
“What begins as a clever conceit becomes an interrogation of sadness itself. Almost suspended in time, the novel elucidates the irreconcilability of learning and living, of performance and being.”—Rachel Cusk, author of Second Place
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Story
Everybody knows that in 1938, runaway heiress artist Juliette Willoughby perished in an accidental studio fire in Paris, alongside her masterpiece Self Portrait As Sphinx. Fifty years later, two Cambridge art history students are confounded when they stumble across proof that the fire was no accident but something more sinister. What they uncover threatens the very foundation of Juliette’s aristocratic family and revives rumors of the infamous curse that has haunted the Willoughbys for generations. But what does their discovery mean? And how is it connected to a murder in present-day Dubai?
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Must Read
- By Peggy shea on 07-13-24
By: Ellery Lloyd
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Devil Is Fine
- A Novel
- By: John Vercher
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Reeling from the sudden death of his teenage son, our narrator receives a letter from an attorney: he has just inherited a plot of land from his estranged grandfather. He travels to a beach town several hours south of his home with the intention of immediately selling the land. But upon inspection, what lies beneath the dirt is much more than he can process in the throes of grief. As a biracial Black man struggling with the many facets of his identity, he’s now the owner of a former plantation passed down by the men on his white mother’s side of the family.
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Mesmerizing
- By Gina Middleton on 06-24-24
By: John Vercher
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Love Letters to a Serial Killer
- By: Tasha Coryell
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Recently ghosted and sick of watching her friends fade into the suburbs, thirty-something Hannah finds community in a true-crime forum that’s on a mission to solve the murders of four women in Atlanta. After William, a handsome lawyer, is arrested for the killings, Hannah begins writing him letters. It’s the perfect outlet for her pent-up frustration and rage. The exercise empowers her, and even feels healthy at first. Until William writes back.
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Well done but the joke gets old.
- By Dorthea Brooks on 06-26-24
By: Tasha Coryell
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God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer
- A Novel
- By: Joseph Earl Thomas
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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After a deployment in the Iraq War dually defined by threat and interminable mundanity, Joseph Thomas is fighting to find his footing. Now a doctoral student at The University, and an EMS worker at the hospital in North Philly, he encounters round the clock friends and family from his past life and would-be future at his job, including contemporaries of his estranged father, a man he knows little about, serving time at Holmesburg prison for the statutory rape of his then-teenage mother.
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Another Perspective of Urban Life
- By Stephanie W. on 07-23-24
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River East, River West
- A Novel
- By: Aube Rey Lescure
- Narrated by: David Shih, Jennifer Lim
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Shanghai, 2007: Fourteen-year-old Alva has always longed for more. Raised by her American expat mother, she’s never known her Chinese father, and is certain a better life awaits them in America. But when her mother announces her engagement to their wealthy Chinese landlord, Lu Fang, Alva’s hopes are dashed, and so she plots for the next best thing: the American School in Shanghai.
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Did not connect with the characters
- By Maryanne T. on 04-18-24
By: Aube Rey Lescure
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Seven Summer Weekends
- By: Jane L. Rosen
- Narrated by: Emily Norman
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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When a Zoom disaster upends Addison Irwin’s decade-long career at a posh Manhattan advertising agency, things look bleak for the thirty-something mid-western transplant. But an unexpected inheritance from an aunt she barely remembers—a property on Fire Island, complete with guest house and artist’s studio—changes everything. While debating whether to stay or sell, Addison learns that she’s also inherited her aunt’s list of eclectic guests, tying her to the island for seven summer weekends.
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The Cover Drew Me In…
- By Jackie0930 on 06-19-24
By: Jane L. Rosen
What listeners say about The Material
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-22-24
Ran87507
I was really hoping to like it, but it went nowhere. It became a little boring for me
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