A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
Essays and Arguments
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A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
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Narrated by:
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Paul Garcia
About this listen
In this exuberantly praised book - a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner - David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction.
©1997 David Foster Wallace (P)2012 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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From the eerily "real", almost holographic evocations of historical figures like Lyndon Johnson and over-televised game-show hosts and late-night comedians to the title story, in which terminal punk nihilism meets Young Republicanism, David Foster Wallace renders the incredible comprehensible, the bizarre normal, the absurd hilarious, and the familiar strange.
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Everything and More
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Part history, part philosophy, part love letter to the study of mathematics, Everything and More is an illuminating tour of infinity. With his infectious curiosity and trademark verbal pyrotechnics, David Foster Wallace takes us from Aristotle to Newton, Leibniz, Karl Weierstrass, and finally Georg Cantor and his set theory. Through it all, Wallace proves to be an ideal guide - funny, wry, and unfailingly enthusiastic. Featuring an introduction by Neal Stephenson, this edition is a perfect introduction to the beauty of mathematics and the undeniable strangeness of the infinite.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Equations via audio are tuff
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In David Lipsky's view, David Foster Wallace was the best young writer in America. Wallace's pieces for Harper's magazine in the '90s were, according to Lipsky, like hearing for the first time the brain voice of everybody I knew: Here was how we all talked, experienced, thought. It was like smelling the damp in the air, seeing the first flash from a storm a mile away. You knew something gigantic was coming.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 11
The True Story of The Coward Brothers follows two musical brothers – one English, one American, both the illegitimate sons of dubious parentage who may, as they claim to be, "one and half-brothers" – perhaps a reference to the disparity in their height and relative talents.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Fun listen
- By Been there on 11-23-24
By: Elvis Costello
-
The Great Indoors
- By: Ginny Hogan
- Narrated by: Mae Whitman
- Length: 3 hrs and 53 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 287
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 280
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 280
Alice's journey begins as all good journeys do: hitting on the sales guy at REI. After a tumultuous breakup, a quick career transition, family upheaval, and a sobriety journey that didn't fix her life quite as much as she expected it to, Alice decides that the only way to solve all her problems is to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. But as she begins preparing for the months-long quest, she realizes the answers she's seeking might not be on top of a snow-covered mountain. Especially since she just learned there was snow in California.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Chuck full of laughs to lift anyone's spirits.
- By Laura Boogaert on 09-22-24
By: Ginny Hogan
-
I Can't Make This Up
- Life Lessons
- By: Neil Strauss - contributor, Kevin Hart
- Narrated by: Kevin Hart
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 56,002
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 50,449
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 50,193
Superstar comedian and Hollywood box-office star Kevin Hart turns his immense talent to the written word by writing some words. Some of those words include: the, a, for, above, and even even. Put them together and you have the funniest, most heartfelt, and most inspirational memoir on survival, success, and the importance of believing in yourself since Old Yeller.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Best Audiobook I Ever Listened To
- By Sam Clear on 07-13-17
By: Neil Strauss - contributor, and others
-
Very Unbecoming
- By: Emily Kron, Kate Hopkins
- Narrated by: Zoë Chao, Esther Povitsky, Amy Sedaris
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 21
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 20
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 20
When two childhood best friends blow up their respective romantic relationships, they make a time-sensitive pact: serial-cheater Chuck cannot sleep with anyone as she attends a three-month-long recovery group for cheaters, while sex-deprived Sofia vows to hook up with as many people as possible before recommitting to monogamy and tying the knot with her long-time fiancé. To keep things interesting, Chuck and Sofia decide to revive a past tradition from their summer camp days—also known as the dawning of sluthood.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Hilarious
- By Rachel on 11-21-24
By: Emily Kron, and others
-
American Psycho
- By: Bret Easton Ellis
- Narrated by: Pablo Schreiber
- Length: 16 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 5,259
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 4,662
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 4,670
Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
Fanntastic book but maybe not for everyone....
- By So Fain on 03-27-11
-
The Perfect Find
- By: Tia Williams
- Narrated by: Wesleigh Siobhan
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,593
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,469
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,466
Jenna Jones, former It-girl fashion editor, is broke and desperate for a second chance. When she’s dumped by her longtime fiancé and fired from Darling magazine, she begs for a job from her old arch nemesis, Darcy Vale. The beyond-bitchy publisher of StyleZine.com, Darcy agrees to hire her rival - only because her fashion site needs a jolt from Jenna’s old school cred. But Jenna soon realizes she’s in over her head.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
A-FREAKING-MAZING!!!
- By Bernadette on 05-30-21
By: Tia Williams
-
Heads Will Roll
- By: Kate McKinnon, Emily Lynne
- Narrated by: Kate McKinnon, Emily Lynne, Tim Gunn, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 17,429
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 15,880
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 15,814
Heads Will Roll is an Audible Original from Saturday Night Live star Kate McKinnon and her cocreator/costar (and real-life sister) Emily Lynne. Produced by Broadway Video, this is not an audiobook - it’s a 10-episode, star-studded audio comedy that features performances from Meryl Streep, Tim Gunn, Peter Dinklage, Queer Eye’s Fab Five, and so many more. Please note: This content is not for kids.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
More like this please
- By Anon893 on 05-03-19
By: Kate McKinnon, and others
-
Breakfast of Champions
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: John Malkovich
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 4,309
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,889
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 3,880
Breakfast of Champions (1973) provides frantic, scattershot satire and a collage of Vonnegut's obsessions. His recurring cast of characters and American landscape was perhaps the most controversial of his canon; it was felt by many at the time to be a disappointing successor to Slaughterhouse-Five, which had made Vonnegut's literary reputation.
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3 out of 5 stars
-
Kurt Was Right to Grade This a C
- By Dubi on 01-10-16
By: Kurt Vonnegut
People who viewed this also viewed...
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Consider the Lobster (A Story from Consider the Lobster)
- And Other Essays
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Robert Petkoff
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 588
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 491
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 488
Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
How this differs from the other version
- By Jonathan Penley on 12-26-17
-
The David Foster Wallace Reader
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, David Foster Wallace, Sally Foster Wallace, and others
- Length: 48 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 215
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 185
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 179
Where do you begin with a writer as original and brilliant as David Foster Wallace? Here - with a carefully considered selection of his extraordinary body of work, chosen by a range of great writers, critics, and those who worked with him most closely. This volume presents his most dazzling, funniest, and most heartbreaking work.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Impossible to use without Chapter Names
- By Ethan Klitzke on 12-04-21
-
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Cerveris, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 17 mins
- Highlights
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 504
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 399
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 395
David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. In his exuberantly acclaimed collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, he combines hilarity and an escalating disquiet in stories that astonish, entertain, and expand our ideas of the pleasures that fiction can afford.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
This is ABRIDGED
- By Mark on 09-26-09
-
The Pale King
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 661
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 555
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 558
The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
The King is dead, long live the King!
- By Darwin8u on 10-31-16
-
Oblivion
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 304
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 264
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 264
In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness--a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
Just 2 Fast & Huge & ALL Interconnected 4 Words
- By Darwin8u on 08-22-12
-
David Foster Wallace: In His Own Words
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 305
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 263
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 260
Collected here for the first time are the stories and speeches of David Foster Wallace as read by the author himself. Over the course of his career, David Foster Wallace recorded a variety of his work in diverse circumstances - from studio recordings to live performances - that are finally compiled in this unique collection.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
The best book on Audible!
- By Karen Chance on 04-07-16
-
Consider the Lobster (A Story from Consider the Lobster)
- And Other Essays
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Robert Petkoff
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 588
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 491
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 488
Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
How this differs from the other version
- By Jonathan Penley on 12-26-17
-
The David Foster Wallace Reader
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, David Foster Wallace, Sally Foster Wallace, and others
- Length: 48 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 215
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 185
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 179
Where do you begin with a writer as original and brilliant as David Foster Wallace? Here - with a carefully considered selection of his extraordinary body of work, chosen by a range of great writers, critics, and those who worked with him most closely. This volume presents his most dazzling, funniest, and most heartbreaking work.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
Impossible to use without Chapter Names
- By Ethan Klitzke on 12-04-21
-
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Cerveris, and others
- Length: 4 hrs and 17 mins
- Highlights
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 504
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 399
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 395
David Foster Wallace made an art of taking readers into places no other writer even gets near. In his exuberantly acclaimed collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, he combines hilarity and an escalating disquiet in stories that astonish, entertain, and expand our ideas of the pleasures that fiction can afford.
-
1 out of 5 stars
-
This is ABRIDGED
- By Mark on 09-26-09
-
The Pale King
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 661
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 555
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 558
The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
The King is dead, long live the King!
- By Darwin8u on 10-31-16
-
Oblivion
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 304
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 264
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 264
In the stories that make up Oblivion, David Foster Wallace joins the rawest, most naked humanity with the infinite involutions of self-consciousness--a combination that is dazzlingly, uniquely his. These are worlds undreamt-of by any other mind. Only David Foster Wallace could convey a father's desperate loneliness by way of his son's daydreaming through a teacher's homicidal breakdown ("The Soul Is Not a Smithy"). Or could explore the deepest and most hilarious aspects of creativity.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Just 2 Fast & Huge & ALL Interconnected 4 Words
- By Darwin8u on 08-22-12
-
David Foster Wallace: In His Own Words
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 305
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 263
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 260
Collected here for the first time are the stories and speeches of David Foster Wallace as read by the author himself. Over the course of his career, David Foster Wallace recorded a variety of his work in diverse circumstances - from studio recordings to live performances - that are finally compiled in this unique collection.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
The best book on Audible!
- By Karen Chance on 04-07-16
-
The Broom of the System
- A Novel
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 16 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 568
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 479
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 481
At the center of The Broom of the System is the betwitching (and also bewildered) heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio, which sits on the edge of a suburban wasteland-the Great Ohio Desert. Lenore works as a switchboard attendant at a publishing firm, and in addition to her mind-numbing job, she has a few other problems. Her great-grandmother, a one-time student of Wittgenstein, has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
Evidence I WASTED my College years.
- By Darwin8u on 04-18-12
-
Everything and More
- A Compact History of Infinity
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 22
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 16
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 16
Part history, part philosophy, part love letter to the study of mathematics, Everything and More is an illuminating tour of infinity. With his infectious curiosity and trademark verbal pyrotechnics, David Foster Wallace takes us from Aristotle to Newton, Leibniz, Karl Weierstrass, and finally Georg Cantor and his set theory. Through it all, Wallace proves to be an ideal guide - funny, wry, and unfailingly enthusiastic. Featuring an introduction by Neal Stephenson, this edition is a perfect introduction to the beauty of mathematics and the undeniable strangeness of the infinite.
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3 out of 5 stars
-
Equations via audio are tuff
- By Brian E. on 03-08-22
-
Consider the Lobster (A Story from Consider the Lobster)
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
- Length: 3 hrs and 48 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,041
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 774
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 768
Long renowned as one of the smartest writers on the loose, David Foster Wallace reveals himself in Consider the Lobster to be also one of the funniest. In this program, he ranges far and farther in his search for the original, the curious, or the merely mystifying. He discovers the World's Largest Lobster Cooker at the Maine Lobster Festival and confronts the inevitable question just beyond the butter-or-cocktail-sauce quandary.
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3 out of 5 stars
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David Foster Wallace...a good place to start
- By Rick on 11-25-08
-
On Tennis
- Five Essays
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 220
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 194
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 194
From the author of Infinite Jest and Consider the Lobster: A collection of five brilliant essays on tennis, from the author's own experience as a junior player to his celebrated profile of Roger Federer at the peak of his powers. A "long-time rabid fan of tennis," and a regionally ranked tennis player in his youth, David Foster Wallace wrote about the game like no one else. On Tennis presents David Foster Wallace's five essays on the sport, published between 1990 and 2006, and hailed as some of the greatest and most innovative sports writing of our time.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Inspiration, though, is contagious, and multiform
- By Darwin8u on 01-27-17
-
Both Flesh and Not
- Essays
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, Katherine Kellgren
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 165
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 138
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 134
Beloved for his epic agony, brilliantly discerning eye, and hilarious and constantly self-questioning tone, David Foster Wallace was heralded by both critics and fans as the voice of a generation. Both Flesh and Not gathers 15 essays never published in book form, including "Federer Both Flesh and Not", considered by many to be his nonfiction masterpiece; "The (As it Were) Seminal Importance of Terminator 2", which deftly dissects James Cameron's blockbuster; and more.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Both Perfect and Not
- By Darwin8u on 02-16-13
-
Girl with Curious Hair
- Stories
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 167
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 125
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 129
From the eerily "real", almost holographic evocations of historical figures like Lyndon Johnson and over-televised game-show hosts and late-night comedians to the title story, in which terminal punk nihilism meets Young Republicanism, David Foster Wallace renders the incredible comprehensible, the bizarre normal, the absurd hilarious, and the familiar strange.
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4 out of 5 stars
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This book is not NOT a Datsun!
- By Darwin8u on 04-15-12
-
Infinite Jest
- By: David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 64 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 62
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 52
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 52
Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
With footnotes!
- By George Saris on 04-25-24
By: David Foster Wallace, and others
-
Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story
- A Life of David Foster Wallace
- By: D. T. Max
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 384
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 342
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 341
David Foster Wallace was the leading literary light of his generation, a man who not only captivated readers with his prose but also mesmerized them with his brilliant mind. In this, the first biography of the writer, D. T. Max sets out to chart Wallace’s tormented, anguished, and often triumphant battle to succeed as a novelist as he fights off depression and addiction to emerge with his masterpiece, Infinite Jest.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Max avoids hagiography or a sycophant's biography
- By Darwin8u on 06-11-13
By: D. T. Max
-
This Is Water: The Original David Foster Wallace Recording
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: David Foster Wallace
- Length: 24 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 1,248
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,011
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 995
Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. This is the audio recording of David Foster Wallace delivering that very address. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The best 20 minutes of my life.
- By John Nosal on 10-09-12
-
This Is Water
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Amy Wallace-Havens
- Length: 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 150
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 87
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 88
How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously? How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion? This audiobook version of a David Foster Wallace commencement speech, read by his sister, Amy Wallace-Havens, captures his electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Too short for what you pay for!
- By Adryan on 05-14-09
-
Gravity's Rainbow
- By: Thomas Pynchon, Frank Miller - cover design
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 37 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,100
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 950
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 939
Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.
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4 out of 5 stars
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"Time to touch the person next to you"
- By Jefferson on 07-04-16
By: Thomas Pynchon, and others
-
Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself
- A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace
- By: David Lipsky
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain, Danny Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 340
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 285
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 282
In David Lipsky's view, David Foster Wallace was the best young writer in America. Wallace's pieces for Harper's magazine in the '90s were, according to Lipsky, like hearing for the first time the brain voice of everybody I knew: Here was how we all talked, experienced, thought. It was like smelling the damp in the air, seeing the first flash from a storm a mile away. You knew something gigantic was coming.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Leapin' Over That Wall of Self
- By Darwin8u on 08-27-12
By: David Lipsky
What listeners say about A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 04-16-16
The title reflects expectations
Wallace's prose toes the line between measured and verbose. Garcia makes the humor absolutely pop.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars
-
Story5 out of 5 stars
- D. Ofallon
- 11-06-13
Brilliant writer/pitch perfect narration
This is a excellent book of essays, narrated beautifully, bringing out all of David Foster Wallace's remarkable humor and irony. I am looking forward to more books narrated by Paul Garcia.
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3 people found this helpful
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars
-
Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 10-29-22
Terrible Reader
The guy reading this doesn’t understand what he’s reading and so can’t modulate his voice in a way that makes sense. Totally off-putting. Basically unlistenable.
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1 person found this helpful
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars
-
Story5 out of 5 stars
- MTH
- 03-02-17
Yes. Good listen.
Good audiobook. Reader was expressive and seemed to get DFW's sense of humor.
Good essays.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars
-
Story5 out of 5 stars
- Bill at Torg Stories
- 03-01-13
Life Through David Foster Wallace's Eyes
I waited a little too long to write this review, but here we go: I'm from Indiana and grew up playing basketball, and I enjoyed Wallace describing his years travelling the Midwest and the dodgy style of gritty tennis he played. He relished the heat, the bugs, and the surprise gusts of wind while others complained of their foul luck. Memorable pieces on the IL state fair and a trip on a luxury cruise liner. Listened to this as I read Michael Martone's The Flatness and Other Landscapes. A good pair.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- eabbel
- 11-21-18
brilliant but dated material
this sounded like the narrator's first read; he did not know how to pronounce several words and proper names, and mis-read the emphasis in long sentences. as ever, Hachette is too lazy to align "chapters" with any meaningful divisions within the book, even in this, a collection of essays with titled sub-sections! so the chapter segments are typically meaningless and unhelpful.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Jeremy
- 09-08-12
A Collection of Clever Observations
Would you listen to A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again again? Why?
Yes. I would like to experience a few of the essay's topics then listen to these essays again.
What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?
The author's attention to details. He has a way of writing a mundane occurrence in a way that makes you feel like you too should be getting more out of how you view life.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
I really appreciated a theme mentioned in at two of the essays of how millions of people are being sold the concept of individualism.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Lori Borchers
- 06-24-24
Great variety
I love the eclectic nature of this collection, and DFW’s writing is so logical, yet poetic and creative. I’m very excited to read Infinite Jest (although the size scares me) and to listen to more of his collections. The performance threw me off at first, as it’s not quite how I imagined DFW’s vibe to be represented, but I got used to it quickly. Also, starting off the book with two tennis essays was rough for pacing.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Ben
- 01-07-20
Started 2020 Right
A fantastic collection! Audible needs to organize the files by essay/story though, not randomly by chunks of 30-50 minutes.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- William F.
- 03-16-24
Great Book
Wildly entertaining at best and kind of boring at worst. David Lynch Keeps His Head, the excerpt from E Unibus Pluram and Shipping Out are the highlights for me. What is to be said that has not been said already?
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