My Father, the Pornographer
A Memoir
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My Father, the Pornographer
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Yen
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By:
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Chris Offutt
About this listen
When Andrew Offutt died, his son, Chris, inherited a desk, a rifle, and 1,800 pounds of pornographic fiction. Andrew had been considered the "king of 20th-century smut", with a writing career that began as a strategy to pay for his son's orthodontic needs and soon took on a life of its own, peaking during the 1970s, when the commercial popularity of the erotic novel reached its height.
With his dutiful wife serving as typist, Andrew wrote from their home in the Kentucky hills, locked away in an office no one dared intrude upon. Here he wrote more than 400 pornographic novels. The more he wrote, the more intense his ambition became and the more difficult it was for his children to be part of his world.
Over the long summer of 2013, Chris returned to his hometown to help his widowed mother move out of his childhood home. As he began to examine his father's manuscripts, memorabilia, journals, and letters, he realized he finally had an opportunity to gain insight into the difficult, mercurial, sometimes cruel man he'd loved and feared in equal measure. Only in his father's absence could he truly make sense of the man and his legacy.
Contains mature themes.
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Story4 out of 5 stars 149
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.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Terrible
- By Ken on 10-14-09
By: Michael Chabon
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The Night Ocean
- By: Paul La Farge
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 126
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 118
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 117
Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Frustratingly Uneven Due to Clumsy Plot Structure
- By Adam on 06-15-17
By: Paul La Farge
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My Life with Bob
- Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues
- By: Pamela Paul
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens, Pamela Paul
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 68
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4 out of 5 stars 62
Pamela Paul has kept a single book by her side for 28 years - carried throughout high school and college, hauled from Paris to London to Thailand, from job to job, safely packed away and then carefully removed from apartment to house to its current perch on a shelf over her desk - reliable if frayed, anonymous-looking yet deeply personal. This book has a name: Bob. Bob is Paul's Book of Books, a journal that records every book she's ever read.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An uncanny mirror and a celebration of book love
- By Cherilyn Parsons on 07-28-19
By: Pamela Paul
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Fairyland
- A Memoir of My Father
- By: Alysia Abbott
- Narrated by: Alysia Abbott
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 122
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 110
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 109
A beautiful, vibrant memoir about growing up motherless in 1970s and 80s San Francisco with an openly gay father. After his wife dies in a car accident, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott moves with his two-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There they discover a city in the midst of revolution, bustling with gay men in search of liberation - few of whom are raising a child. Steve throws himself into San Francisco's vibrant cultural scene.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great representation of the time
- By AvidReader22 on 06-07-19
By: Alysia Abbott
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The Last Love Song
- A Biography of Joan Didion
- By: Tracy Daugherty
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 26 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 83
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Riveted for 1591 miles
- By Kaysi12 on 04-11-16
By: Tracy Daugherty
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Where the Past Begins
- A Writer's Memoir
- By: Amy Tan
- Narrated by: Amy Tan
- Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 182
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 162
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Story4 out of 5 stars 158
Moving from her childhood in Oakland and growing up with her Chinese parents through her success as a novelist, Amy Tan delves into her creative interests in music, the paralysis of beginning a new project, journal writing, and travelling. Where the Past Begins chronicles the making of a writer. With characteristic humor and poignant observation, Tan weaves a nontraditional introspective narrative that is as complex and vibrant as this beloved American novelist's fiction.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Narration Issues
- By Sara on 12-14-17
By: Amy Tan
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Trying to Save Piggy Sneed
- By: John Irving
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 293
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 242
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 241
Trying to Save Piggy Sneed contains a dozen short works by John Irving, beginning with three memoirs, including an account of Mr. Irving’s dinner with President Ronald Reagan at the White House. The longest of the memoirs, The Imaginary Girlfriend,” is the core of this collection.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Unabridged?
- By K. Stiffler on 02-11-22
By: John Irving
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Mislaid
- A Novel
- By: Nell Zink
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 201
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 180
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 179
Stillwater College in Virginia, 1966. Freshman Peggy, an ingénue with literary pretensions, falls under the spell of Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The couple are mismatched from the start - she's a lesbian, he's gay - but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter, leaving their nine-year-old son behind.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Misbegotten, mishandled, misfired novel
- By Julie W. Capell on 02-07-16
By: Nell Zink
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Flesh Wounds
- By: Richard Glover
- Narrated by: Richard Glover
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
A mother who invented her past, a father who was often absent, a son who wondered if this could really be his family...Richard Glover's favourite dinner-party game is called 'Who's Got the Weirdest Parents?' It's a game he always thinks he'll win. There was his mother, a deluded snob who made up large swathes of her past and who ran away with Richard's English teacher, a Tolkien devotee, nudist and stuffed toy collector.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Such a Meaningful Reflection
- By Awarenessing on 11-28-15
By: Richard Glover
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Because Our Fathers Lied
- A Memoir of Truth and Family, from Vietnam to Today
- By: Craig McNamara
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright, Craig McNamara
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 65
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 55
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Story4 out of 5 stars 56
Craig McNamara came of age in the political tumult and upheaval of the late '60s. While Craig McNamara would grow up to take part in anti-war demonstrations, his father, Robert McNamara, served as John F. Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense and the architect of the Vietnam War. This searching and revealing memoir offers an intimate picture of one father and son at pivotal periods in American history. Because Our Fathers Lied is more than a family story—it is a story about America.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Title Does Not Reflect Scope of the Book
- By Amazon Customer on 07-15-22
By: Craig McNamara
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10:04
- By: Ben Lerner
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 217
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 185
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Story4 out of 5 stars 184
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.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A novel worth reading
- By Bradley Paul Valentine on 01-29-15
By: Ben Lerner
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In the Great Green Room
- The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown
- By: Amy Gary
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 79
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 66
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Story4 out of 5 stars 65
The extraordinary life of the woman behind the beloved children's classics Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny comes alive in this fascinating biography of Margaret Wise Brown. Margaret's books have sold millions of copies all over the world, but few people know that she was at the center of a children's book publishing revolution.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Excruciatingly boring
- By Melissa S. on 01-31-19
By: Amy Gary
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The Trip to Echo Spring
- On Writers and Drinking
- By: Olivia Laing
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 125
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 116
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 117
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.
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4 out of 5 stars
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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
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Grief Cottage
- By: Gail Godwin
- Narrated by: Jacob York
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 123
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 109
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Story4 out of 5 stars 108
The haunting tale of a desolate cottage, and the hair-thin junction between this life and the next, from best-selling National Book Award finalist Gail Godwin. After his mother's death, 11-year-old Marcus is sent to live on a small South Carolina island with his great aunt, a reclusive painter with a haunted past. Aunt Charlotte, otherwise a woman of few words, points out a ruined cottage, telling Marcus she had visited it regularly after she'd moved there 30 years ago because it matched the ruin of her own life.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Character story or ghost story ?
- By RueRue on 12-18-17
By: Gail Godwin
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The Voice is All
- The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac
- By: Joyce Johnson
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 24
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 23
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 23
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.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Kerouac's Voice
- By Robert L. Stofel on 09-26-12
By: Joyce Johnson
What listeners say about My Father, the Pornographer
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- PaintbrushPie
- 08-13-24
The Weirdness
Very uncomfortable for me. I ended up just feeling so sorry for everyone, even the person who’s behaviors seemed to damage those he engaged with.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- E in Atlanta
- 09-20-16
His father was president of SFWA from 78-80.
Would you listen to another book narrated by Jonathan Yen?
No.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The child's-eye view of SF conventions in the 1970's and early 80's was particularly interesting. I'm glad that they have improved over the years.
Any additional comments?
I liked the writing and the story, but felt some depth was lacking in the overall perspective of the larger SF community of the time. I wish more time had been spent placing SF in American culture in this period, along with the sexual revolution that his parents were clearly participants in. Overall, a book I'm glad was written. Didn't care for the narrator, but that's a matter of personal taste.
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3 people found this helpful