All Stories Are Fiction

By: Mike Daisey

Narrated by: Mike Daisey

Length: 1 hr

Publisher's Summary

Mike Daisey is a fierce storyteller, one minute hilarious, the next minute sweet, with a fine-tuned ear for digression. He circles in on his uneasy subject matter, closer and closer, until he exposes the raw heart. The New York Times calls him "the master storyteller" and he has been compared to Garrison Keillor, Spalding Gray, and David Sedaris.

In these seven monologues, recorded before live audiences at New York's Performance Space 122, Daisey tells true stories from his life that range from the terrible beauty of his rural Maine hometown, to shipping weapons to the Middle East, to the unintentionally hilarious dangers of defending free speech.

In Tension is the Great Integrity, the passing of the Pope and conflicting feelings about Catholicism are touched on, as is Mike's trouble with writing deadlines for an independent film to be made in Copenhagen. Papal musings come head-to-head with evocative and mournful Scandinavian imagery like "a cup full of black ravens sits before me and I live in a profound desolation of the self". Yes, it's funnier than it sounds.

Listen to all seven of Mike Daisey's All Stories Are Fiction.

©2005 Mike Daisey (P)2005 Audible, Inc.

Critic Reviews

"Comic delivery so sharp it draws blood." (San Jose Mercury News)
"Irresistible storytelling...elevating and hilarious." (San Francisco Weekly)
"Daisey is a brainy, manic hoot, a blond, owl-shaped cross between cultural critic Noam Chomsky and rambunctious actor-rocker Jack Black." (The Seattle Times)
"Relentlessly interesting...brilliantly spun narrative...Daisey has the kind of timing and dramatic instinct that would make the most mundane story interesting." (The New York Times)

Good content, lousy audio

Daisy is very entertaining as a writer struggling with procrastination, writer's block, getting a screenplay done for his movie producer friend and living in NY City. But this recording was done in some NYC club, and it's not suitable for listening to as an audio book. Sometimes he brings his voice down to a whisper, and a moment later he's shouting at the top of his lungs. That's great for comic effect if you're sitting in the audience, but not if you're trying to listen on the go. Give this one a pass until they re-record the session.