-
The Haunted Life
- And Other Writings
- Narrated by: Liev Schreiber, Luke Daniels
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $18.26
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks
- By: Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 4 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
More than 60 years ago, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, two novice writers at the dawn of their careers, sat down to write a novel about the summer of 1944, when one of their friends killed another in a moment of brutal and tragic bloodshed. Alternating chapters, they pieced together a hard-boiled tale of bohemian New York during World War II, full of drugs and obsession, art and violence.
-
-
Pre-Beat Lit, instant classic!
- By Jeffrey A. Pierce on 08-20-09
By: Jack Kerouac, and others
-
Big Sur
- By: Jack Kerouac, Aram Saroyan - foreword
- Narrated by: Ethan Hawke
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this 1962 novel, Kerouac's alter ego, Jack Duluoz, overwhelmed by success and excess, gravitates back and forth between wild binges in San Francisco and an isolated cabin on the California coast where he attempts to renew his spirit and clear his head of madness and alcohol. Only nature seems to restore him to a sense of balance. In the words of Allen Ginsberg, Big Sur "reveals consciousness in all its syntactic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion".
-
-
Astonishing Ethan Hawke Performance
- By L E Stewart on 11-10-20
By: Jack Kerouac, and others
-
The Sea Is My Brother
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 4 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Written seven years before The Town and the City officially launched his writing career, The Sea Is My Brother marks the pivotal point at which Kerouac began laying the foundations for his pioneering method and signature style. The novel chronicles the misadventures of two seamen who at first seem different but are really two sides of the same coin: 27-year-old Wesley Martin, who “loved the sea with a strange, lonely love,” and William Everhart, an assistant professor of English at Columbia College.
-
-
For Kerouac fans
- By Anthony on 02-17-14
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Wake Up
- A Life of the Buddha
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally written in 1955 and now published for the first time in audiobook form, Wake Up is Kerouac's retelling of the life of Prince Siddartha Gotama, who as a young man abandoned his wealthy family and comfortable home for a lifelong searchfor Enlightenment. Distilled from a wide variety of canonical scriptures, Wake Up serves as both a penetrating account of the Buddha's life and a concise primer on the principal teachings of Buddhism.
-
-
I enjoyed Jacks biography of The Buddha
- By Joel on 07-10-23
By: Jack Kerouac
-
The Dharma Bums
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Ethan Hawke
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 1958, a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouac's most powerful and influential novels. The story focuses on two ebullient young Americans - mountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder, and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writer - whose quest for Truth leads them on a heroic odyssey, from marathon parties and poetry jam sessions in San Francisco's Bohemia to solitude and mountain climbing in the High Sierras.
-
-
Lyrical Rendition
- By Michael E on 04-28-20
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Maggie Cassidy (Original Manuscript)
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Mike Dennis
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Maggie Cassidy is one of Kerouac's most nostalgic recollections of his past, focusing on his first true love when he was a high school senior and a local star athlete. Filled with the sweet innocence of youth and the daily heartbreak of quarrels and unfulfilled sexual yearnings, Kerouac employs his stylishly Beat observations toward the bygone era of pre-World War II Lowell, Massachusetts, when he was torn between the companionship of his gang of buddies and the sirens' call of the opposite sex.
-
-
Kerouac simply tells as was.
- By Anonymous User on 02-15-22
By: Jack Kerouac
-
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks
- By: Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 4 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
More than 60 years ago, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, two novice writers at the dawn of their careers, sat down to write a novel about the summer of 1944, when one of their friends killed another in a moment of brutal and tragic bloodshed. Alternating chapters, they pieced together a hard-boiled tale of bohemian New York during World War II, full of drugs and obsession, art and violence.
-
-
Pre-Beat Lit, instant classic!
- By Jeffrey A. Pierce on 08-20-09
By: Jack Kerouac, and others
-
Big Sur
- By: Jack Kerouac, Aram Saroyan - foreword
- Narrated by: Ethan Hawke
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this 1962 novel, Kerouac's alter ego, Jack Duluoz, overwhelmed by success and excess, gravitates back and forth between wild binges in San Francisco and an isolated cabin on the California coast where he attempts to renew his spirit and clear his head of madness and alcohol. Only nature seems to restore him to a sense of balance. In the words of Allen Ginsberg, Big Sur "reveals consciousness in all its syntactic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion".
-
-
Astonishing Ethan Hawke Performance
- By L E Stewart on 11-10-20
By: Jack Kerouac, and others
-
The Sea Is My Brother
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 4 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Written seven years before The Town and the City officially launched his writing career, The Sea Is My Brother marks the pivotal point at which Kerouac began laying the foundations for his pioneering method and signature style. The novel chronicles the misadventures of two seamen who at first seem different but are really two sides of the same coin: 27-year-old Wesley Martin, who “loved the sea with a strange, lonely love,” and William Everhart, an assistant professor of English at Columbia College.
-
-
For Kerouac fans
- By Anthony on 02-17-14
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Wake Up
- A Life of the Buddha
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally written in 1955 and now published for the first time in audiobook form, Wake Up is Kerouac's retelling of the life of Prince Siddartha Gotama, who as a young man abandoned his wealthy family and comfortable home for a lifelong searchfor Enlightenment. Distilled from a wide variety of canonical scriptures, Wake Up serves as both a penetrating account of the Buddha's life and a concise primer on the principal teachings of Buddhism.
-
-
I enjoyed Jacks biography of The Buddha
- By Joel on 07-10-23
By: Jack Kerouac
-
The Dharma Bums
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Ethan Hawke
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 1958, a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouac's most powerful and influential novels. The story focuses on two ebullient young Americans - mountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder, and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writer - whose quest for Truth leads them on a heroic odyssey, from marathon parties and poetry jam sessions in San Francisco's Bohemia to solitude and mountain climbing in the High Sierras.
-
-
Lyrical Rendition
- By Michael E on 04-28-20
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Maggie Cassidy (Original Manuscript)
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Mike Dennis
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Maggie Cassidy is one of Kerouac's most nostalgic recollections of his past, focusing on his first true love when he was a high school senior and a local star athlete. Filled with the sweet innocence of youth and the daily heartbreak of quarrels and unfulfilled sexual yearnings, Kerouac employs his stylishly Beat observations toward the bygone era of pre-World War II Lowell, Massachusetts, when he was torn between the companionship of his gang of buddies and the sirens' call of the opposite sex.
-
-
Kerouac simply tells as was.
- By Anonymous User on 02-15-22
By: Jack Kerouac
-
On the Road
- 50th Anniversary Edition
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Will Patton
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few novels have had as profound an impact on American culture as On the Road. Pulsating with the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, illicit drugs, and the mystery and promise of the open road, Kerouac’s classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be “beat” and has inspired generations of writers, musicians, artists, poets, and seekers who cite their discovery of the book as the event that “set them free”.
-
-
My Favorite Narration and a Wonderful Book
- By Guillermo on 09-17-09
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Desolation Peak
- Collected Writings
- By: Jack Kerouac, Charles Shuttleworth - editor
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer of 1956, Jack Kerouac hitchhiked from Mill Valley, California, to the North Cascades to spend two months serving as a fire lookout for the US Forest Service. Taking only the Diamond Sutra for reading material, he intended to spend his time in deep contemplation and to achieve enlightenment.
-
-
Kerouac at his most honest
- By MckyD’z on 12-01-22
By: Jack Kerouac, and others
-
Tristessa
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Mike Dennis
- Length: 2 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1955, novelist Jack Kerouac detoured from his cross-country American travels to Mexico City, where a group of junkie expatriates he had known from the New York City post-war scene had gone for the cheap and plentiful supply of heroin and morphine. Fellow beat writer William S. Burroughs, who had been a part of the Mexican expatriate community, had introduced Kerouac to Bill Garver (named Old Bull Gaines in the novel), a much-older, long-term addict who had in turn introduced Kerouac to Esperanza Villanueva, whom Kerouac named Tristessa in the novel.
-
-
Gritty
- By William on 06-09-18
By: Jack Kerouac
-
On the Road: The Original Scroll
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: John Ventimiglia
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Though Jack Kerouac began thinking about the novel that was to become On the Road as early as 1947, it was not until three weeks in April 1951, in an apartment on West 20th Street in Manhattan, that he wrote the first full draft that was satisfactory to him.
-
-
A Classic Brought to Life
- By Sil A. on 11-25-16
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Slaughterhouse-Five
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: James Franco
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).
-
-
Don't Quit Your Daytime Job, James
- By Keith on 11-20-15
By: Kurt Vonnegut
-
The First Third & Other Writings
- By: Neal Cassady
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Immortalized as Dean Moriarty by Jack Kerouac in his epic novel, On the Road, Neal Cassady was infamous for his unstoppable energy and his overwhelming charm, his savvy hustle and his devil-may-care attitude. A treasured friend and traveling companion of Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Ken Kesey, to name just some of his cohorts on the beatnik path, Cassady lived life to the fullest, ready for inspiration at any turn. Here are his autobiographical writings, the rambling American saga of a free man.
-
-
Where would we be without Neal Cassady?
- By Susie on 08-22-16
By: Neal Cassady
-
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
- 50th Anniversary Edition
- By: Ken Kesey, Robert Faggen - introduction
- Narrated by: John C. Reilly
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Turning conventional notions of sanity and insanity on their heads, the novel tells the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her.
-
-
Fantastic
- By Scott on 08-03-12
By: Ken Kesey, and others
-
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
- By: Tom Wolfe
- Narrated by: Luke Daniels
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tom Wolfe - one of the 20th century’s foremost voices in cultural criticism - went from local news reporter to international icon in 1968, with the publication of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Now voiced with vivacity and vigor by Audible Hall of Fame narrator Luke Daniels, the non-fiction swan-dive delves into the world of hippies, hedonism, and everything in between.
-
-
Maybe it resonated with a different time and place
- By S. Phillips on 04-11-19
By: Tom Wolfe
-
Hell's Angels
- A Strange and Terrible Saga
- By: Hunter S. Thompson
- Narrated by: Scott Sowers
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas author Hunter S. Thompson rocked the literary world with his mind-bending style of Gonzo journalism. First published in 1966, Hell’s Angels is Thompson’s up-close and personal look at the infamous motorcycle gang during the time when its moniker was most feared.
-
-
Visions of the Future of Motorcycle Gangs
- By Joe Bloggs on 07-13-13
-
Pnin
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the best-loved of Nabokov's novels, Pnin features his funniest and most heart-rending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian emigre precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950s. Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunderstandings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator.
-
-
Why not leave their private sorrows to people?
- By Darwin8u on 01-13-20
By: Vladimir Nabokov
-
The Great Shark Hunt
- Strange Tales from a Strange Time
- By: Hunter S. Thompson
- Narrated by: Scott Sowers
- Length: 29 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally published in 1979, the first volume of the best-selling "Gonzo Papers" is now back in print. The Great Shark Hunt is Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's largest and, arguably, most important work, covering Nixon to napalm, Las Vegas to Watergate, Carter to cocaine. These essays offer brilliant commentary and outrageous humor, in signature Thompson style. Thompson's razor-sharp insight and crystal clarity capture the crazy, hypocritical, degenerate, and redeeming aspects of the explosive and colorful '60s and '70s.
-
-
Like HST but...
- By Saltlab on 12-26-13
-
Lolita
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
An Absolutely Gorgeous Audible Experience
- By Jim on 10-26-05
By: Vladimir Nabokov
Publisher's summary
Jack Kerouac wrote The Haunted Life in 1944 when he was 22 years old and attending Columbia University. Originally intended as a three-part novel, only this first 20,000-word section was ever finished. Upon its completion, Kerouac promptly lost his only hand-written final draft in a New York taxi cab, remaining unknown to the public until its appearance at Christies about ten years ago.
Kerouac’s family has now decided to share this manuscript with the world.
While the entirety of the novel remained unfinished, the surviving manuscript successfully works alone as a novella with a satisfying, if open-ended, conclusion. It features a scaled-down version of the Martin family and is set in Lowell, Massachusetts, as was Kerouac’s first novel The Town and The City. Kerouac had planned on writing a cycle of novels tentatively titled An American Passed Here, which was to be set primarily in the fictional town of Galloway (based on Lowell). That cycle was to contain The Haunted Life and The Sea is My Brother, tracing the story of the Martin family throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Eventually Kerouac’s plans for his Martin cycle materialized into his first novel, The Town and the City, shortly before he moved on to compose his iconic On the Road.
Todd Tietchen, the editor of the project and the Jack Kerouac/Beat Scholar in residence at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, has assembled a number of archival documents to thicken out the context of this lost novella, documents that attest to the level of intention and care that went into Kerouac’s writing projects.
More from the same
What listeners say about The Haunted Life
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Asmarranda
- 04-21-21
Liev Schreiber should read more
The book is better than I thought it would be. Liev Schreiber should read more.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Carl A. Gallozzi
- 03-21-19
Early Kerouac - Lowell, Ma. - shows brilliance
Disclaimer: "The Haunted Life" is the first work by Jack Kerouac that I've ever read - much less reviewed.
Commentary:
Galloway is Lowell, Ma.
A simple, yet rich & complex story about "growing up (and out)" from Lowell, Ma - right before WW II. The characters each represent different life and political philosophies. The father represents the very Conservative voices of the time (Novel written in 1944 - but published in 2014) represented by the view of Father Charles Coughlin. In the Father's introductory monologue - many of the ideas mentioned resonate today with those who are politically Conservative - and through the appropriatea Conservative news outlets.
Other characters represent wanderlust - getting out of Lowell, Ma. and ...."seeing the world as a romantic artist and adventurer with the U.S. Army.
The title comes from the idea that two of Kerouac's friends were killed in WWII - and that their loss - has "haunted" Kerouac.
A theme is also how WW II has transformed nearly everyone and everything - and this transformation was just becoming visible.
This is an "early Kerouac" work - it seems to indicate that his (Kerouac's) concerns to be expressed during his "beat era" - had their beginnings during the Great Depression and WW II.
Great writing - dealing with the "tensions of the day" - a harbinger of the greater writing yet to come.
Carl Gallozzi
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- Gary Ghirardi
- 01-23-22
An honest man is a failure by most measures.
This book seems more like a montage of images that mirror the times we are experiencing now in 2022, maybe all times, struggling to define what it means to be an American, at least the imperious ones.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
On the Road: The Original Scroll
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: John Ventimiglia
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Though Jack Kerouac began thinking about the novel that was to become On the Road as early as 1947, it was not until three weeks in April 1951, in an apartment on West 20th Street in Manhattan, that he wrote the first full draft that was satisfactory to him.
-
-
A Classic Brought to Life
- By Sil A. on 11-25-16
By: Jack Kerouac
-
The Dharma Bums
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Ethan Hawke
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 1958, a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouac's most powerful and influential novels. The story focuses on two ebullient young Americans - mountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder, and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writer - whose quest for Truth leads them on a heroic odyssey, from marathon parties and poetry jam sessions in San Francisco's Bohemia to solitude and mountain climbing in the High Sierras.
-
-
Lyrical Rendition
- By Michael E on 04-28-20
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Wake Up
- A Life of the Buddha
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally written in 1955 and now published for the first time in audiobook form, Wake Up is Kerouac's retelling of the life of Prince Siddartha Gotama, who as a young man abandoned his wealthy family and comfortable home for a lifelong searchfor Enlightenment. Distilled from a wide variety of canonical scriptures, Wake Up serves as both a penetrating account of the Buddha's life and a concise primer on the principal teachings of Buddhism.
-
-
I enjoyed Jacks biography of The Buddha
- By Joel on 07-10-23
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Desolation Peak
- Collected Writings
- By: Jack Kerouac, Charles Shuttleworth - editor
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer of 1956, Jack Kerouac hitchhiked from Mill Valley, California, to the North Cascades to spend two months serving as a fire lookout for the US Forest Service. Taking only the Diamond Sutra for reading material, he intended to spend his time in deep contemplation and to achieve enlightenment.
-
-
Kerouac at his most honest
- By MckyD’z on 12-01-22
By: Jack Kerouac, and others
-
Desolation Angels
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally published in 1965, this autobiographical novel covers a key year in Jack Kerouac’s life—the period that led up to the publication of On the Road in September of 1957. After spending two months in the summer of 1956 as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascade Mountains of Washington, Kerouac’s fictional self Jack Duluoz comes down from the isolated mountains to the wild excitement of the bars, jazz clubs, and parties of San Francisco, before traveling on to Mexico City, New York, Tangiers, Paris, and London.
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Big Sur
- By: Jack Kerouac, Aram Saroyan - foreword
- Narrated by: Ethan Hawke
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this 1962 novel, Kerouac's alter ego, Jack Duluoz, overwhelmed by success and excess, gravitates back and forth between wild binges in San Francisco and an isolated cabin on the California coast where he attempts to renew his spirit and clear his head of madness and alcohol. Only nature seems to restore him to a sense of balance. In the words of Allen Ginsberg, Big Sur "reveals consciousness in all its syntactic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion".
-
-
Astonishing Ethan Hawke Performance
- By L E Stewart on 11-10-20
By: Jack Kerouac, and others
-
On the Road: The Original Scroll
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: John Ventimiglia
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Though Jack Kerouac began thinking about the novel that was to become On the Road as early as 1947, it was not until three weeks in April 1951, in an apartment on West 20th Street in Manhattan, that he wrote the first full draft that was satisfactory to him.
-
-
A Classic Brought to Life
- By Sil A. on 11-25-16
By: Jack Kerouac
-
The Dharma Bums
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Ethan Hawke
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 1958, a year after On the Road put the Beat Generation on the map, The Dharma Bums stands as one of Jack Kerouac's most powerful and influential novels. The story focuses on two ebullient young Americans - mountaineer, poet, and Zen Buddhist Japhy Ryder, and Ray Smith, a zestful, innocent writer - whose quest for Truth leads them on a heroic odyssey, from marathon parties and poetry jam sessions in San Francisco's Bohemia to solitude and mountain climbing in the High Sierras.
-
-
Lyrical Rendition
- By Michael E on 04-28-20
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Wake Up
- A Life of the Buddha
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally written in 1955 and now published for the first time in audiobook form, Wake Up is Kerouac's retelling of the life of Prince Siddartha Gotama, who as a young man abandoned his wealthy family and comfortable home for a lifelong searchfor Enlightenment. Distilled from a wide variety of canonical scriptures, Wake Up serves as both a penetrating account of the Buddha's life and a concise primer on the principal teachings of Buddhism.
-
-
I enjoyed Jacks biography of The Buddha
- By Joel on 07-10-23
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Desolation Peak
- Collected Writings
- By: Jack Kerouac, Charles Shuttleworth - editor
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer of 1956, Jack Kerouac hitchhiked from Mill Valley, California, to the North Cascades to spend two months serving as a fire lookout for the US Forest Service. Taking only the Diamond Sutra for reading material, he intended to spend his time in deep contemplation and to achieve enlightenment.
-
-
Kerouac at his most honest
- By MckyD’z on 12-01-22
By: Jack Kerouac, and others
-
Desolation Angels
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally published in 1965, this autobiographical novel covers a key year in Jack Kerouac’s life—the period that led up to the publication of On the Road in September of 1957. After spending two months in the summer of 1956 as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascade Mountains of Washington, Kerouac’s fictional self Jack Duluoz comes down from the isolated mountains to the wild excitement of the bars, jazz clubs, and parties of San Francisco, before traveling on to Mexico City, New York, Tangiers, Paris, and London.
By: Jack Kerouac
-
Big Sur
- By: Jack Kerouac, Aram Saroyan - foreword
- Narrated by: Ethan Hawke
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this 1962 novel, Kerouac's alter ego, Jack Duluoz, overwhelmed by success and excess, gravitates back and forth between wild binges in San Francisco and an isolated cabin on the California coast where he attempts to renew his spirit and clear his head of madness and alcohol. Only nature seems to restore him to a sense of balance. In the words of Allen Ginsberg, Big Sur "reveals consciousness in all its syntactic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion".
-
-
Astonishing Ethan Hawke Performance
- By L E Stewart on 11-10-20
By: Jack Kerouac, and others
Related to this topic
-
Sophie's Choice
- By: William Styron
- Narrated by: Norman Snow
- Length: 2 hrs and 53 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this brilliant, multi-layered novel, a young Southerner, Stingo, wants to become a writer. In Brooklyn, he meets Nathan, a brilliant Jewish intellectual involved in a turbulent love-hate affair with Sophie, a beautiful Polish woman. She has a terrible wound in her past, one that impels both Sophie and Nathan toward destruction.
-
-
THIS IS ABRIDGED
- By J. Flynn on 07-25-16
By: William Styron
-
Look Homeward, Angel
- By: Thomas Wolfe
- Narrated by: Scott Sowers
- Length: 26 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The works of Thomas Wolfe cemented his legacy as one of the very best of the American Southern writers. Wolfe's largely autobiographical novel features Eugene Gant, who pines for a more expansive life after being born to a father whose bouts of maniacal raving are fueled by a prodigious appetite for drink.
-
-
One Of The Gret Novels Of The 20th Century
- By Eric on 02-22-09
By: Thomas Wolfe
-
Lolita
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
An Absolutely Gorgeous Audible Experience
- By Jim on 10-26-05
By: Vladimir Nabokov
-
Fury
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Salman Rushdie
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world renowned author of The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie is a Whitbread Award winner and recipient of the Booker Prize. His first truly American novel, Fury is a metaphorically rich black comedy that reflects the pressure-cooker of modern life. Malik Solanka, irascible doll-maker and retired historian of ideas, suffers the pain of wanting without knowing exactly what it is he wants.
-
-
surprisingly good
- By David on 11-21-07
By: Salman Rushdie
-
Peyton Place
- By: Grace Metalious
- Narrated by: Tim O'Connor
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Best book I've read to date!
- By Crusader on 11-07-11
By: Grace Metalious
-
Going to Meet the Man
- By: James Baldwin
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories, as told by James Baldwin, detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their heads above water.
-
-
Punch in the gut
- By Rebecca on 05-08-17
By: James Baldwin
-
Sophie's Choice
- By: William Styron
- Narrated by: Norman Snow
- Length: 2 hrs and 53 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this brilliant, multi-layered novel, a young Southerner, Stingo, wants to become a writer. In Brooklyn, he meets Nathan, a brilliant Jewish intellectual involved in a turbulent love-hate affair with Sophie, a beautiful Polish woman. She has a terrible wound in her past, one that impels both Sophie and Nathan toward destruction.
-
-
THIS IS ABRIDGED
- By J. Flynn on 07-25-16
By: William Styron
-
Look Homeward, Angel
- By: Thomas Wolfe
- Narrated by: Scott Sowers
- Length: 26 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The works of Thomas Wolfe cemented his legacy as one of the very best of the American Southern writers. Wolfe's largely autobiographical novel features Eugene Gant, who pines for a more expansive life after being born to a father whose bouts of maniacal raving are fueled by a prodigious appetite for drink.
-
-
One Of The Gret Novels Of The 20th Century
- By Eric on 02-22-09
By: Thomas Wolfe
-
Lolita
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
An Absolutely Gorgeous Audible Experience
- By Jim on 10-26-05
By: Vladimir Nabokov
-
Fury
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Salman Rushdie
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world renowned author of The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie is a Whitbread Award winner and recipient of the Booker Prize. His first truly American novel, Fury is a metaphorically rich black comedy that reflects the pressure-cooker of modern life. Malik Solanka, irascible doll-maker and retired historian of ideas, suffers the pain of wanting without knowing exactly what it is he wants.
-
-
surprisingly good
- By David on 11-21-07
By: Salman Rushdie
-
Peyton Place
- By: Grace Metalious
- Narrated by: Tim O'Connor
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Best book I've read to date!
- By Crusader on 11-07-11
By: Grace Metalious
-
Going to Meet the Man
- By: James Baldwin
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story