Ethan Hawke has narrated 4 audiobooks on Listento.it by 5 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.8★ across 15 ratings. The most-rated is The Dharma Bums.
The Dharma Bums
Summary
Jack Kerouac’s classic novel about friendship, the search for meaning, and the allure of nature 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.
©1958 Jack Kerouac (P)2020 Penguin Audio
A Bright Ray of Darkness
Summary
The blistering story of a young man making his Broadway debut in Henry IV just as his marriage implodes — an utterly transfixing book about art and love, fame and heartbreak from the acclaimed actor/writer/director. Hawke’s first novel in nearly 20 years is a bracing meditation on fame and celebrity, and the redemptive, healing power of art; a portrait of the ravages of disappointment and divorce; a poignant consideration of the rites of fatherhood and manhood; a novel soaked in rage and sex, longing and despair; and a passionate love letter to the world of theater. A Bright Ray of Darkness showcases Ethan Hawke's gifts as a novelist as never before. Hawke's narrator is a young man in torment, disgusted with himself after the collapse of his marriage, still half-hoping for a reconciliation that would allow him to forgive himself and move on as he clumsily, and sometimes hilariously, tries to manage the wreckage of his personal life with whiskey and sex. What saves him is theater: in particular, the challenge of performing the role of Hotspur in a production of Henry IV under the leadership of a brilliant director, helmed by one of the most electrifying - and narcissistic - Falstaff's of all time. Searing and raw, A Bright Ray of Darkness is a novel about shame and beauty and faith, and the moral power of art.
©2021 Ethan Hawke (P)2021 Random House Audio
The Poet's Guide to Life
Summary
In this treasury of uncommon wisdom and spiritual insight, the best writings and personal philosophies of one of the 20th century's greatest poets, Rainer Maria Rilke, are gleaned by Ulrich Baer from thousands of pages of never-before translated correspondence. The result is a profound vision of how the human drive to create and understand can guide us in every facet of life. Arranged by theme, from everyday existence with others to the exhilarations of love and the experience of loss, from dealing with adversity to the nature of inspiration, here are Rilke's thoughts on how to live life in a meaningful way. Intimate, stylistically masterful, brilliantly translated, and brimming with the wonder and passion of Rilke, The Poet's Guide to Life is comparable to the best works of wisdom in all of literature and a perfect book for all occasions.
©2005 Ulrich Baer (P)2005 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.
Big Sur
Summary
A poignant masterpiece of wrenching personal expression from the author of On the Road and The Dharma Bums. 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".
©1962 Jack Kerouac (P)2020 Penguin Audio