Wolfram Kandinsky has narrated 4 audiobooks on Listento.it by 4 authors, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is McTeague.
McTeague
Summary
Few works have captured the seamy side of American urban life with such graphic immediacy as Frank Norris's McTeague. Heredity and environment play the role of fate in this portrayal of human degradation in turn-of-the-century San Francisco.McTeague, a strong but stupid dentist, marries Trina, introduced to him by her cousin Marcus Schouler. When Trina wins $5,000 in a lottery and increases the sum by shrewd investment, Schouler, who had wanted to marry Trina himself, feels cheated. In revenge, he exposes McTeague's lack of diploma or license.Forbidden to practice, McTeague becomes mean and surly, but the miserly Trina refuses to let him use her money, and they sink into poverty. What follows is a descent into the ultimate crime - murder - and life as a fugitive, in a tale that moves toward its harrowing conclusion with the grim power and inevitability of classic tragedy.
Public Domain (P)1993 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
This Side of Paradise
Summary
Amory Blaine, a handsome, wealthy, spoiled and snobbish young man from the Midwest, attends Princeton University and acquires a refined sense of the proper "social" values. Lacking all sense of purpose, he interests himself in literary cults, vaguely "liberal" student activities, and a series of flirtations with some rather predatory young ladies. Perhaps This Side of Paradise - F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel - succeeds because of its vibrant quality of youthfulness. The New York Times expressed this opinion: "The glorious spirit of abounding youth glows throughout this fascinating tale. As a picture of the daily existence of what we call loosely 'college men,' this book is as nearly perfect as such a work could be. It could have been written only by an artist who knows how to balance his values with a delightful literary style." Partially autobiographical, This Side of Paradise was credited with having invented the American flapper.
Public Domain (P)1993 Blackstone Audiobooks
The Education of Henry Adams
Summary
Few works have so firmly established their position in American literature as The Education of Henry Adams. As a man of extraordinary gifts and learning, and a member of one of the greatest American families, Henry Adams wrote an insightful exploration of himself and the tumultuous age in which he lived. In the words of Van Wyck Brooks, he "revealed a phase of American history with unparalleled boldness and truth." In spite of his illustrious background and Harvard schooling, Henry Adams asserts that his conventional education was defective because it did not prepare him to live in a world transformed by the new science and the new technology. His intention was to write a kind of handbook to prepare "young men, in universities and elsewhere, to be men of the world, equipped for any emergency." The result is what many consider to be one of the finest autobiographies ever written.
Public Domain (P)1993 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Last Gentleman
Summary
Williston Bibb Barrett is a rather unusual and inquisitive young Southerner with a special gift for cultivating the possibilities of life. He suffers from occasional bouts of amnesia and disconcerting attacks of déjà vu. He clings to certain old-fashioned notions of behavior, and yet he finds himself constantly impelled to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations. And he lives with the secret suspicion that the great world catastrophe that everyone fears will happen has already happened. The novel follows Will Barrett’s adventures as he becomes involved in the complex troubles, loves, and fortunes of a Southern family, the Vaughts, that is living in the shadow of their youngest son’s illness. With settings ranging from New York to Alabama, Louisiana to New Mexico, this is an ambitious, funny, compulsively readable novel about the dilemmas of modern man.
©1966 Walter Percy (P)2000 Blackstone Audio, Inc.