
Night Thoughts
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Narrated by:
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Wallace Shawn
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By:
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Wallace Shawn
About this listen
Writer and actor Wallace Shawn's probing, honest, and self-critical take on civilization and its discontents.
Although he is guided and inspired by the people he respects, and despite the insufficiency of his knowledge and experience - an insufficiency shared by most (or all) other humans, Wallace Shawn can’t see any real alternative to trying to figure out his own answers to the most essential questions about the world he lives in.
Having recently passed the age of 70, before which he found it difficult to piece together more than a few fragments of understanding, Shawn would like to pass on anything he's learned before death or dementia close down the brief window available to him, but he may not be ready yet.
©2017 Wallace Shawn (P)2018 Wallace ShawnListeners also enjoyed...
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Overall
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-
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Performance
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-
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By: Cary Elwes, and others
-
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- By: Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim - translator
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon, a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals—while her other lover, earnest, faithful, and good, stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence we feel “the unbearable lightness of being."
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Based on the NPR series of the same name, This I Believe features 80 Americans—from the famous to the unknown—completing the thought that begins with the book's title. The pieces that make up the program compel listeners to re-think not only what and how they have arrived at their own personal beliefs, but also the extent to which they share them with others.
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Performance
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Addicted to Outrage
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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A strange and terrible vehicle
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The Republic of Imagination
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favorite novels, she describes the unexpected journey that led her to become an American citizen after first dreaming of America as a young girl in Tehran and coming to know the country through its fiction. She urges us to rediscover the America of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and challenges us to be truer to the words and spirit of the Founding Fathers, who understood that their democratic experiment would never thrive or survive unless they could foster a democratic imagination.
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Love
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Critic reviews
"Acerbic yet compassionate, Shawn's writing epitomizes qualities he admires - curiosity, thoughtfulness, sharp logic, deep emotion - and sees society turning away from.” (Publishers Weekly, Best Books of 2017)
"[P]erceptive and forcefully argued.” (Kirkus Reviews)
"A compelling diagnosis of the world's injustice but also a very personal response to that injustice." (San Francisco Chronicle)
"Shawn has a way of pulling the reader into conversation, making the experience of Night Thoughts feel like more than moving through an extended essay by an important American playwright and actor. Somewhere, as one reads it, the feeling of friendship appears, as if Shawn has known you for years, and now, late in his life, he's decided to tell you what it's all about.” (Shelf Awareness)
What listeners say about Night Thoughts
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Marisa
- 01-18-23
Inspiring, illuminating, beautiful book
Will listen to this again. Wallace Shawn writes with utter honesty and a strange sort of optimism about human nature, privilege, and the future of human civilization. What a gem.
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- J.J. Justice
- 04-26-18
Brilliant.
Apparently words in this section are not optional. Plain Brilliant. 5 words remaining 2, now 1, now...thank you.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Pam Jacobs
- 08-14-18
Humans are truly terrible.
A good essay on how humans need to retire from the absurd practice of world domination. and that means you. And me.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-27-23
Please…
Always flawless! Love everything that he thinks and then reveals. Adore this talent. ♥️💡
Just a divine guy!
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- LisaR
- 01-26-22
Wallace Shawn has a lot of thoughts
There's some poignant wisdom here, but also some rambling tangents. But I could listen to him talk all day.
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1 person found this helpful