
The Material
A Novel
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $18.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Megan Tusing
-
By:
-
Camille Bordas
About this listen
A single momentous day transforms the lives of students and professors at a school for stand-up comedy in a novel that “[brims] with insecure characters, clever repartee, dark jokes and funny riffs” (The Wall Street Journal)
“Insightful, compassionate, biting and honest.”—The Washington Post
“Brilliance is on display here.”—Percival Everett, author of James and The Trees
ONE OF SLATE’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • Longlisted for the New American Voices Award
Can comedy be taught? Someone, at some point, seemed to think so. The Chicago Stand-Up MFA program has enrolled young comedians for nearly a decade.
Its teachers and students all know how bits work—in theory, at least. They know that there’s a line between sharp and cruel, that sad becomes funny at the right angle, that the worst is the best, the truth is the worst, and any moment of your life that isn’t a punch line will either get you to a punch line or force you to be one.
They’re all afraid to be one.
Artie may be too handsome for standup, Olivia too reluctant to examine her own life, and Phil too afraid to cause harm. Kruger may be too vanilla to command his students’ respect, Ashbee too detached. And then we have Dorothy—the only woman on the program’s faculty—who though preparing to launch a comeback tour can’t tell if she’s too abiding, too ambitious, or too ambivalent.
Whether a visiting professor—the high-profile, controversy-steeped comedian Manny Reinhardt—will do more to help or harm their cause remains to be seen. But he’s on his way. He’ll be arriving sooner than anyone thinks.
Riffing keenly across a diverse array of precision-cut perspectives, The Material examines life through the eyes of a reluctantly assembled ensemble, a band of outsiders bound together by the need to laugh and the longing to make others laugh even harder.
©2024 Camille Bordas (P)2024 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
Rejection
- Fiction
- By: Tony Tulathimutte
- Narrated by: Micky Shiloah, Allyson Ryan, Quincy Surasmith, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the touchiest problems of modern life. The seven connected stories seamlessly transition between the personal crises of a complex ensemble and the comic tragedies of sex, relationships, identity, and the internet.
-
-
Trigger warning for one chapter, otherwise really creative
- By Amazon Customer on 10-06-24
-
Scaffolding
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Elkin
- Narrated by: Lauren Elkin
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two couples in two separate but similar times-set against a backdrop of political disappointment and intellectual controversy-face the challenges of marriage, fidelity, and pregnancy. Lauren Elkin's Scaffolding is about the way our homes hold communal memories of all their inhabitants and their stories; about the bonds we create, and the difficulty of ever fully severing them; about the ways people we've loved live on in us.
-
-
Wonderful
- By Laura M on 11-14-24
By: Lauren Elkin
-
Great Expectations
- A Novel
- By: Vinson Cunningham
- Narrated by: Aaron Goodson
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A historic presidential campaign changes the trajectory of a young Black man’s life in this “coming of age story that captures the soul of America” (The Washington Post), the debut novel from The New Yorker staff writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist Vinson Cunningham.
-
-
Not the political story I expected
- By Aeroduncan on 12-19-24
-
How to Behave in a Crowd
- A Novel
- By: Camille Bordas
- Narrated by: Adam Alexi-Malle
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Isidore Mazal is 11 years old, the youngest of six siblings living in a small French town. He doesn't quite fit in. Isidore has never skipped a grade or written a dissertation. But he notices things the others don't, and asks questions they fear to ask. So when tragedy strikes the Mazal family, Isidore is the only one to recognize how everyone is struggling with their grief, and perhaps the only one who can help them - if he doesn't run away from home first.
-
-
Charming and Moving
- By David P on 11-21-19
By: Camille Bordas
-
Hum
- By: Helen Phillips
- Narrated by: Ariel Blake
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a near-future world addled by climate change and inhabited by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. Desperate to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance. Seeking reprieve from her recent hardships and her family’s addiction to their devices, May splurges on passes for her family to spend three nights respite in the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals still thrive.
-
-
Why Literary "Speculative Fiction" Doesn't Work
- By NMwritergal on 08-06-24
By: Helen Phillips
-
Playground
- A Novel
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Robin Siegerman, Eunice Wong, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up in naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while Todd Keane’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.
-
-
What a tremendous story
- By Deb Hatch on 11-08-24
By: Richard Powers
-
Rejection
- Fiction
- By: Tony Tulathimutte
- Narrated by: Micky Shiloah, Allyson Ryan, Quincy Surasmith, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the touchiest problems of modern life. The seven connected stories seamlessly transition between the personal crises of a complex ensemble and the comic tragedies of sex, relationships, identity, and the internet.
-
-
Trigger warning for one chapter, otherwise really creative
- By Amazon Customer on 10-06-24
-
Scaffolding
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Elkin
- Narrated by: Lauren Elkin
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two couples in two separate but similar times-set against a backdrop of political disappointment and intellectual controversy-face the challenges of marriage, fidelity, and pregnancy. Lauren Elkin's Scaffolding is about the way our homes hold communal memories of all their inhabitants and their stories; about the bonds we create, and the difficulty of ever fully severing them; about the ways people we've loved live on in us.
-
-
Wonderful
- By Laura M on 11-14-24
By: Lauren Elkin
-
Great Expectations
- A Novel
- By: Vinson Cunningham
- Narrated by: Aaron Goodson
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A historic presidential campaign changes the trajectory of a young Black man’s life in this “coming of age story that captures the soul of America” (The Washington Post), the debut novel from The New Yorker staff writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist Vinson Cunningham.
-
-
Not the political story I expected
- By Aeroduncan on 12-19-24
-
How to Behave in a Crowd
- A Novel
- By: Camille Bordas
- Narrated by: Adam Alexi-Malle
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Isidore Mazal is 11 years old, the youngest of six siblings living in a small French town. He doesn't quite fit in. Isidore has never skipped a grade or written a dissertation. But he notices things the others don't, and asks questions they fear to ask. So when tragedy strikes the Mazal family, Isidore is the only one to recognize how everyone is struggling with their grief, and perhaps the only one who can help them - if he doesn't run away from home first.
-
-
Charming and Moving
- By David P on 11-21-19
By: Camille Bordas
-
Hum
- By: Helen Phillips
- Narrated by: Ariel Blake
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a near-future world addled by climate change and inhabited by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. Desperate to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance. Seeking reprieve from her recent hardships and her family’s addiction to their devices, May splurges on passes for her family to spend three nights respite in the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals still thrive.
-
-
Why Literary "Speculative Fiction" Doesn't Work
- By NMwritergal on 08-06-24
By: Helen Phillips
-
Playground
- A Novel
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Robin Siegerman, Eunice Wong, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up in naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while Todd Keane’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.
-
-
What a tremendous story
- By Deb Hatch on 11-08-24
By: Richard Powers
Critic reviews
“Insightful, compassionate, biting and honest.”—The Washington Post
“Fluid, inventive and often, yes, funny . . . There’s definitely a quirky wryness here that will please fans of Curtis Sittenfeld and A.M. Homes.”—The Spectator
“Funny, intelligent and has much to say about how we live now . . . Part of what keeps us reading is to see how far [Bordas will] go.”—Financial Times
What listeners say about The Material
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 07-22-24
Ran87507
I was really hoping to like it, but it went nowhere. It became a little boring for me
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!