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Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays Audiobook
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Publisher Description
This program is read by actor and singer-songwriter Maya Hawke, star of Netflix's Stranger Things.
"Narrating in a voice as clear and sustaining as a cool glass of water, Hawke’s unflashy approach allows the words to reveal their magic."—The Orange County Register
"Didion’s timeless essays shine with Hawke at the helm. This audiobook will bring new listeners to this classic and is highly recommended for libraries everywhere.”—Library Journal (Starred Review)
“Maya Hawke performs this classic collection superbly...Hawke gets Didion's measured pace and thoughtful tone just right as she conveys the much admired author's idiosyncratic, elegant language.”—AudioFile (Earphones Award Winner)
Celebrated, iconic, and indispensable, Joan Didion’s first work of nonfiction, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, is considered a watershed moment in American writing. First published in 1968, the collection was critically praised as one of the “best prose written in this country.”
More than perhaps any other book, this collection by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era captures the unique time and place of Joan Didion’s focus, exploring subjects such as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up in California and the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture. As Joyce Carol Oates remarked: “[Didion] has been an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time, a memorable voice, partly eulogistic, partly despairing; always in control.”
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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“Maya Hawke performs this classic collection superbly. She pays attention to Joan Didion’s exquisite prose and captures her careful observations…The audiobook vividly brings back the 1960s…Didion writes eloquently, and Hawke’s lovely voice and professional delivery are a good fit. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile
Awards
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Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award
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Among longlisted titles for Los Angeles Times Best Books of the Year, 2017
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Among longlisted titles for Los Angeles Times Best Books of the Year, 2017
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Among longlisted titles for Slate Best Books of the Year, 2024
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About Joan Didion
Joan Didion (1934-2021) was a New York Times bestselling author whose many books include The Year of Magical Thinking, winner of the National Book Award. She graduated from the University of California at Berkley and moved to New York after winning a contest at Vogue. Her first novel, Run River, was published to much acclaim in 1963. Her first nonfiction work was Slouching towards Bethlehem, which Alfred Kazin called “some of the best prose written today in this country.”