Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson, read by Nick Offerman, Michael Shannon, Dermot Mulroney, Will Patton, and Liev Schreiber.
The Largesse of the Sea Maiden is the long-awaited new story collection from Denis Johnson, author of the groundbreaking, highly acclaimed Jesus' Son. Written in the same luminous prose, this collection finds Johnson in new territory, contemplating mortality, the ghosts of the past, and the elusive and unexpected ways the mysteries of the universe assert themselves.
Finished shortly before Johnson's death, this collection is the last word from a writer whose work will live on for many years to come.
Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson, read by Nick Offerman, Michael Shannon, Dermot Mulroney, Will Patton, and Liev Schreiber.
The Largesse of the Sea Maiden is the long-awaited new story collection from Denis Johnson, author of the groundbreaking, highly acclaimed Jesus' Son. Written in the same luminous prose, this collection finds Johnson in new territory, contemplating mortality, the ghosts of the past, and the elusive and unexpected ways the mysteries of the universe assert themselves.
Finished shortly before Johnson's death, this collection is the last word from a writer whose work will live on for many years to come.
Critiques-
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The audio version of Denis Johnson's posthumous short story collection has an eye-popping cast of celebrity narrators. Actors Nick Offerman, Michael Shannon, Dermot Mulroney, Will Patton, and Liev Schreiber are simply terrific. In the title story, Offerman, as an ad man in his 60s, delivers lines like, "Have I loved my wife? We've gotten along . . . " with a sublime blend of thoughtfulness and dry humor. Shannon is wry and tense as a recovering alcoholic writing letters to his family. The gravelly voiced Mulroney finds humor and pathos in a story of life in a county jail. Patton brings a hushed intensity to his role as an aging novelist. And, finally, Schreiber expertly vacillates between serious and absurd as a poet who's obsessed with a conspiracy theory about Elvis. A.T.N. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
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Starred review from March 5, 2018
An outstanding assemblage of actors narrates this powerful collection of five short stories from the late Johnson, who died in 2017. Film actor Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road, Nocturnal Animals) soulfully relays “The Starlight on Idaho,” which unfolds in a series of letters to friends and family, written by a character named Mark “Cass” Cassandra from inside a rehab facility where he is trying, once again, to get clean. Shannon’s delivery fully embraces the highs and lows of Cass’s missives, which are at times as funny as they are tragic. “Triumph over the Grave” is written from the perspective of an elderly writer who ponders his mortality while reflecting on the deaths of his friends. Voice actor Will Patton reads this story in a Southern accent. He sounds both reflective and wise, and his slow pacing gives the impression that the speaker is a man who chooses his words carefully. The story ends with a chilling passage that Patton transforms into a emotionally raw soliloquy. While Patton and Shannon provide the most noteworthy performances, the other stories, which are read by celebrity narrators Nick Offerman, Dermot Mulroney, and Liev Schreiber, are also excellent. These exceptional stories are expertly rendered, both in the writing and the reading, and are a fitting finale to Johnson’s career. A Random House hardcover. -
Starred review from September 4, 2017
The second story collection from the late Johnson (Jesus' Son) is a masterpiece of deep humanity and astonishing prose. The title story chronicles a lifetime of moments, from the small to the ecstatic, of ad agent Bill Whitman, including a chance bathroom encounter, his marriage ("Have I loved my wife? We've gotten along. We've never felt like congratulating ourselves"), and his searching walks around his neighborhood at night ("I wonder if you're like me, if you collect and squirrel away in your soul certain odd moments when the Mystery winks at you"). "The Starlight on Idaho" is structured as a series of letters written by Mark Cassandra, an alcoholic in a recovery center, to all the significant people in his life—siblings, doctors, Satan—as he considers how he can correct his tendency toward self-destruction ("I have been asked over and over by medical people who probably know what they're talking about ‘Why aren't you dead?'"). In "Strangler Bob," a young man named Dink ends up in county lockup, where he meets a group of other wayward men, eats a hot rod magazine soaked in an unspecified hallucinogen, and mulls over what would happen if an ominous red button on the wall were to be pressed. "Triumph Over the Grave" is a winding story told by an aging writer about his deceased friends and acquaintances, including a novelist who sees the ghosts of his brother and sister-in-law on his Texas ranch. In "Doppelgänger, Poltergeist," a poetry professor's long friendship with one of his students draws him into the student's obsession with an Elvis conspiracy. This book is an instant classic. It's filled with Johnson's unparalleled ability to inject humor, profundity, and beauty—often all three—into the dark and the mundane alike. These characters have been pushed toward the edge; through their searches for meaning or clawing just to hold onto life, Johnson is able to articulate what it means to be alive, and to have hope. Agent: Nicole Aragi, Aragi Inc. - Daily Telegraph In his lifetime Denis Johnson was far more highly regarded in America than in Britain... This stunning book – bleak, funny tender, despairing and ecstatic (sometimes all at the same time) – decisively proves that the Americans were right.
- New York Times, Critics' Top Books of 2018 This posthumously published book of short stories is the long-awaited follow-up to Johnson's Jesus' Son (1992), perhaps the most influential and beloved volume of American short stories of the past three decades... One can say about this book what one narrator says about a collection of poems he loves: "They were the real thing, line after line of the real thing."
- New Statesman Now Johnson is dead... we should be sorry to have lost such a wise and compassionate guide to life's darkness, but thankful to have his magnificent books. Here is another of them.
- Financial Times The prose remains as deliriously alive as ever. In one story there is a rueful, lyrical, lovely paragraph that I hope is more than fictionally true because it suggests that Johnson enjoyed himself producing some of the greatest literary works of our age.
