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The Book of Illusions audiobook

  • By: Paul Auster
  • Narrator: Paul Auster
  • Length: 10 hours 39 minutes
  • Publisher: HarperAudio
  • Publish date: August 10, 2004
  • Language: English
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(17377 ratings)
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The Book of Illusions Audiobook Summary

After losing his wife and two young sons in an airplane crash, professor David Zimmer spends his waking hours in a blur of alcoholic grief and self-pity. Then, watching television one night, he sees a clip from a lost film by the silent comedian Hector Mann. Zimmer soon finds himself embarking on a journey around the world to study the works of this mysterious figure, who vanished from sight in 1929.

Presumed dead for sixty years, Hector Mann was a comic genius who had flashed briefly across American movie screens, tantalizing the public with the promise of a brilliant future. Then, just as the silent era came to an end, he walked out of his house one January morning and was never heard from again.

Zimmer’s research leads him to write the first full-length study of Hector’s films. Upon publication the following year, a letter turns up bearing a return address from New Mexico — supposedly written by Hector’s wife. “Hector has read your book and would like to meet you. Are you interested in paying us a visit?” Is the letter a hoax, or is Hector Mann still alive? Torn between doubt and belief, Zimmer hesitates, until one night a strange woman appears on his doorstep and makes the decision from him, changing his life forever.

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The Book of Illusions Audiobook Narrator

Paul Auster is the narrator of The Book of Illusions audiobook that was written by Paul Auster

Paul Auster is the bestselling author of Oracle Night, The Book of Illusions, and Timbuktu. I Thought My Father Was God, the NPR National Story Project anthology, which he edited, was also a national bestseller. His work has been translated into thirty languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

About the Author(s) of The Book of Illusions

Paul Auster is the author of The Book of Illusions

The Book of Illusions Full Details

Narrator Paul Auster
Length 10 hours 39 minutes
Author Paul Auster
Publisher HarperAudio
Release date August 10, 2004
ISBN 9780060784362

Additional info

The publisher of the The Book of Illusions is HarperAudio. The imprint is HarperAudio. It is supplied by HarperAudio. The ISBN-13 is 9780060784362.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

Ahmad

October 11, 2021

The Book of Illusions, Paul Auster The Book of Illusions is a novel by American writer Paul Auster, published in 2002. It was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2004.Set in the late 1980s, the story is written from the perspective of David Zimmer, a university professor who, after losing his wife and children in a plane crash, falls into a routine of depression and isolation. After seeing one of the silent comedies of Hector Mann, an actor missing since the 1920s, he decides to occupy himself by watching all of Mann's films and writing a book about them. تاریخ نخستین خوانش: در ماه نوامبر سال 2009میلادیعنوان: کتاب اوهام؛ نویسنده: پل آستر (اوستر)؛ مترجم: امیر احمدی آریان؛ تهران، مروارید، چاپ دوم 1386؛ در 340ص؛ شابک9789648838268؛ چاپ چهارم 1391؛ چاپ پنجم 1395؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده امریکا - سده 20مآثار «پل استر»، نمونه ی بارز ادبیات پست مدرن هستند، و «کتاب اوهام» را می‌توان یکی از پیروزمندترین آثار ایشان دانست؛ داستان این کتاب، از زبان یک پروفسور ادبیات تطبیقی، به نام «دیوید زیمر» بازگو می‌شود، که خانواده‌ اش را در رویداد فروافتادن هواپیما، از دست داده، و از آن پس دچار آشفتگی و افسردگی بسیاری شده است؛ راوی یکشب در حال تماشای تلویزیون، با صحنه‌ ای از یک فیلم کمدی کلاسیک، از یک کارگردان گمنام، به نام «هکتور مان» روبرو می‌شود؛ آن صحنه او را در اوج افسردگی، به خنده وامیدارد؛ و از همین جا مسیر زندگیش دیگر می‌شود...؛ «پل استر»، در این اثر، به دنیای دو فرد می‌پردازد، فرد دوم (هکتور مان) از دریچ یه روایت قهرمان نخست (دیوید زیمر) برای خوانشگر ترسیم می‌شود؛ نویسنده برای اینکه «هکتور مان» در لابلای دنیای «دیوید زیمر» برای خوانشگر گم نشود، دومین فصل کتاب را به دستنوشته‌ های «دیوید زیمر» درباره ی «هکتور مان» اختصاص می‌دهدنقل نمونه ای از متن: (همه فکر می‌کردند مرده است. سال 1988میلادی که کتابم درباره‌ ی فیلم‌های هکتور مان منتشر شد، شصت سالی می‌شد که از او خبری نبود؛ جز تعدادی تاریخ‌نگار و طرف‌دار فیلم‌های قدیمی، آدم‌های کمی می‌دانستند او زمانی وجود داشته است؛ مضاعف یا هیچ، آخرین فیلم از سری دوازده‌ تایی فیلم‌های دوحلقه‌ ای او، در اواخر دوران سینمای صامت، در روز بیست و سوم ماه نوامبر سال 1928میلادی پخش شد؛ دو ماه بعد، بدون اینکه با هیچ‌یک از دوستان، یا اقوامش خداحافظی کند، بی آنکه نامه‌ ای بر جای بگذارد، یا کسی را از نقشه‌ اش آگاه کند، از خانه‌‌ ی اجاره‌ ای خویش در «نورت‌ ارنج‌ درایو» بیرون آمد و دیگر هرگز دیده نشد...)؛ پایان نقلتاریخ بهنگام رسانی 25/09/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 19/07/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Jill

February 17, 2009

By reading this book I have become a die-hard Auster fan. The man is amazing. So clever, so imaginitive, so poetic and almost profound. This book rambles, and in doing so touches on so many intertwined narratives that one almost gives up on what was assumed to be the original plot and assumes the opening catch phrase was just another Paul Auster smoke screen story line. But this one, even in creating such an intricatedly woven network of a character experiences, never looses sight of its ultimate goal - to explain how the supposed disapearance of a silent film actor affected the life of a professor and widower from Detroit. The world created in this book is done with such care and is so full of unexpected and tangential details that I found myself wondering if I wasn't perhaps reading a work of historical fiction rather than just a plain old novel. It's an amazingly well crafted narrative, heartwrenching and hopeful at the same time. A man's life is an illusion to all except those who share in it.

Erik

August 19, 2011

Paul Auster, you bastard!The man writes such depressing stuff. As with the other Auster I've read (I know I've only read 2 Austers, I am such a failure at being pretentious), I finished this and I was like... what, why did I read this?To explain myself I should say that I follow the Roger Ebert school of criticism. Roger Ebert cares more about how a movie makes him feel than on its technical merits. Granted, this is rather less valid in the medium of words on a page than the sound and fury of film, but I still stick to it. I have no problem trashing Plath's Bell-jar, regardless of its supposed literary merit or historical significance, because it bored and annoyed me.But getting to the point of this book, let me break it down for you literary thugs: there is a man whose family dies in an accident. He is depressed, but then he sees a silent comedy on TV and laughs for the first time in long while. He then decides to write about the star of this silent comedy, a man named Hector Mann. In the course of this, he finds out that Hector Mann disappeared, but he may actually still be alive!!! Stuff ensues, there are some themes brought up, there's some angst, there's some sex, you know the drill. And don't worry none of that's spoiler material, all on the first page basically.Worth reading for a few pieces of stellar writing. I was particularly impressed by how Auster writes about a film that doesn't actually exist. I bought into it, I was convinced. It's a story within a story (within a story within a story ad nauseam), and it's true that the inner stories are better told than the outer ones. I'm cool with that.In summary, though: "Paul Auster, you bastard!" is my review. If you likewise enjoy calling famous authors bastards, then I recommend this book to you highly.As a side note, a result of this novel, I had to add a new shelf called "bepretentious." Just read some of the other, actually useful reviews and you'll see what I mean.

Ian

July 09, 2021

CRITIQUE:Multi-Dimensional NarrativePaul Auster uses multiple dimensions of narrative to structure this story of Professor David Zimmer and silent film actor Hector Mann (born Chaim Mandelbaum).The first and most straightforward tells us about Zimmer and the loss of his wife (Helen) and two sons (Todd and Marco) in a fatal plane crash in 1985. Understandably, Zimmer has failed to recover from his loss, and has suffered from depression in the intervening years: "When a man has nothing to look forward to, he might as well be dead". He has also been angry, self-loathing and unforgiving about his loss, and has often been rude and obnoxious to those surrounding (even especially close to) him, particularly women, even well-meaning work colleagues. When he seeks drugs from a doctor (before a plane trip), he says he "seeks oblivion, not his own death".The second dimension is the story of Hector Mann, a handsome, mustachioed comic film actor who disappeared from Hollywood in 1929. A fictional issue of "Sight and Sound" described him as "the last great practitioner of the art of silent slapstick." Zimmer, a professor of literature, becomes obsessed with Hector's 12 extant films, and, when given indefinite compassionate leave from his university teaching post, he decides to write a monograph about Hector Mann. The second chapter seems to be a precis of, or extract from, Zimmer's book, "The Silent World of Hector Mann". We learn about the man, Hector, from a close reading and analysis of his creative work.Auster also refers to gossip columns and newspaper articles speculating about the circumstances of Hector's disappearance, none of which advance a convincing case for a suicide, a kidnapping, a gangland murder, or a staged disappearance. His fate is a mystery. It will take a work of fiction, an assemblage or book of illusions, to solve it."Memoirs of a Dead Man"While Zimmer is waiting for his book to be accepted for publication, he receives an invitation from an old friend, Alex Kronenberg, to translate an autobiographical work of Chateaubriand, which he proposes to entitle "Memoirs of a Dead Man".The third chapter describes Zimmer's experience of translating this book, and includes an extract from his introduction.It also contains extracts from a box of paper clippings, fan zines, letters and other ephemera about Hector that Zimmer has collected, but not used in his book.Both the second and the third chapters give us some context and insight into the broader concerns of the novel and Zimmer's frame of mind. These chapters evoked Nabokov's "Pale Fire".These quasi-non-fictional works surround, bolster and influence the reading of the fictional work proper, although in reality the whole of the work is a work of fiction.The Epistles Concerning HectorWhile in the process of translating Chateaubriand, Zimmer receives a letter purporting to be from Hector Mann's wife, Frieda Spelling, which states that Hector has read his book and would like to meet him at their studio/ ranch in New Mexico. In a later letter, she explains that Hector had written and directed a number of additional films since leaving Hollywood in 1929, and that he is willing to screen them for Zimmer.If Hector is actually alive, he must be in his nineties and potentially in bad health. Zimmer, literally, can't believe his eyes, and responds sceptically, which results in the correspondence being discontinued.This epistolary section leads to the arrival of Alma Grund (Alma's father was Hector's trusted cameraman and friend), who apparently lives with the Manns on their ranch. Her mission is to bring Zimmer, by whatever means necessary, back to New Mexico with her. Chapter 4, in which this encounter occurs, is written in a Chandleresque style. Alma is a burgundy-and hard-headed femme fatale, who packs a gun in her purse. After a late night argument about whether Zimmer will accompany her back to New Mexico, she declines to sleep on the proffered couch downstairs.By morning, having found an alternative bed for Alma, Zimmer is more agreeable, so much so that he overcomes his fear of flying without the use of Xanax.Talk on Trains, Planes, and AutomobilesOnce their flight lands safely, there is still a 2 1/2 hour drive, until they arrive at the ranch. Alma talks most of the time, revealing her knowledge of Hector's private and family life, about which she, too, has written a book (an authorised biography) called "The Afterlife of Hector Mann" documenting Hector's "whole story" as told to her by him. Her intimate knowledge fills Zimmer in on the period immediately before and after Hector's supposed disappearance.Because of its intimate and incriminating content, Alma has agreed not to publish her book, until after Hector's death. Frieda, on the other hand, wishes to eliminate all evidence or proof of Hector's existence (which includes his films, notebooks and biography) after his death (to honour an old pact made between the two of them after the bank robbery).A large part of chapter 5 recounts Hector's amorous and sexual adventures under the pseudonym, Herman Loesser (including a live sex act with a young whore, which they perform 47 times), from which adventures he always walks out, disappears, flees or escapes, up until he meets his future wife in a bank that is about to be robbed by an armed man, who almost takes their lives.Source Love DoublesIn chapter 6, Alma elaborates, "They fell hard for each other...If we don't watch out, the same thing is going to happen to us."Zimmer realises that "Alma was giving me the possibility of a second life, that something was still in front of me if I had the courage to walk toward it."In effect, Alma was resuscitating or resurrecting Zimmer from his metaphorical death, just as Frieda Spelling gave Herman a new life, by marrying him and allowing him to take her surname, so he became Hector Spelling. Zimmer and Alma are arguably doubles for Hector and Frieda. "In eight short days, she had brought me back from the dead."A Book of Fragments...and IllusionsZimmer admits that "This is a book of fragments, a compilation of sorrows and half-remembered dreams." Fantasies and illusions inevitably come to an end, if prematurely. Nothing lasts, except Zimmer's book. We hold in our hands the only memento that survived the (fictional) events assembled and catalogued in the tellers' tale.The novel is made complete by what Zimmer calls "my pathetic little collection of notes, my trilogy of desert jottings: the breakdown of [the film] 'The Inner Life of Martin Frost' [in which 'Martin burned his story in order to rescue Claire from the dead'], the snippets from Hector's journal, [both of which he had brief access to when he arrived at the ranch], and an inventory of extraterrestrial plants that had nothing to do with anything."Having been resurrected by Alma, Zimmer comes to recognise that he is now "living on borrowed time." It's an illusion to believe that he can live happily ever after, even if "something in me resisted the urge to destroy myself...": "I wasn't sure if I had tricked myself into believing that I was strong enough to go on working - or if I had simply gone numb."For the rest of the summer I felt as though I were living in a different dimension, awake to the things around me and yet removed from them at the same time..." Ultimately, this novel is a fascinating experiment in temporality, stitched together with a thread of mortal romance and sentiment.SOUNDTRACK:(view spoiler)[Wilco - "Box Full Of Letters"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gyZw..."I just can't find the timeTo write my mindThe way I want it to read..."Duke Special - "The Silent World of Hector Mann"https://vimeo.com/25673507 Duke Special - "Hearth and Home" [Live at Nottingham Rescue Rooms on 8th May 2010]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AFfx...Duke Special - "Mr Nobody"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsnyo...Duke Special - "Teller's Tale" (Matt Hales)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG21D...Duke Special - "Wanda, Darling of the Jockey Club" (Neil Hannon)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLX8V...Duke Special - "The Prop Man" (Thomas Truax)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkJO7...Robyn Hitchcock - "Intricate Thing"https://youtu.be/3Jssr7_wFPoRobyn Hitchcock - "I Just Wanna Be Loved"https://youtu.be/a8bGYYGRMc8Robyn Hitchcock - "She Doesn't Exist"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp63e...Robyn Hitchcock - "You and Oblivion"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3LXD... 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Chris_P

November 12, 2021

Paul Auster obviously has a thing for men who linger between reality and nothingness. Men whose realities take a turn towards the vague, so much so, that they seem to dress themselves in the vagueness that surrounds them. Men who lose everything or men who never really had anything to begin with. Men who seem to be caught for good inside an illusion along with everyone that surrounds them. Now they’re here, now they’re not. There are two of those men in The Book of Illusions: the narrator and Hector Man. Bound to each other, they meet only for an hour toward the end but the echo of their meeting is present after as much as before the event.What strange time for me to read this particular book! By the end of the first chapter it had grabbed me by the neck. What’s weird is that my present state has something of the book’s essence. As a result, book and reality mixed in an almost hurtful way. I regret, however, that my own illusions take up much of my mental capacity nowadays, which proved unable to fully embrace this haunting novel. Not that I regret the illusions themselves. Where would the point in that be, after all?It’s haunting, intense, and filled with a melancholy that sticks on your fingers with every page that you turn. There’s a kind of sadness in the very idea of illusions, and Auster sure took great advantage of that. It’s the idea that everything you have can disappear in the blink eye. Something precious falls into our arms and we call it a miracle. One day, we open our eyes and it’s gone. Then, it’s a tragedy. The worst is that, once it’s gone, one can never be sure if it was ever even there.Don’t be fooled, The Book of Illusions is so much more than my clouded mind can produce right now. A story of lightnings that strike the same place twice against all odds. As for me, I’m becoming a fan.

Blair

February 25, 2017

David Zimmer is a teacher and writer whose wife and two young sons have been killed in an aeroplane crash. At his lowest ebb, suicidal and alcoholic, David sees a silent film on television and laughs for the first time since the tragedy. Thereafter, he develops a fascination with the actor featured in the old movie, Hector Mann - a minor star of silent comedies who vanished in 1929 and was never seen or heard of again. Travelling around the world in order to visit the film archives containing Hector's few movies, David channels his obsession into a book about the actor's work. However, the story really begins some time after this, when David receives a mysterious letter containing some startling news about Hector.The Book of Illusions displays many characteristics of Auster's typical style, most noticeably the constant presence of symbolism, the perceived significance of art and the line between reality and (as the title suggests) illusion. Here, rather than the emphasis being on language and writing, the focus is on Hector's films and their visual impact, though of course the power of storytelling is still key. When David discovers that Hector made some films that were never seen by anyone else, he questions whether art has any importance if it is not shared with and experienced by an audience. David's ruminations are mirrored in various ways throughout the narrative - David withdraws from life, shuts himself away and becomes invisible, so it seems ironic that he becomes obsessed with a silent movie star; Hector makes a film called 'Mr. Nobody' in which he literally becomes invisible, and then, in his real life, he disappears; another character, Alma, is made more visible by a large birthmark on her face, yet she feels this gives her the ability to instantly see others' true characters through their reactions to her appearance.There are elements of the story that are, from a distance, completely implausible. The manner of David and Alma's first meeting is really quite ridiculous, and certainly unbelievable, as is the speedy development of their relationship. But I think this is where the genius of Auster's writing really lies, in suspending the reader's disbelief and immersing you so deeply into the story that these strange events seem believable. I can imagine that the book won't work for everyone - some may find the lengthy descriptions of unseen, nonexistent films dull (I really enjoyed them), and there's a curious... quietness about it all - a very subdued feel. This is not a deeply thrilling novel, more of a restrained but haunting little tale. On balance I think I personally prefer Oracle Night, but there is plenty to recommend this story, especially for fans of the author. (If you're not already acquainted with Auster, I'd still recommend The New York Trilogy as a primer.)

Daniel

October 03, 2020

What if it‘s all for nothing?David, our narrator gets obsessed with an obscure 1920's-era silent film star Hector Mann, who made 12 silent comedies and then disappeared in 1928, as in he was a missing person and was never to found. David chases down and studies all his films and then publishes a book on them. Some time later, after the book is published and made a small number of sales, he gets a letter by someone claiming to be Hector's wife inviting him to meet Hector Mann in person, who is living incognito in New Mexico as Hector Spelling. Is this real? David's uncertainty leads him to explain himself, how this books hurts him, how his whole obsession happened in the midst of his kind of collapse after losing his wife and kids in a airplane crash while he remained in his Vermont home. And we learn that apparently Hector has continued to make movies, except he wants them all destroyed at his death and he's dying and no one has seen them.This is terrific storytelling, a continual pouring out of captivating story facts. It's easy enjoyable reading (that I was able to put it down for long periods of time says more about me than the book). And there is a lot going on. Auster, I think, makes full use of Mann's name and his later life in New Mexico...Hector, the father, warrior, slain by Achilles, and it's direct meaing of hectoring man...a man or all humanity (perhaps with intentional sexist intent?). The book then comes to an uncomfortable end. There seems to be an unclear but distinct point. I think readers who effortlessly hummed through will feel suddenly uncomfortable. Left me that way. Wondering. (view spoiler)[Also, I suspect there is a commentary on nuclear annihilation here, highlighted by the New Mexico setting, the location of the WWII atomic bomb testing sites. That is, Hector's movies represent man's accomplishment and their destruction and the pointlessness of it all is, eventually, inevitable. (hide spoiler)]This is the first Paul Auster I've read. It was a really enjoyable book, one I can safely recommend to anyone interested and even to those a little resistant.-----------------------------------------------48. The Book of Illusions by Paul Austerpublished: 2002format: 321-page paperback, given to me by a coworker in Augustread: Aug 20 – Sep 22 (8 hr 20 min, 1.6 m/p)rating: 4locations: mainly Vermont and New Mexicoabout the author: American author from Newark, NJ, born 1947

Doug

May 28, 2007

I just recommended this book to someone stranded in the Minneapolis airport. I had forgotten how much I liked it until I saw it sitting there quietly on the shelf, minding it's own business.This is why real books are so much more awesome than ebooks--they come back to tickle your mind. That, and when you spill wine on them (like I did on my copy of The Book of Illusions) they don't give up the ghost in an electric funeral.Anyhow. Take that, Minneapolis.

Iulia

November 28, 2021

"Finalul m-a dazamãgit, de aici doar cele trei stele. În rest, e Paul Auster si am zis tot:)" -așa spuneam data trecută și nu aveam dreptate. Acum, la recitire, ii dau 5 stele, am fost mult mai atentă și am citit-o oarecum detaşatã, fãrã graba de a afla ce se întãmplã. Ceea ce am înţeles acum este cã dl.Auster nu pune accent pe acțiune, ci pe aspectul psihologic și emoțional, acolo stăruie el mult, acolo e punctul forte al "iluziilor".

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It depends. Yes, there are free audiobooks and paid audiobooks. Speechify offers a blend of both!

It varies. The easiest way depends on a few things. The app and service you use, which device, and platform. Speechify is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks. Downloading the app is quick. It is not a large app and does not eat up space on your iPhone or Android device.
Listening to audiobooks on your smart phone, with Speechify, is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks.

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