Cosmopolis: A Novel

Written by:
Don DeLillo
Narrated by:
Will Patton

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
16
Narrator
1
Release Date
April 2003
Duration
5 hours 30 minutes
Summary
Now a major motion picture directed by David Cronenberg and starring Robert Pattinson, Cosmopolis is the thirteenth novel by one of America’s most celebrated writers.

It is an April day in the year 2000 and an era is about to end. The booming times of market optimism—when the culture boiled with money and corporations seemed more vital and influential than governments— are poised to crash. Eric Packer, a billionaire asset manager at age twenty-eight, emerges from his penthouse triplex and settles into his lavishly customized white stretch limousine. Today he is a man with two missions: to pursue a cataclysmic bet against the yen and to get a haircut across town. Stalled in traffic by a presidential motorcade, a music idol’s funeral and a violent political demonstration, Eric receives a string of visitors—experts on security, technology, currency, finance and a few sexual partners—as the limo sputters toward an increasingly uncertain future.

Cosmopolis, Don DeLillo’s thirteenth novel, is both intimate and global, a vivid and moving account of the spectacular downfall of one man, and of an era.
Reviews
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Anonymous

I loved it. Fast-paced, offbeat and intelligent. He rocks.

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Van

I think that a part of me died listening to this. Granted, I only made it to track 3 of the first disc then I had to end the torture. Who is the narrator? Run away...far, far...away. The nonsensical rambling just goes on and on and on until you are like "What the heck did I just listen to." Save your valuable time...rent something...anything...else.

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Anonymous

One of the worst books I have ever listened to or read. The writing ranged from completely insipid to utterly pretentious, while failing to be about anything interesting. Unfortunately, the style of narration only amplified the annoying tone of the writing. If it hadn't been so short, I don't think I would have made it to the end.

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David Howard

A lot of things can happen on your way cross town to get a hair cut. Cosmopolis borrows from a variety of sources, the most immediately evident is The Swimmer, a late ‘60's Burt Lancaster film chronicling a "successful" and bored man's attempt to add a little zest to his otherwise predictable and tedious life by dipping into a succession of neighbours' pools on his way home — with similarly dire result. Eric, our sometime protagonist, indulges a similar "day", setting out, limo-clad and body-guarded, on a trip back in time to his roots in a "neighbourhood", touching as he goes, increasingly contrived and exposing indulgences in his effort to regain a sense of what's real and to escape his virtuality. His self-destructive odyssey finds him lying at last, naked in the street, a mere extra in that most contrived of all circumstance, a movie set, the film ironically brought low by his own intentional financial undoing. Throughout the reader (listener) is challenged, as is Eric with sequenced visitations by those that "actually believe in something", a grounded sense that he pines for, but, for all his power and wealth, is unable to access. This theme, what constitutes celebrity, fame, legitimate respect, culminates with the funeral procession of a "successful rapper", idolized by Eric, celebrated and grieved by all, telling counterpoint to Eric's vanishing with no more legacy than the prophetic image on his watch crystal. DeLillo's narrative style, an unlikely mix of Mickey Spillane and Michael Ondaatje is compelling throughout. Language alone is enough reason to listen to this book. Good read (or listen).

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