Gamelife, Michael W. Clune
Gamelife, Michael W. Clune
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Gamelife
A Memoir

Author: Michael W. Clune

Narrator: Peter Berkrot

Unabridged: 6 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/15/2015

Synopsis

In telling the story of his youth through seven computer games, critically acclaimed author Michael W. Clune (White Out) captures the part of childhood we live alone.

You have been awakened.

Floppy disk inserted, computer turned on, a whirring, and then this sentence, followed by a blinking cursor. So begins Suspended, the first computer game to obsess seven-year-old Michael, to worm into his head and change his sense of reality. Thirty years later he will write: "Computer games have taught me the things you can't learn from people."

Gamelife is the memoir of a childhood transformed by technology. Afternoons spent gazing at pixelated maps and mazes train Michael's eyes for the uncanny side of 1980s suburban Illinois. A game about pirates yields clues to the drama of cafeteria politics and locker-room hazing. And in the year of his parents' divorce, a spaceflight simulator opens a hole in reality.

About Michael W. Clune

Michael W. Clune is a professor of English at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of a memoir titled White Out: The Secret Life of Heroin and of the scholarly books, American Literature in the Free Market and Writing Against Time.

About Peter Berkrot

Peter Berkrot is an audiobook narrator, stage, screen and television actor, and acting coach.  He has narrated over 100 works that span a range of genres, including fiction, non-fiction, thriller, and children’s titles. His audiobook credits include works of Alan Glynn, Eric Van Lustbader, Nora Roberts and Dean Koontz.  In film and television, he appeared in Caddyshack, America's Most Wanted, and Unsolved Mysteries.  He performs in regional and New York theaters and directs the New Voices acting school.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Todd

First the good. the author's descriptions of games that were very formative to me were certainly the highlights of the book. the rest of the book was a mishmash vignettes. but the main character was unlikable and inconsistent, as were those that surrounded him. Maybe that was the author's point. but......more

Goodreads review by Stephanie

Oh, this had so much promise! Chapter One was exquisite, with gamelife and reallife paralleled so beautifully. The dialogue was elliptical, the turns of phrase sharp, the questions astute: "That night I imagined myself lying on my bed. Then I took away my hands. Okay, I thought, now I can't feel the......more

Goodreads review by Jeff

I definitely grew up with videogames. My father had an Intellivision, and I must have played hours of Night Stalker when I was much too young to figure it out. I grew up in a Nintendo family, and, while I still play games today, they're not nearly as important to the day to day as they once were. Gam......more

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