Old Glory, Jonathan Raban
Old Glory, Jonathan Raban
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Old Glory
A Voyage Down the Mississippi

Author: Jonathan Raban

Narrator: James Langton

Unabridged: 18 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/05/2022

Synopsis

The author of Bad Land realizes a lifelong dream as he navigates the waters of the Mississippi River in a spartan sixteen-foot motorboat, producing yet another masterpiece of contemporary American travel writing. In the course of his voyage, Raban records the mercurial caprices of the river and the astonishingly varied lives of the people who live along its banks. Whether he is fishing for walleye or hunting coon, discussing theology in Prairie Du Chien or race relations in Memphis, he is an expert observer of the heartland’s estrangement from America’s capitals of power and culture, and its helpless nostalgia for its lost past. Witty, elegiac, and magnificently erudite, Old Glory is as filled with strong currents as the Mississippi itself.

About Jonathan Raban

Jonathan Raban is the author of Soft City, Arabia, Old Glory, Foreign Land, For Love and Money, Coasting, and Hunting Mr. Heartbreak. He won the W. H. Heinemann Award for Literature in 1982 and the Thomas Cook Award in 1981 and 1991. He has also edited the Oxford Book of the Sea. He lives in Seattle.

About James Langton

James Langton, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, trained as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and later as a musician at the Guildhall School in London. He has worked in radio, film, and television, also appearing in theater in England and on Broadway. He is also a professional musician who led the internationally renowned Pasadena Roof Orchestra from 1996 to 2002.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jurjen on September 22, 2024

About two and a half months ago, I set off on my summer holiday to Eastern Europe, landing in Moldova and travelling back by train. I had four books with me. The first one was Huckleberry Finn, the second and third were not, and the fourth was Old Glory. My trip started and ended in the literary com......more

Goodreads review by Troy on March 07, 2011

Cerebral, yet accessible, Old Glory is difficult to peg in terms of genre. Travel narrative approaches, but any classification would fall well short of the mark. Raban incorporates history, mesmerizing descriptive prose, biographical morsels, and sparse but welcome bits of dry British wit in this jo......more

Goodreads review by Kasa on September 30, 2020

Read over 30 years ago, this account of a trip down the Mississippi by a British author sticks in my mind.......more

Goodreads review by Cindy Dyson on October 16, 2021

I bought this book many years ago and somehow never got around to reading it. His writing is masterful, evocative, and calm-- A factory went by; an empty dock; a lone man with a paintbrush on the deck of a tug, who looked up for a moment from his work and waved; then summer-dusty trees, massed and e......more

Goodreads review by Sairam on March 01, 2023

Old Glory had been lying around for a while in my little collection of books, and I only got to it when news of Jonathan Raban's passing arrived. It is my kind of book: Impulsive, meandering, indulgent, and yet soft in its way of looking at the world. And the late Raban is an extraordinary traveller......more

Quotes

“Throughout this epic journey [Raban] struggles to reconcile the real, treacherous, protean river with the shimmering dream-waters of his boyhood. This is what gives his book its remarkable power, elevating it close to the level of myth.” Salman Rushdie

“Mr. Raban has a keen ear, but for the river itself he has to evince not only a keen eye but a capacity to use a painters palette. He gives us the strong brown god in all its rage, sullenness, and beauty.” Anthony Burgess

“Stunning…More successful than ninety nine percent of the books about America since de Tocqueville.” New York Times Book Review

“He can skewer life in an anecdote and evoke a river scene in a few brushstrokes.” The Nation

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