Elmer Gantry

Elmer Gantry

by Sinclair Lewis

Narrated by Anthony Heald

Unabridged — 16 hours, 2 minutes

Elmer Gantry

Elmer Gantry

by Sinclair Lewis

Narrated by Anthony Heald

Unabridged — 16 hours, 2 minutes

Audiobook (Digital)

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Overview

Elmer Gantry is the portrait of a silver-tongued evangelist who rises to power within his church, yet lives a life of hypocrisy, sensuality, and ruthless self-indulgence.

The title character starts out as a greedy, shallow, philandering Baptist minister, turns to evangelism, and eventually becomes the leader of a large Methodist congregation. Throughout the novel, Gantry encounters fellow religious hypocrites. Although often exposed as a fraud, Gantry is never fully discredited.

When Elmer Gantry was first published in 1927, it created a public furor. Now it is considered a landmark in American literature and one of the most penetrating studies of hypocrisy in modern literature. The novel also represents the evangelistic activity of America in the 1920s and people's attitudes toward it.


Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Lewis fut un auteur prophetique autant qu'un chroniqueur exact de son temps. L'organisation des Protestants evangelistesqu'il avait predit prit reellement forme par la suite.(...) Elmer Gantry a ete interdit a Boston au moment de sa publication, etsans aucun doute de multiples ecoles et bibliotheques sont encore en train d'essayer de le bannir de leurs rayons. Autant qu'unproduit de son propre moment historique, ce livre s'avere de notre temps egalement, et probablement de tous les temps.

MARCH 2009 - AudioFile

Lewis's classic story of a corrupt and cynical evangelical preacher would seem torn from the pages of current newspapers if the dialogue weren't surprisingly dated. Elmer Gantry is charismatic without being likable, which makes voicing him a tricky business for Anthony Heald. His Elmer is an ambitious, self-righteous sociopath, whose timbre betrays no trace of conscience, self-doubt, regret, or sympathy for others, even at the beginning of his career. Heald's pacing, his accents, his narrative drive are all excellent, although his women tend to sound the same, mostly breathy, credulous ninnies. It may be that that's all there was on the page, but with no character growth in sight, the dispiriting effect is of one jarring note overwhelming the music from beginning to end. B.G. 2009 Audies Winner © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID: 2940169862874
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date: 02/01/2008
Edition description: Unabridged
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