The Enormous Room cover art

The Enormous Room

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The Enormous Room

By: E. E. Cummings
Narrated by: Ken Kliban
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About this listen

The Enormous Room is a 1922 autobiographical novel by the poet and novelist E. E. Cummings about his temporary imprisonment in France during World War I.

Drawing on his experiences in France as a volunteer ambulance-driver, Cummings recounts the series of mistakes that led to his arrest and imprisonment for treason. This edition restores much of the original manuscript.

Public Domain (P)2010 Audible, Inc. Classics

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Editor reviews

Narrator Ken Kliban gives a definitive performance of e. e. Cummings' autobiographical novel about his temporary imprisonment in France during World War I for supporting his friend's anti-war statements. Kliban perfectly captures Cummings' mixture of intellectualism and wit as he describes the people he meets and the absurd situations he finds himself in during his four-month incarceration. The other characters are also vividly embellished with accents and mannerisms that make them stand out, and listeners will feel as though they know these people from real life.
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This audio is quite well performed and gets the ironic tone of Cummings's WW1 imprisonment told as a bit of a lark very well. Purchasers should be aware that this appears to be the text of the 1922 edition, which omitted some quite long passages from the 'fair copy' text of the manuscript and translates many of the French passages into English. The author called these 'stupidities' in a letter to his father, but I suspect most listeners will not mind them and may even prefer this version as more comprehensible.

As usual, I like to separate comment on the quality of the work from my rating of the quality of the recording, which is a 4-star performance. The work itself is interesting insofar as telling of a strange (and outrageous) miscarriage of justice, but becomes quickly repetitive and is rather long for what it achieves. One might say that the boredom replicates that of being imprisoned for an unclear offence and an indeterminate length of time and thus is a modernist replication of medium as message, but that might not be enough interest to hold many listeners.

Audio of the 1922 version not approved by author

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