Sunset Limited/The Counselor - Cormac McCarthy Audiobook

Written by Cormac McCarthy
Read by Austin Pendleton, Ezra Knight, Tom Stechschulte, Jonathan Davis
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Two of the four plays written by Coemac McCarthy.

The Sunset Limited: A Novel in Dramatic Form
By: Cormac McCarthy
Narrated by: Austin Pendleton, Ezra Knight, Tom Stechschulte

Length: 1 hr and 42 mins
Release date: 08-26-10
Publisher: Recorded Books

This little book is a novelization of the 2006 stage production.

A startling encounter on a New York subway platform leads two strangers to a run-down tenement where a life or death decision must be made.

In that small apartment, “Black” and “White,” as the two men are known, begin a conversation that leads each back through his own history, mining the origins of two fundamentally opposing world views. White is a professor whose seemingly enviable existence of relative ease has left him nonetheless in despair. Black, an ex-con and ex-addict, is the more hopeful of the men–though he is just as desperate to convince White of the power of faith as White is desperate to deny it.
Their aim is no less than this: to discover the meaning of life.

Deft, spare, and full of artful tension, The Sunset Limited is a beautifully crafted, consistently thought-provoking, and deceptively intimate work by one of the most insightful writers of our time

AudioFile Magazine
A college professor attempting “suicide by subway” is rescued by a black man from the projects, who takes him home to discuss the value of life. With short narrative passages by Tom Stechschulte, the “novel in dramatic form” is performed by Austin Pendleton and Ezra Knight, as the professor and his guardian angel. Each engages fully in his character to the point that the listener feels empathy for the professor as he endures his rescuer’s relentless badgering and sadness for the angel as he struggles to find any way to save the professor’s soul. Stechschulte delivers the narrative passages with sadness, along with an almost clinical detachment. The gripping story and performance leave the listener wanting more. R.L.L. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award

The Counselor: a screenplay
By: Cormac McCarthy
Narrated by: Jonathan Davis

Length: 3 hrs and 39 mins
Release date: 10-31-13
Publisher: Recorded Books

The Counselor, performed in 2013, was one of four plays written my McCarthy. Unfortunately, unlike Sunset Limited, it is not novelized or done as a multi-cast recording but is a straight script read with stage directions and all. I don’t know how the screenplay differs from the original.

On the eve of becoming a married man, the Counselor makes a risky entrée into the drug trade - and gambles that the consequences won’t catch up to him.

Along the gritty terrain of the Texas- Mexico border, a respected and recently engaged lawyer throws his stakes into a cocaine trade worth millions. His hope is that it will be a one-time deal and that, afterward, he can settle into life with his beloved fiancée. But instead, the Counselor finds himself mired in a brutal and dangerous game - one that threatens to destroy everything and everyone he loves.

Deft, shocking, and unforgettable, McCarthy is at his finest in this gripping tale about risk, consequence, and the treacherous balance between the two.

Concentrate on the story, not the distractions.