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The Vivisector
- Narrated by: Humphrey Bower
- Length: 27 hrs and 3 mins
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The Vivisector
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Publisher's Summary
Winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize, The Vivisector chronicles the life of egotistic painter Hurtle Duffield, exploring the relationship between art and the artist.
Hurtle Duffield, a painter, is incapable of loving anything except what he paints. The men and women who court him during his long life are, above all, the victims of his art. He is the vivisector, dissecting their weaknesses with cruel precision: his sister's deformity, a grocer's moonlight indiscretion and the passionate illusions of his mistress, Hero Pavloussi.
It is only when Hurtle meets an egocentric adolescent whom he sees as his spiritual child does he experience a deeper, more treacherous emotion in this tour de force of sexual and psychological menace that sheds brutally honest light on the creative experience.
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What listeners say about The Vivisector
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Simon
- 01-08-2019
Excellent rendition of a masterpiece
Outstanding performance of one of the great novels of the 20th Century by Nobel Prize winner, Patrick White.
I do hope Audible record more of White’s novels. He was a genius.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- L. White
- 12-04-2022
A brilliant novel superbly read
This superb rendition of this granitic novel has brought alive what had previously been for me a rather forbidding masterpiece. Humphrey Bower brings a cast of characters superbly to life with all their variegated voices and class-, age- and gender- based variations on the Australian accent across the 20th Century. Two magicians meet!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 09-04-2024
a wonderful study of a tortured fabulous life
great characterisations by the reader(s). And And an insightful observation into class distinction in Australia in the first half of the 20 th century.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Joe Blow
- 17-06-2021
Hardly noticed the hours slip by
Amazingly easy to listen to considering the breadth of issues and characterization. Another PW down.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- stuart
- 10-05-2021
Disgraceful
Publications such as this is of VERY poor taste. There is no reason Paedophilia should be condoned in any way.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Rodney Wetherell
- 02-10-2021
Brilliant reading of disappointing novel
The Vivisector was the first novel by Patrick White which I really enjoyed, having failed to do so, with Voss and The Tree of Man. This was in the early 70s. However, nearly 50 years later I find the novel quite distasteful, though full of White's characteristic poetic prose. There is little doubt that White enshrined his vision of the artist in the mind of the painter Hurtle Duffield of The Vivisector. He sees the artist as almost a godlike figure, to whom ideas and paintings are 'given'. Duffield paints as he is 'meant to' - choice and rational processes have nothing to do with it. And he believes his role and talents (genius, rather) give him the right to sneer constantly at all the 'ordinary' people with their banal lives and boring utterances. His disgust for his sister Rhoda, from the moment he sets eyes on her, is reported as being quite forgiveable, and his attitude to the unfortunate Cutbush is never less than lordly. I had a great sense of letdown while reading this novel. White no doubt counts as a genius himself, but my once-high view of his writing has gone way down.
However, Humphrey Bower's reading of the novel, with the myriad voices he assumed, was quite brilliant from beginning to end.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 10-12-2021
Inspiration in a turgid flow
As the basis for this long novel two big themes are ever present: the nature of art and the life of the artist. In dealing with these themes White seldom strays far from a steady plod along the path of gravitas. Even his interludes of florid excess, as he attempts to describe the process and experience of making art, become heavy with ponderous verbiage. Bower's nuanced reading is excellent but, with more than eleven hours remaining, I decided that life is too short to maintain patience with books like this, however fine the reading.
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