Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Asylum of Dr. Caligari
    The Asylum of Dr. Caligari
    The Asylum of Dr. Caligari
    Audiobook5 hours

    The Asylum of Dr. Caligari

    Written by James Morrow

    Narrated by Paul Boehmer

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    If you think today's profiteers are diabolical, blink again.

    It is the summer of 1914. As the world teeters on the brink of the Great War, a callow American painter, Francis Wyndham, arrives at a renowned European insane asylum, where he begins offering art therapy under the auspices of Alessandro Caligari-sinister psychiatrist, maniacal artist, alleged sorcerer. And determined to turn the impending cataclysm to his financial advantage, Dr. Caligari will-for a price-allow governments to parade their troops past his masterpiece: a painting so mesmerizing it can incite entire regiments to rush headlong into battle.

    The Asylum of Dr. Caligari is a timely tale that is by turns funny and erotic, tender and bayonet-sharp-but ultimately emerges as a love letter to that mysterious, indispensable thing called art.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateAug 29, 2017
    ISBN9781541479319
    The Asylum of Dr. Caligari
    Author

    James Morrow

    Born in 1947, James Morrow has been writing fiction ever since he, as a seven-year-old living in the Philadelphia suburbs, dictated “The Story of the Dog Family” to his mother, who dutifully typed it up and bound the pages with yarn. This three-page, six-chapter fantasy is still in the author’s private archives. Upon reaching adulthood, Jim produced nine novels of speculative fiction, including the critically acclaimed Godhead Trilogy. He has won the World Fantasy Award (for Only Begotten Daughter and Towing Jehovah), the Nebula Award (for “Bible Stories for Adults, No. 17: The Deluge” and the novella City of Truth), and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award (for the novella Shambling Towards Hiroshima). A fulltime fiction writer, Jim makes his home in State College, Pennsylvania, with his wife, his son, an enigmatic sheepdog, and a loopy beagle. He is hard at work on a novel about Darwinism and its discontents.

    Related to The Asylum of Dr. Caligari

    Related audiobooks

    Absurdist For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Paul Tremblay

      Jun 17, 2020

      IT’S ALWAYS BEEN ONE OF MY BIGGEST FEARS that I would live to see the end of everything,” says Paul Tremblay, speaking to SFX from his Massachusetts home in the middle of lockdown. It’s a singularly peculiar time, and a peculiar interview for him to

      3 min read

    • Article

      Mail

      Nov 26, 2020

      Mail
      1 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems by Max Jacob

      Sep 15, 2018

      In the summer of 1935, the young Elizabeth Bishop, only recently graduated from Vassar College, set out on one of her many voyages. This was a trip to France. After a homesick crossing by ship, she spent a month in the small port of Douarnenez, on th

      6 min read

    • Article

      In Search Of Lost Paris

      Oct 19, 2022

      I sympathise with Oscar Wilde, ill in his room at the Hotel d’Alsace in Paris, when he complained that he was fighting a duel to the death with his wallpaper. ‘One of us has to go,’ he decided. Left Bank wallpapers have not improved, as I discovered

      4 min read

    • Article

      Behind The Apple

      Nov 24, 2021

      Alex Danchev with Sarah Whitfield (Profile, £30) IN 1946, René Magritte painted his most famous picture, The Son of Man, which shows a bowler-hatted figure in a black overcoat standing ramrod straight in front of a featureless background of sky and

      5 min read

    • Article

      Nadar’s Livre d’or

      Jul 5, 2017

      Nadar’s Livre d’or
      9 min read

    • Article

      ‘The Ventriloquists’: Featured Fiction from E.R. Ramzipoor

      Aug 27, 2019

      An excerpt from a debut novel that Booklist calls a "compelling historical thriller." The post ‘The Ventriloquists’: Featured Fiction from E.R. Ramzipoor appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      La Otra Historia

      Jun 30, 2022

      La Otra Historia
      14 min read

    • Article

      Vaguely Clever

      Jun 29, 2022

      It was quite a coup for our little church in the Sussex village of Ticehurst. Edith Vogel, a renowned pianist, had generously come down from London to give a recital in aid of the restoration of the roof. She was well into a Beethoven sonata which wa

      3 min read

    • Article

      To Make Art Is To Be Human

      Oct 13, 2021

      IN 1950, Ernst Gombrich published The Story of Art. The book was an instant bestseller and was the first to show that there was, indeed, such a thing as a story of art, that artists and movements existed not in isolated moments of time, but as part o

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Resister

      Feb 23, 2018

      The Resister
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Lives Of Artists

      Sep 27, 2023

      The Lives Of Artists
      6 min read

    • Article

      Café Perec

      Dec 1, 2023

      Café Perec
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Rebellious Bird

      Feb 8, 2024

      A Rebellious Bird
      2 min read

    • Article

      Surrealism Beyond Borders; Whistler’s Woman in White: Joanna Hiffernan – review

      Feb 27, 2022

      Tate Modern’s enormous and surprising Surrealism Beyond Borders is a round-the-world tour of what must be the 20th-century art’s most far-reaching movement. It has Austrian totem poles and Egyptian fetishes, paintings from Sweden and Senegal to Haiti

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Asylum of Dr. Caligari

    4/5

    28 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      I have a love-hate relationship with James Morrow. He has written some of the most incredible novels and short stories I have ever read. (For example, This is the Way the World Ends and the Bible Stories for Adults. And this is without my having delved into some of his more famous works.) But he has also written things I consider a complete waste of time. The Last Witchfinder springs instantly to mind.But the ones I feel are great so far outshine those I wish I had never wasted my time on that I continue to explore.Consider this particular exploration somewhere in between. Not as bad as the bad he has written, but no where near the best. And, moving outside the stricture of considering this a James Morrow work, it is still, just okay.The story is set in WWI and Dr. Caligari (of “The Cabinet Dr. Caligari” fame) runs an asylum that has amazing success. Into this world comes an artist who is hired to work with some of the inmates, using art as therapy. However, Dr. Caligari has plans beyond the asylum – a money-making scheme to help continue support of the asylum. In simple terms, he has created a work of art that, when viewed by the soldiers who walk by the giant painting, cause armies to be filled with blood lust. He is selling his service to everyone, and that service is causing the war to be even more horrible than it might have been on its own.The artist, a collection of the inmates, some who work in the asylum, and an inhabitant of a painting work together to thwart the plan.Sounds fun and interesting. And, sometimes, it is. But other times it seems bogged down in its plot (not an extensive one at only 184 pages) and the need to maintain the verisimilitude of WWI. At times, it was the literal “Can’t put it down” syndrome. The magic can be fun. And the concepts are interesting. But, in others, it was “I don’t want to pick this up.” The conversations become stilted in the attempt to maintain the feel of the times, and there are just portions where it all drags.It is not bad. It works as a pleasant, short read. (Did I mention 184 pages?) But it is nothing more than a trifle. And, at times, it is a trifle that bores.I would not dissuade anyone from reading it, but neither would I say run and get it. You won’t waste your time, but you will wonder if it might have been time better spent elsewhere.
    • 4/5
      I'm not entirely sure what to say about this book. I went in blind save for the blurb on the back cover. It's fascinating, especially for Modernist art fans. I'm not entirely sure if this is a book about madness or a book about art or perhaps something in between the two. It is set where in which he is working something secret to drive the war.The characters are memorable and the magic curious but fitting. There is also a nod to the book's predecessor film, [The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari], in the narrative but the two works are quite different.
    • 4/5
      James Morrow’s novella picks up Dr Caligari, the main character from the classic silent movie The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, and tell us about his next enterprise: an asylum in a small neutral country just as the beginning of the Great War.I loved the film, and I’ve also very much enjoyed this novella, which blends an entertaining and well written fictional story, with real First World War historical facts. And although a clear anti-war message pervades the book, the story is brilliant in itself, not a mere instrument in the service of the message. The book also deals with many other “serious” issues (art, psychology…), but the humor is present at all times, the characters are engaging and original and the plot is witty (although there were a couple of details I found a bit unbelievable). On the whole, a quick and highly enjoyable read.
    • 5/5
      ***This book was reviewed for the San Francisco and Seattle Book Reviews, and via NetgalleyThe Asylum of Dr Caligari by James Morrow, spun from the 1920s silent film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, is a commentary on duality- life and death, war and peace, science and art, reason and mysticism, sanity and insanity- and how things are often not as dualistic as first they seem, for they are connected. Like the yin-yang, there is always a bit of one in the totality of the other. Beyond that, it is an admonishment against war, the foolishness that starts it, and the lust that fuels it. A young artist, Francis Wyndham, sets off from America, headed to Europe to learn from the masters. Unfortunately, poor Francis cannot find a place as an apprentice, and he begins to need to consider focusing on a trade in order to survive. He is spared from brickmason’s schooling when he is unexpectedly offered a job working as an art therapist for Dr Caligari at his asylum in Weizenstaat. Caligari is a mesmerist and alienist with unconventional methods including sex therapy and heteropathy. Francis accepts and begins teaching four gifted 'lunatics’. On his initial tour, Francis is shown artwork done by his new students, which is held on display at a museum attached to the asylum. Shrouded in one section is a painting Dr Caligari has done. Francis asks about it and is pretty much told to mind his own business. Not only does Francis go back to see the picture, but he takes Ilona, one of his students, with him. What they find defies explanation. Using alchemy, Caligari has created a painting to arouse bloodlust in all who view it. As World War One looms on the horizon, Caligari begins to charge governments, and exposing soldiers to the painting, priming them for fighting. Francis and Ilona have to stop him, but how? Thankfully, Caligari isn't the only paint mystic around. Question is, can they pull off a peace painting to counter the lust for war?This is a satire for the ages, a skillful blending of the history of World War One, and the fantastical realm of alchemy and magic. There's so much going on in this book, philosophy and spiritual-wise. With Caligari, Francis, and Ilona, you have both Creator and Destroyer in each. The art they create can incite intense emotion, and it's a lesson that such power should be handled with care. Art, and creativity itself, in any form is a gift and a chance to give beauty back to the world. Abuse of that gift is tragic. Jedermann is a liminal guardian, and a psychopomp, in a quite literal way for Francis, and for countless soldiers in a more figurative fashion. The wry, tongue-in-cheek amusement of Morrow’s writing reminds me of reading Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal many moons ago (and reread a few years past). I'm not a huge fan of satire, but this tale is eminently readable. ?????
    • 4/5
      This is a weird surreal adventure at the start of WWI, where Art and Sorcery in a lunatic asylum are used both on the side of good and peace and evil and war.Dr. Caligari sells access to his masterpiece to the highest bidder. A masterpiece painting that compels its viewers into unbridled passion for war. Both sides of the building conflicts are eager to avail themselves of his services. Francis is an artist from America, who comes to the asylum to work as an art therapist. While there, he uncovers Caligari's plans and endeavors to stop him. With the help of his students, the Spider Queen of Ogygia, the Commander of an Alien Armada, a Grand Chessmaster, and several others, they construct an "antidote" painting to cause the viewer and equally unbridled passion for peace.Its funny, satirical, and poignant. Its a quick read, and I'm not doing it justice, but if you like good witty writing its definitely worth your time."'This morning I learned something marvelous. Never have I hoarded so precious a secret''Pray tell''If I tell, it won't be a secret. If you pray, it will be a waste of time'""Vita Brevis, ars longa" (Life is Short, Art is Forever - to paraphrase the latin)"Only God is flawless," said Ilona. "It's the first thing you'll notice about Him, if he ever gets round to existing"8/10S: 6/20/17 - 6/24/17 (5 Days)