02028cam a2200217 4500 100368726 TxAuBib 20110420120000.0 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||und|u 3609 LibriVox TxAuBib De Quincey, Thomas. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater [LibriVox] / De Quincey, Thomas. 16 sound files : digital, MP3 or Ogg files. This is an online free audiobook and is compatible in most MP3 and iPod players. The text for this LibriVox audiobook came from public-domain text. “Thou hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtle, and mighty Opium!”Though apparently presenting the reader with a collage of poignant memories, temporal digressions and random anecdotes, the Confessions is a work of immense sophistication and certainly one of the most impressive and influential of all autobiographies. The work is of great appeal to the contemporary reader, displaying a nervous (postmodern?) self-awareness, a spiralling obsession with the enigmas of its own composition and significance. De Quincey may be said to scrutinise his life, somewhat feverishly, in an effort to fix his own identity.The title seems to promise a graphic exposure of horrors; these passages do not make up a large part of the whole. The circumstances of its hasty composition sets up the work as a lucrative piece of sensational journalism, albeit published in a more intellectually respectable organ – the London Magazine – than are today’s tawdry exercises in tabloid self-exposure. What makes the book technically remarkable is its use of a majestic neoclassical style applied to a very romantic species of confessional writing - self-reflexive but always reaching out to the Reader. (Summary by Martin Geeson.) In MP3 and Ogg vorbis format. Electronic audiobooks. LibriVox.org. http://librivox.org/bookfeeds-v2/confessions-of-an-english-opium-eater-by-thomas-de-quincey.xml