A ROAR of an Audiobook: Twenty Narrators Exemplify Hollywood Culture, Exploring the Complexities of Life and Death in “ROAR: Roger Orr: American Master, the Oral Biography”
Tony Lyons, president and publisher of Skyhorse Publishing, announced today that the audiobook for ROAR: Roger Orr: American Master, the Oral Biography is “one of the most ambitious and unique audiobooks in history.”
Bruce Wagner, the legendary chronicler of a Hollywood that rivals Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County or the imaginings of Nathanael West, has written a towering novel of the life of Roger Orr (“ROAR“), a world-famous film director, actor, and dermatologist. The book is in the form of an imaginary oral history, comparable only to Jean Stein’s and George Plimpton’s classics of the genre (Edie and Capote respectively), and the narration for the audiobook further exemplifies this motif.
Available now on Audible, the ROAR audiobook includes narration from twenty actors, many reading from their own entries in the novel, to collectively “personate” more than 400 lines of dialogue within the book: Stephen Fry does Gore Vidal and Francis Bacon, both of whom he knew in real life. Wallace Shawn plays himself, as does Griffin Dunne (also voicing his father, Dominick Dunne), Billie Lourd (herself and the voice of her mother, Carrie Fisher), Graydon Carter, and Beverly D‘Angelo. Others in the cast are Marc Maron (as Roar/Roger Orr); Dana Delany; the brilliant comedians Kate Berlant (as Caitlyn Jenner) and John Early; Jordan Firstman (Elon Musk); Hollywood biographer Sam Wasson (as himself); Kevin Nealon, Ed Begley Jr., Lisa Edelstein, Jennifer Grey, Kelly Lynch, and Jamie Rose.
Bringing the novel to life in a chorus of voices raised in celebration of a man who never existed, the ROAR audiobook is a theatrical companion piece to its source material that, by its end, a singular voice in itself, matchless in the epic song that it sings.
“With over 400 speaking parts of all colors and genders, the audiobook is an epic eulogy that memorializes Roger Orr, a complex, towering figure,” states Bruce Wagner. “Friends, family, critics, enemies, lovers, and strangers all say their piece, and in doing so they create an enormous tapestry that, in the form of an oral history, is a deeply emotional experience for the listener.”
About Skyhorse Publishing
Skyhorse Publishing was launched in September 2006 by Tony Lyons, former president and publisher of the Lyons Press. The company has had fifty-six New York Times bestsellers and has over 10,000 titles in print. Through its twenty imprints, Skyhorse publishes an eclectic and maverick list of titles. Its imprints cover everything from nature, sports, country living, history, reference, travel, humor, health, art, business, philosophy, religion, current events, politics, investigative and conspiracy, to fiction, literary nonfiction, science fiction, fantasy, and young adult and children’s literature. Skyhorse is distributed by Simon & Schuster in the U.S. and abroad.
Learn more at:Â www.skyhorsepublishing.com
