The Enormous Room

E.E. Cummings

May 2015 · Recorded Books · Narrated by Luis Moreno

About this audiobook

"Of all the work by young men who have sprung up since 1920 one book survives-The Enormous Room by E. E. Cummings."-F. Scott Fitzgerald The most notable work of fiction from our most beloved modernist poet, The Enormous Room was one of the greatest-yet still not fully recognized- American literary works to emerge out of World War I. Drawing on E. E. Cummings's experiences in France as a volunteer ambulance driver, this novel takes us through a series of mishaps that led to the poet's being arrested for treason and imprisoned. Out of this trauma Cummings produced a work like no other-a story of oppression and injustice told with his characteristic linguistic energy and unflappable exuberance, which celebrates the spirit of the individual and offers a brave and brilliant opposition in the face of the inhumanity of war. Illustrated with drawings Cummings made while imprisoned in France and featuring an illuminating new introduction by Susan Cheever, this reissued edition offers a unique and multifaceted lens onto the inner life of the poet in his youth and demands recognition by a twenty-first-century readership.

About the author

A Harvard University graduate, e e cummings lived in Greenwich Village and spent his summers on a farm in New Hampshire. He was born on October 14, 1894, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While working for the American Red Cross in France in 1917, cummings was mistakenly imprisoned for several months. This experience resulted in the publication of a novel, The Enormous Room (1922). Although he went on to write other prose, it is for his poetry that he is best known. He also published plays, wrote a ballet, and was a respected painter. He was awarded many honors for his work, including the 1958 Bollingen Prize for poetry and the National Book Award in 1955. Although he used many techniques to stress his meaning, he wrote about the traditional subjects of love, nature, and the corrupting influence of materialism. cummings delivered lectures while at Harvard in 1952; in that same year, he was awarded an honorary seat as a guest professor. He also wrote the delightful commentaries for the 50 photographs in Adventures in Value by his wife, Marion Morehouse, a fine and sensitive photographer cummings died of a stroke on September 3, 1962, at the age of 67 in North Conway, New Hampshire at the Memorial Hospital. His cremated remains were buried in Forest Hills Cemetery and Crematory in Boston.