Audiobooks by Jerry Stahl

Nein, Nein, Nein!: One Man's Tale of Depression, Psychic Torment, and a Bus Tour of the Holocaust

A guided group tour to concentration camps in Poland and Germany allows Stahl to confront personal and historical demons with both despair and humor. In September 2016, Jerry Stahl was feeling nervous on the eve of a two-week trip across Poland and Germany. But it was not just the stops at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau that gave him anxiety. It was the fact that he would be traveling with two dozen strangers, by bus. In a tour group. And he was not a tour-group kind of guy. The decision to visit Holocaust-world did not come easy. Stahl's lifelong depression at an all-time high, his career and personal life at an all-time low, he had the idea to go on a trip where the despair he was feeling—out-of-control sadness, regret, and fear, not just for himself, but for our entire country—would be appropriate. And where was despair more appropriate than the land of the Six Million? Seamlessly weaving global and personal history, through the lens of Stahl's own bent perspective, Nein, Nein, Nein! stands out as a triumph of strange-o reporting, a tale that takes us from gang polkas to tour-rash to the truly disturbing snack bar at Auschwitz. Strap in for a raw, surreal, and redemptively hilarious trip. Get on the bus.

Jerry Stahl (Author), Jerry Stahl (Narrator)

Audiobook

Permanent Midnight: A Memoir (20th Anniversary Edition)

“An extraordinary accomplishment. . . . A remarkable book that will be of great value to people who feel isolated, alienated and overwhelmed by the circumstances of their lives.”—Hubert Selby, Jr., author of Last Exit to Brooklyn “[Stahl] is a better-than-Burroughs virtuoso.”—Thomas Mallon, The New Yorker “Original, appalling, indelible picture of a man trying to swim and drown at the same time. Stahl has nerve, heart, a language of his own and a ghastly, riotous humor.”—Tobias Wolff, author of This Boy’s Life “Permanent Midnight is one of the most harrowing and toughest accounts ever written in this century about what it means to be a junkie in America, making Burroughs look dated and Kerouac appear as the nose-thumbing adolescent he was.”—Booklist A searing confessional infused with the darkest humor, Permanent Midnight chronicles the opiated abyss of a Hollywood screenwriter and his formidable climb into sobriety. Made into a major motion picture starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, Permanent Midnight is revered by critics and an ever-growing cult of devoted readers as one of the most compelling contemporary memoirs. Music © 2015 by Joe Cardamone

Jerry Stahl (Author), Jerry Stahl, Scott Merriman (Narrator)

Audiobook

Bad Sex on Speed: A Novel

Bad Sex On Speed is a savage, careening, hyper-real nightmare of a novel, taking us to the depths of Amphetamine America. Told with no concession to traditional narrative, in the voices of those in the grips and on the fringes, the stories that emerge are at once devastating, hysterical, and—perhaps most terrifying of all—going on all around you, all the time. Stahl digs deep into the psyche of the most demented and dispossessed among us, returning with a vision so unsparing that those not prepared to experience the screaming depths of speed psychosis up close and on the page should back slowly away and return to their lives unscathed.

Jerry Stahl (Author), Jerry Stahl (Narrator)

Audiobook

OG (Old Guy) Dad: Weird Shit Happens When You Don't Die Young

Old Guy Dad recounts the adventures of a man who, in the autumn of his years—or at least the pre-autumn—discovers his girlfriend is pregnant. He is going to be a father. Again. Only this time he wants to do it right: no heroin, plenty of low-back pain. A collection of celebrated columns from The Rumpus with new material and never-before-told tales, OG Dad finds Jerry Stahl fighting a terminal disease—not to mention mortality, sleeplessness, and the soul-crushing weirdness of preschool drop-offs with parents half his age. Square is the last frontier.

Jerry Stahl (Author), Alexander Cendese (Narrator)

Audiobook

Happy Mutant Baby Pills: A Novel

Lloyd has a particular set of skills. He writes the small print for prescription drugs, marital aids, and incontinence products. The clients present him with a list of possible side effects. His job is "to recite and minimize",sometimes by just saying them really fast and other times by finding the language that can render them acceptable. The results are ingenious. The methods diabolical. Lloyd has a habit, too. He cops smack during coffee breaks at his new job writing copy for Christian Swingles, an online dating service for the faithful. He finds a precarious balance between hackwork and heroin until he encounters Nora, a mysterious and troubled young woman, a Sylvia Plath with tattoos and implants, who asks for his help. Lloyd falls swiftly in love, but Nora bestows her affections at a cost. Before Lloyd clears his head from the fog of romance, he finds himself complicit in Nora's grand scheme to horrify the world and exact revenge on those who poison the populace in order to sell them the cure. Jerry Stahl is the author of the narcotic memoir Permanent Midnight and Perv,a Love Story, both Los Angeles Times bestsellers, as well as the acclaimed novels Pain Killers, Plainclothes Naked, and I, Fatty. He has written extensively for film and television.

Jerry Stahl (Author), Peter Ganim (Narrator)

Audiobook