Pafko at the Wall, Don DeLillo
Pafko at the Wall, Don DeLillo
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Pafko at the Wall
A Novella

Author: Don DeLillo

Narrator: Billy Crudup, Zachary Levi, Tony Shalhoub

Unabridged: 1 hr 59 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/30/2021


Synopsis

"There's a long drive.
It's gonna be.
I believe.
The Giants win the pennant.
The Giants win the pennant.
The Giants win the pennant.
The Giants win the pennant."
-- Russ Hodges, October 3, 1951
On the fiftieth anniversary of "The Shot Heard Round the World," Don DeLillo reassembles in fiction the larger-than-life characters who on October 3, 1951, witnessed Bobby Thomson's pennant-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth inning. Jackie Gleason is razzing Toots Shor in Leo Durocher's box seats; J. Edgar Hoover, basking in Sinatra's celebrity, is about to be told that the Russians have tested an atomic bomb; and Russ Hodges, raw-throated and excitable, announces the game -- the Giants and the Dodgers at the Polo Grounds in New York. DeLillo's transcendent account of one of the iconic events of the twentieth century is a masterpiece of American sportswriting.

About Don DeLillo

Don DeLillo is the author of seventeen novels including Underworld, Zero K, Libra, and White Noise, and the story collection The Angel Esmeralda, a finalist for the Story Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He has also written plays and essays. He has won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Saul Bellow Award, the Jerusalem Prize for his complete body of work, the William Dean Howells Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and, in 2025, the Academy's Gold Medal for Fiction. DeLillo has been awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction and the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Andrew

I’ve read a couple of DeLillo novels and found them barely penetrable. There’s something about the way he strings sentences together that confuses me. Each sentence seems perfectly formed, but when he links them together I just seem to get lost. It took me three attempts to read Falling Man and when......more

Goodreads review by Chris

Pafko at the Wall is a novella fictokn tale about the October 3, 1951 game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants, where the famous "Shot Heard Round the World" happened, and those who attended the game. You have well-known names, such as Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, J. Edgar Hoover; and......more


Quotes

"One couldn't imagine three more American-sounding voices than Billy Crudup's, Zachary Levi's, and Tony Shalhoub's as they recount one of the most iconic events in American sports history—Bobby Thomson's clutch home run that won the National League pennant for the New York Giants in the bottom of the ninth on October 3, 1951. Our trio captures all the nostalgia, gentle satire, and historic reimaginings of Don DeLillo's beloved work, originally published in 1997 and recorded live at the 92nd Street Y in 2019."