Silence (Object Lessons)

Author(s): BIGUENET,JOHN

Psychology

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.


What is silence? In a series of short meditations, novelist and playwright John Biguenet considers silence as a servant of power, as a lie, as a punishment, as the voice of God, as a terrorist's final weapon, as a luxury good, as the reason for torture-in short, as an object we both do and do not recognize. Concluding with the prospects for its future in a world burgeoning with noise, Biguenet asks whether we should desire or fear silence-or if it is even ours to choose.


Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

Contents: I What Is Silence? II Selling Silence Seeking Silence Silence Versus Solitude Voluntary Silences III The Representation of Silence Silent Reading Silence on Stage The Unspeakable IV The Silenced Moment The Silence of Dolls Silencing Silence and Secrets V The Future of Silence

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When I realized I was making notes on memorable passages in Silence several times a page, I knew I'd found the book I've been needing to read. John Biguenet's extended meditation on silence is provocative, witty, moving, and truly golden.  - Valerie Martin, Orange Prize-winning novelist.
One virtue of silence is that it enables us to contemplate a work like John Biguenet's ever-fascinating new book. One virtue of his book-one of many-is that it does not go overboard in treating silence as a virtue. - Garret Keizer, author.
John Biguenet gives us a surprisingly boisterous tour of silence, stillness, and calm. Biguenet takes a space that looks at first glance like it is empty, as if it were, actually, defined by its emptiness, and he fills it with his erudition, his wisdom, his warmth, and his wit. We are lucky to spend this time rapt at his feet, to take all of this in. - Jessa Crispin, editor-in-chief Booklust
What makes [Silence] stand out is the way this silence retreats, fails to materialize as such. The book unfolds as a failed or botched detective story: the search for silence, for a state that defies the human. Written in the form of a memoir or notes to and from one self to others... [Silence] ends as [Biguenet] leafs through a National Geographic, reads an article on noise pollution at sea and its catastrophic effects on the social life of whales. 'What is the future of silence,' he asks? 'More lonely whales,' he fears. It's enough to make you never want to speak again. -- Julian Yates Los Angeles Review of Books
Biguenet examines how we define silence, how we seek silence, how we sell silence, and how silence relates to things such as reading, the stage, secrets, and even dolls. He talks about how true silence is virtually unachievable in the modern world and how people become disoriented in pure silence. ... At the end of Silence, Biguenet contemplates the future. As he writes amidst noise and commotion, the "hum" of the modern world as he describes it, he read a National Geographic article about whales and how passing ships disrupt their ability to communicate with one another. Their 'silence' is broken. Thus, we are left to consider how silence or lack thereof impacts not only us but the entire ecosystem around us. It's a poignant reminder that in the modern world, with its hectic pace and ever present noise, sometimes what we most need is the one thing we can't seem to get. - Frank Valish, Under the Radar

John Biguenet is Robert Hunter Distinguished University Professor at Loyola University, New Orleans, USA. His publications include Oyster (Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers, 2002), The Torturer's Apprentice: Stories (Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers, 2001), Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida (co-editor with Rainer Schulte, University of Chicago Press, 1992), and Foreign Fictions (Random House/Vintage, 1978). He served as the first guest columnist of The New York Times (2005-2006). He has received an O. Henry Award for short fiction, and his nonfiction, poetry, fiction and plays have appeared in such magazines as Granta, Esquire, Oxford American, and Playboy. He has twice been elected president of the American Literary Translators Association.

General Fields

  • : 9781628921427
  • : Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
  • : Bloomsbury Academic USA
  • : 0.149
  • : November 2015
  • : 165mm X 120mm X 15mm
  • : United States
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : BIGUENET,JOHN
  • : Paperback
  • : 15-Nov
  • : 306.01
  • : 152