In Pursuit of Silence - Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise

Zusatztext "Elegant and eloquent."— New York Times   "[A] genial and informative study of the noisiness of modern life."— The New Republic    “An adventure of profound listening.”— The New Yorker   “Fascinating.”— Salon "A global quest to find those who still value silence.”—NPR “Sometimes alarming and often charming, it sings the praises of quiet and reports the uncertain progress in the war against noise.”— The Dallas Morning News   “Compelling.”— Bookforum   "Smart... Silence is good for falling asleep, but Prochnik's attentive take on noise keeps us wide awake."— Publishers Weekly “Elegant and understated, this thoughtful look at rarely considered aspects of everyday life reveals an often unrecognized cost of modern living.— Booklist "A lucid, balanced appreciation of silence's solemn tonic."— Kirkus Reviews Informationen zum Autor George Prochnik Klappentext A brilliant, far-reaching exploration of the frontiers of noise and silence, and the growing war between them. Between iPods, music-blasting restaurants, earsplitting sports stadiums, and endless air and road traffic, the place for quiet in our lives grows smaller by the day . In Pursuit of Silence gives context to our increasingly desperate sense that noise pollution is, in a very real way, an environmental catastrophe. Traveling across the country and meeting and listening to a host of incredible characters, including doctors, neuroscientists, acoustical engineers, monks, activists, educators, marketers, and aggrieved citizens, George Prochnik examines why we began to be so loud as a society, and what it is that gets lost when we can no longer find quiet. Chapter One     Listening for the Unknown     On my second night in the monastery, I heard the silence. I was inside the church: a beautiful, vast chamber of limestone blocks that resemble lumpy oatmeal and were quarried from the Iowan earth by the monks themselves in the mid-nineteenth century. Themonks had finished compline, the last of the day's seven prayer services, and had filed off into the inner recesses of the monastery, where they would observe the Great Silence, speaking to no one until after mass the next morning. The last of the monks toleave had switched off the lights above the choir, and then the light over the lectern. Though the section of visitors' pews where I sat still had a little illumination, the body of the church was now in total blackness except for the faint flickering of avotive candle suspended high in the distance against the far wall. For the first quarter hour, a few worshippers remained on the benches around me.   Although I sat very quietly, I found my mind busy and loud. Mostly I was reflecting on the service I had just heard, which Brother Alberic, my gracious liaison to the world of the monastery, had described as a kind of lullaby. Compline is lovely, and Iwas frustrated that I had not been able to find it more profound. These weren't my prayers. I yearned only for more quiet. My thoughts were noisy enough that I half expected to see them break out of my skull and begin dancing a musical number up and down thewooden benches.   Soon the other worshippers departed and I was left alone. For a moment or two, my experience was of literal silence. Then, all at once, there came a ting, a tic, another tic, a tap, and a clang. The sounds came from all around the enormous dark church.They ranged from the verge of inaudibility to the violence of hammer blows; discrete chips of sound and reverberatory gonnngs. Out of nowhere, I was treated to a concert by the sound of heat in the pipes. It was a grand, slightly menacing sound that I had beenoblivious to not only during the prayer service but afterward in the din of my mental dithering. And it was worth that long opening p...

Product details

• Authors: George Prochnik
• Publisher: Anchor Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 05.04.2011
• EAN: 9780767931212
• ISBN: 978-0-7679-3121-2
• No. of pages: 352
• Dimensions: 135 mm x 205 mm x 20 mm
• Subjects: Guides > Health; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories