John Biguenet

Silence (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

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.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury eBooks US
• Seitenzahl: 160
• Erscheinungstermin: 24. September 2015
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781628921441
• Artikelnr.: 48420965

Autorenporträt

John Biguenet is the Robert Hunter Distinguished University Professor at Loyola University New Orleans, USA. He has published ten books, including Oyster, a novel, and The Torturer's Apprentice: Stories, as well as The Rising Water Trilogy: Plays and Silence (Bloomsbury, 2015). Six of his plays have been produced nationally and internationally. An O. Henry Award winner for short fiction and past president of the American Literary Translators Association, he worked as a student intern on the first issue of New Orleans Review in 1968 and edited the magazine from 1980 to 1992.

Inhaltsangabe

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

Rezensionen

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 and author, most recently, of The Ghost of the Mary Celeste

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.