Send him (or her, but him for the rest of this review since the author of this book is a male) out to the big world to discover things.ģ. Find a grumpy New Yorker who doesn't like something.Ģ. They feel like boilerplate books that can be churned out at will with this formula.ġ. They feel like magazine pieces that just won't end. It also made me think about why I generally do not like most non-fiction books.
This book is entertaining and it made me think. But then there are pretty silly philosophical ramblings that sort of sound like the thoughts of a stoned undergrad or the rambling musings by a car stereo enthusiast that doesn't sound all that different from some embarrassing things I wrote in high school notebooks that the author elevates to the level of metaphysical truths.
When the book deals with straight reporting it is pretty interesting, although it doesn't feel anymore in depth than say an article in Harpers. Noise is something that needs to be thought of for various reasons, most of which this book gives some coverage too. I'm not exactly sure that this book needed to be written. I don't know what I expected from this book. I don't notice most of those noises most of the time, which is good because they are all pretty fucking annoying to hear. At he end of my block is the elevated subway, the elevated LIRR which passes right below the subway, and I'm right directly under one of the incoming flight paths of LaGuardia, which is about a mile or so from my apartment, so planes fly in mighty low over my house. I do live in what I once read in a "Trifecta of Noise". Not that I put a huge premium on my silence. I mentioned this to Karen a few months ago and she told me that this is what psychos do. Most of the time I'm home this is the case.
#RADIO SILENCE URBAN DICTIONARY TV#
My cat is making an adorable little snoring / purring sound though, which I probably wouldn't be noticing if I had my TV on. No music playing, I'm not talking to myself. I generally sit most of the time in my apartment with no background noise, well for example right now there is a garbage truck making a beeeeeepppp beeeeeeppppp noise, and now a plane, and some engine noise off in the distance and noises like that which are almost always there, but there is no sounds being made to entertain or distract me. I think that there is a whole lot of useless bullshit being said and noises being made. Not, Eh!, the very friendly goodreader, but, Eh. He shows us the benefits of decluttering our sonic world.Īs Prochnik travels across the United States and overseas, we meet a rich host of characters: an idealistic architect who is pioneering a new kind of silent architecture in collaboration with the Deaf community at Gallaudet University a special operations soldier in Afghanistan (and former guitarist with Nirvana) who places silence at the heart of survival in war a sound designer for shopping malls who ensures that the stores we visit never stop their auditory seductions and a group of commuters who successfully revolted against piped-in music in Grand Central Station.Ī brilliant, far-reaching exploration of the frontiers of noise and silence, and the growing war between them, In Pursuit of Silence is an important book that will appeal to fans of Michael Pollan and Daniel Gilbert.Įh. Listening to 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.
In Pursuit of Silence gives context to our increasingly desperate sense that noise pollution is, in a very real way, an environmental catastrophe.
More than money, power, and even happiness, silence has become the most precious-and dwindling-commodity of our modern world.īetween 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.