After finishing Ben Shattuck’s masterful new book of short stories, “The History of Sound” I did something I hadn’t done for more than two decades, I started reading it over again from the beginning.
I read “The History of Sound” twice because while each of the dozen stories can be read with significant pleasure individually, the stories are also braided together into a larger whole, as characters and events in one story return in an entirely different context in another, and then another. You would not mistake “The History of Sound” for a novel in terms of construction, but as a whole, it is very much an entire, immersive world. I wanted to take a second journey through that world, armed with what I’d experienced the first time to better appreciate these connections.
The collection opens with the title story, told by Lionel, a man in the twilight of his life looking back on an adventure just after World War I when he was on break from his studies in vocal performance at a music conservatory. He meets David in a bar near the conservatory campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when David performs a folk song Lionel had heard done by his father in his native Kentucky. He is intrigued by this young man who knows the music of his home.
Lionel sings for David, and the attraction between them is impossible to resist. David disappears after one night together, but reestablishes contact years later, inviting Lionel on a summer adventure, where they will travel through rural Maine, collecting recordings of regional folk songs on wax cylinders. The experience is strange and intense, and becomes the defining weeks of Lionel’s now quite long life. The wax cylinders have recently appeared, unbidden at his door. He wonders what they will have to tell him now that he is well past 80 years old.
We eventually achieve additional closure on Lionel’s life in the final story of the collection “Origin Stories,” after experiencing numerous adventures along the way. The stories are all set along the eastern seaboard, Massachusetts to Maine, and span time from the 1800s to present day. Each story tends to have a direct handoff to the one following, as between “August in the Forest,” set in contemporary time, in which the characters visit the site of an old logging camp where a mysterious massacre happened, and “The Journal of Thomas Thurber,” a tense work of horror, in which we’re told the story of that massacre from the perspective of one of its participants.
These connections are fun, and thematically rich, but they are really just the cherry on top of the individual stories themselves, each of which is perfectly executed. Shattuck even manages to work in a variety of forms, including a clever interstitial tale, “Radiolab: ‘Singularities’” which is told in the form of a script from the popular public radio show, deftly imitating the particular, (and to my mind, sometimes annoying) quirks of the show.
This is one of those weeks where I am frustrated by the confined space of this column because I could wax on about the virtues of this book for many hundreds more words. Shattuck’s connection to the region he writes about is palpable on the page. The emotions evoked, primarily around the difficulty of finding meaningful connections to others, land with a combination of great force and quiet tenderness.
I know that some readers are hesitant to invest themselves in short stories, finding the relationship too fleeting when compared to a full-length novel, but “The History of Sound” is worth your time.
You may even read it twice.
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “Prophet Song” by Paul Lynch
2. “Nobody’s Fool” by Richard Russo
3. “Lucy by the Sea” by Elizabeth Strout
4. “Absolution” by Alice McDermott
5. “Eyeless in Gaza” by Aldous Huxley
— Sandra P., Lake Forest
I’m looking for something that’s a close character study that also has its share of interesting atmosphere: “The Quiet American” by Graham Greene.
1. “Trust” by Hernan Diaz
2. “Wellness” by Nathan Hill
3. “Leave the World Behind” by Rumaan Alam
4. “Lincoln in the Bardo” by George Saunders
5. “If Cats Disappeared from the World” by Genki Kawamura
— Anne W., DeKalb
It’s been a while since I recommended this novel, but it’s truly an enduring book that should continue to be read for many years, “The Known World” by Edward P. Jones.
1. “North Woods” by Daniel Mason
2. “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver
3. “The Giver of Stars” by Jojo Moyes
4. “Erasure” by Percival Everett
5. “Horse” by Geraldine Brooks
— Nancy A., Normal
“Want,” by Lynn Steger Strong, remains one of the best novels I know for illuminating the challenges of living in the present age. I think it’s a good fit for Nancy.
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.