杏吧原创

TICK. Tock. Tick. I would do a much better job reviewing books if the clock in my office didn鈥檛 thump out the seconds like a crazed drummer. The dog鈥檚 tail whacks the floor. The floor creaks. How does anyone expect me to write in the midst of this racket?

It doesn鈥檛 surprise me that many of my fellow writers share my fantasies of a golden bubble of silence. Why else do we have writer鈥檚 retreats, tucked into sheltering forests or beside pastoral streams (where, frankly, the water gurgles damn noisily)?

Three new books embrace this silence-is-golden theme. George Prochnik鈥檚 In Pursuit of Silence and George Michael Foy鈥檚 Zero Decibels focus on hunting for the perfect hush. In The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want, Garret Keizer takes another route, critically surveying the cacophony of our industrial world.

Keizer鈥檚 is probably the most realistic approach because 鈥� as becomes obvious 鈥� books about silence inevitably turn into books about noise. As both Prochnik and Foy quickly discover, quiet is an elusive goal in our surround-sound environment. (Must my husband have the television blaring at this moment?)

Foy becomes so obsessed with the constant roar of life around him that he begins to think of the sound as something almost alive, the rumbling exhale of a great creature, 鈥渢he monster-breath鈥�. He buys an audiometer, which measures noise in decibels. Zero decibels refers to the tiniest sound audible to healthy human ears, an infinitesimal notch above silence. The sound of your own breath in a quiet room is about 30 dB; the hum of a refrigerator averages above 50. Subway trains register in the 90s. The scale refers to the pressure of sound waves on the ears, with rising numbers indicating a logarithmic increase. On the decibel scale, Foy notes, a jet engine at 120 dB generates a trillion times more sound-wave pressure than one of those fleeting whispers at 0 dB.

Foy obsessively measures the sounds of daily life as he searches for his zero-decibel moment. Eventually, he resorts to spending time in a sensory deprivation tank. Prochnik also tries sensory deprivation, and discovers that with no distraction he can hear the sound of saliva swooshing in his mouth. In further pursuit of quiet, Prochnik goes on to investigate noise-control regulations and soundproofing technologies.

My favourite part of Prochnik鈥檚 journey is the time he spends at a Trappist monastery in Iowa, tucked away in a landscape of gentle hills and small farms. It allows him to ponder the idea that 鈥渟ome things we cannot put into words are yet resoundingly real鈥�, and captures the author鈥檚 belief that if we can find a way to listen we may eventually hear the voice of our better selves.

Foy鈥檚 book is edgier, jazzier. He has an elegant way with description 鈥� lakes are 鈥渢he colour of Parker ink鈥� and rocks rise from the ground 鈥渓ike the back of a surfacing whale鈥�. But his perspective is darker. When he visits the famously taciturn Lakota Indians, for instance, he finds them not so much beautifully silent but culturally crushed, left with nothing to say.

Keizer, on the other hand, likes the idea of a joyful noise. He watches two young boys poised to roar off on all-terrain vehicles and feels a leap of happiness. 鈥淚 wanted them and their noise to exist forever.鈥� But the occasional tribute to rowdy children aside, he is no noise lover either.

For Keizer, the real noise is the noise of industry, and noise pollution and industrial pollution walk arm in arm. 鈥淭he history of noise in this book is in many ways an implicit history of fossil fuels,鈥� he notes. Industrialisation has left us with a decibel-blasted lifestyle that doctors link to depression and rage. People have killed their neighbours for refusing to turn off the stereo.

鈥淚ndustrialisation has left us in a decibel-blasted lifestyle that doctors link to depression and rage鈥�

And that鈥檚 what really ties these three books together. It鈥檚 not just any noise that makes us crazy, it鈥檚 our noise 鈥� our amplified sound systems, our revving engines, the whole exasperating, jangling loudness of modern life.

So, these writers agree, if there is no perfect quiet, it wouldn鈥檛 hurt us all to turn it down a little, respect our neighbours鈥� need for occasional peace and find a little ourselves. And now, if you鈥檒l excuse me, I鈥檓 taking the battery out of the clock and asking my husband to turn down that movie. Otherwise I don鈥檛 know how anyone expects me to finish this review.