The History of Sound: Stories

“I’ve never cared much about objects. […] Yet I still have that note David sent, asking me to come north. Still have all the notes he left me on the floor of his apartment. Still have the cigarette he rolled and forgot on the piano one night, and the box of matches from the pub where we used to meet.”

Lionel Worthing’s attachment to mementos surrounding his relationship with David captures The Clarifying Power of History. Lionel holds that he usually doesn’t care “much about objects,” but admits that objects related to David hold a different emotional resonance. For Lionel, “the notes,” “the cigarette,” and “the matches” are portals to the past and emblems of his and David’s love. The way he regards these memorabilia clarifies his response to the phonograph cylinders, which act as a passage to his and David’s history.

“How to put it? This type of sadness. Not nostalgia. Not grief. Just the obvious and sudden fact that my life looked an inch shorter than it could have been. That the best year really had come when I was twenty.”

Lionel’s emotional response to hearing David’s voice on the phonograph cylinders conveys The Universality of Love, Loss, and Longing. Decades have passed since Lionel and David were together and since David passed away. However, the cylinders reawaken Lionel’s unrequited love for his late lover, capturing the texture of “the best year” of his life. These aspects of Lionel’s emotional experience resonate throughout the collection, as all of Shattuck’s characters have similar encounters with love, loss, and longing.

“My mother might get sicker, though maybe not. My father would continue to not come back from the pond. […] The sheep would lamb. The seals would continue to stare at us from the waves. This might last another forty years. The only unpredictable parts of a life are what comes with war and bad health. That is my experience.”

Edwin Chase’s use of anaphora and parallel structure enacts the predictability of his life. Edwin feels stuck in his life on the farm with Laurel, in which every facet of his future feels mapped out and preordained.