The History of Sound: Stories

“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. The language and syntax he employs capture the inevitability of his experience while foreshadowing the surprising discoveries he’ll make about his mother via his coming encounter with her personal history.

“In my father’s long disappearances, I improved my recipes. Under the storms battering the house, cooking was the one thing I could control. Everything changes for the better with heat and time: onions go sweet with butter; potatoes soften.”

Edwin’s use of figurative language conveys his reliance on cooking as a form of control. Edwin has experienced upheaval from a young age, particularly through his father’s mental illness and death, and his mother’s grief. He uses cooking as a way to navigate these complex experiences. Cooking is an art, too, and Edwin’s regard for the practice reiterates the collection’s overarching portrayal of art as a tool for navigating the human experience.

“‘Does that ever happen to you?’ Mallory said. ‘That you see a painting that seems made for you? Anyway, it started me on his trail, and we just mounted an exhibit of Snowe’s work at the museum.’”

In “The Silver Clip,” both Mallory and the first-person narrator’s regard for Will Snowe’s songbird painting convey the theme of Art as a Form of Expression and Communication. The painting was personal to Will, but it speaks to Mallory and the narrator decades later. Despite the passage of time, this piece of artwork communicates ineffable aspects of all the characters’ experiences.

“I have afternoon tea in here. I like smelling the paints. Looking at the mess he made. It makes him feel more present. I don’t understand why everybody doesn’t leave a little messy room of the dead. It’s been a great balm.”

Mallory’s attachment to her late husband’s studio captures her reliance on the past to withstand the present. She doesn’t try to erase her husband’s presence after his death and instead basks in his space to preserve her connection with him. In this way, her marital history is a balm for her grief in the present.

“She never imagined the time would come when it would be necessary to say anything more than that. If she had told him about her past, she was sure he would have rescinded his proposal. By keeping the truth from him, she was protecting Harold from his own bad judgment.”

Hope’s attempts to hide her personal history from her husband convey her fear of letting the past impact her present life. She convinces herself that she is overcoming her fraught past by withholding it, and this quote ends with the rationalization that she’s protecting her husband. In reality, her history is embedded in the present, despite her avoidance. The passage thus reiterates the clarifying power of history.

“Maybe, she thought only much later, if she had known more men, she would have seen his hand on her knee as a warning, and not, as she thought then, a prize that she was finally being awarded for her troubles.”

Hope uses a reflective tone when musing on her former relationship with Sam. In the past, she thought her and Sam’s relationship was “a prize” for all “her troubles.” In retrospect, she understands that her youth and inexperience colored this dynamic. Her retrospective musings capture how Hope has changed over time.

“She didn’t know how to tell him what had happened yesterday. […] In a way, nothing had happened. But her past had come so close to her life that it might as well have arrived. She needed to tell Harold who she thought he’d been standing by, there in front of the songbirds.”

Hope proves to be a dynamic character by the end of “Graft.” She’s spent years hiding from her past, but her encounter with the boy at the museum makes her realize that she can never fully erase this era of her life. Her decision to tell Harold about her past conveys her evolution and reiterates the clarifying power of history.

“He’d stayed away from home, too, years back, when he and Ian would get into an argument nearly every evening. Home became the most uncomfortable place to be. Mark invented work that kept him late, volunteer for delivery jobs far away.”

Mark’s reflective tone conveys his emotional distress. He is observing Julia out with friends, an image that he juxtaposes with his own avoidance habits in the past. To combat his entrapment and powerlessness, he tried to stay away from home—much like Julia is doing in the present. The passage captures Mark’s ongoing attempts to navigate his complex home life and seemingly impossible circumstances with Ian.

“Maybe the trees would live. Some, at least. The Golden Curls willow would probably die. The Attaryi Fullmoon Japanese maple might be alright if it got enough light. In a century, if the trees resisted hurricanes and moths and blight and the incoming sea, some might get as tall as the native ones, breaking up through the canopy. And maybe someone would walk down here, wonder what they were looking at, what this ring of trees within the forest meant.”

The trees that Mark plants at the end of “Tundra Swan” are symbolic of hope. Trees are archetypes of growth and new life. Although Ian has disappeared and Mark is powerless to reconnect with him, his decision to plant the trees implies that he still believes in the possibility of reconciliation and renewal. Imagining a world where someone else is walking amongst his trees helps him withstand the present.

“Sitting with her, something unfamiliar happened to August. He felt sad. Or troubled is maybe the word. Over the next few days, his mind reached something like a meltdown. He began to feel bitter toward her. Distant.”

August’s unrequited feelings for Elizabeth reiterate the theme of the universality of love, loss, and longing. While August doesn’t know the other characters in the collection, he has similar emotions as they do. Like Lionel, David, Edwin, and Hope, for example, August feels sadness, distress, bitterness, and confusion in his intimate relationships.

“Maybe he had betrayed her. And then, he thought, what would that story look like? The story of him reading his fiancée a story about a century ago, in which the fiancée recognized herself from a decade earlier?”

August’s musings on the potential repercussions of publishing his short story capture the complex Ethics of Storytelling. August admits that his unflattering portrayal of Elizabeth might be a betrayal, but he also believes that the story is his to tell. His use of questions implies that he’s still wrestling with these ethical conundrums and still wants to justify his right to render reality how he chooses.

“I can’t spend all night on what I cannot let you read, and so I’ll return to the task at hand: an account for Isabelle! From her husband, Thomas. The facts of his Wintery & Absent Life.”

Thomas Thurber’s personal journal is an example of art as a form of expression and communication. Thomas doesn’t explicitly identify as an artist, but his personal writings are a way for him to translate his experience into a new form. His journal is also a historical account of his “Wintery & Absent Life” that would otherwise be inaccessible to coming generations.

“I found my journal not under my pillow as I usually leave it, but on the covers. I asked Winslow if he’d been reading it. He first pretended to be asleep. I shook him. I said I’d just seen him standing up at the bunk, and my journal wasn’t where I left it, and it was likely that he was reading it. He rolled over, […] saying that he’d been looking for his cap, which I could see was plainly on the bed-hook.”

Thomas’s protectiveness of his journal furthers the collection’s explorations of the ethics of storytelling. Thomas feels justified in recording Winslow’s story in his journal, but Winslow feels threatened by Thomas’s accounting—specifically, his decision to write about James’s murder. This event is indeed part of Thomas’s time in the woods but recording the tale might lead to Winslow’s conviction. These dynamics capture the possible implications of co-opting another person’s story without their permission.

“It’s a picture of a woman—of Nora Hunt, Will’s wife—at the bow of the fishing dory, pointing to the rocks. She has this huge smile. She looks ecstatic, like she’s on a roller coaster or something. Really happy.”

Nora’s ecstatic response to hunting the great auk conveys the bird’s symbolic resonance. Although Nora is exhibiting signs of early onset dementia, looking for the auk with Will reinvigorates her passion for life. The auk offers her the same renewed sense of hope and possibility that it does Will and Anna Mott, highlighting the universality of love, loss, and longing.

“But it came so easy. It made me think, why was I so interested in the great auk story to begin with? Why do certain stories grab your attention? If I believed in a higher power or whatever, I’d say the auk was leading me to this life, to Luke and my new home. It does feel, in a way, like fate.”

Anna’s musings on her regard for the great auk suggest that life’s mysteries can offer the individual joy. For Anna, the great auk reawakens her to life’s beauty and surprises. She never finds the bird, but the auk incidentally leads her to her fate in Newfoundland. Her encounter with history (in the form of the auk photograph) clarifies her journey in the present.

“Instead, on my walks alone, I wondered if my life would always be this narrow and difficult, and then, inevitably, would look out to Marble Island, and think of the auk in the attic that had lived there once, a century earlier. Point being, the auk started to add some volume to my thoughts, a distraction.”

Will Hunt is overwhelmed by despair until he rediscovers the taxidermied great auk in his attic. On its surface, the stuffed auk is a useless artifact from his great-great-grandfather’s life. For Will, however, the auk offers a pathway to redemption. Once he excavates and photographs the auk, he reconnects with his wife and rediscovers a sense of joy.

“It’s hard to describe why those sentences meant so much, at the time. Only, imagine that your spouse hasn’t asked you to do anything with them for half a year, hasn’t shown any interest in leaving the house for months, hasn’t looked at you with a kind of soft smile that reminded you of how she looked at you years earlier.”

Will decides to embrace the mythical story of the great auk for both his and Nora’s benefit. His decision not to tell Nora the truth about the taxidermied bird is his way of using storytelling as a form of escape. He tries to justify this decision in this passage, musings that capture his longing to preserve his and Nora’s life together as long as possible.

“She loved the meeting. She loved Karl’s expressions and calm and tranquility and certainty. The Bible, Karl explained, was composed of geometry of verse—numbers assigned to words—that could be translated into notes and then melodies that Karl had written down. Layered, the notes created harmonies. The harmonies were transmissions to Heaven.”

The story that Karl Dietzen tells his followers about eternity offers Caroline Thatcher hope and redemption. Karl is manipulating his congregants, but he offers Caroline a sense of possibility. Her use of diction like “tranquility,” “certainty,” “layered,” and “transmissions” captures her heartfelt belief in Karl’s story. The moment captures the ethical complexities of storytelling.

“The discord he anticipates with Caroline when he returns to the house to tell her that Emma won’t stay—and the discomfort he feels in thinking of the blanket on the ground of the shed—are only pebbles on the mountain one climbs for a view of the divine.”

Philip chooses to embrace Karl’s manipulative story about eternity over protecting Emma because Karl’s promise offers him hope. In the present, Philip’s life is defined by “discord” and “discomfort.” However, in the future reality that Karl has promised, these troubles will fade away and mean nothing. The passage reiterates how stories can offer the individual a sense of possibility and deliverance.

“I cried every night for a week when Mary went away to boarding school, and I blamed my parents for sending her. I later discovered it was Mary’s idea to go, and that our grandmother paid for it. In retrospect, it wasn’t surprising Mary wanted to leave home.”

Cal Owens’s emotional reflections on his and Mary’s childhood reiterate the universality of love, loss, and longing. In the introduction to his book, Cal creates narrative connections between his personal life and the Dietzens’ story. These parallels suggest that Cal understands what Karl’s followers might have felt because he experienced similarly complex emotions when he lost Mary as a boy.

“It was a place where you could go, that you would very much see if only you took the right path. Or, for that matter, it was as real a place as the snow-dusted mountains of Idaho, the elevated, euphoric escape far from home.”

Cal’s musings on eternity and the afterlife present storytelling as a form of escape and hope by representing it as a place. He encourages his readers not to judge Karl’s followers, arguing that Karl’s story helped them survive their harrowing frontier circumstances. Cal’s point of view speaks to all of Shattuck’s characters’ relationships with art and history—stories bind them together and offer them insight.

“I think every generation thinks the one before them had more interesting lives. It’s a function of escapism—nostalgia. That your own life would be better if only you lived in the year…fill in the blank.”

Lionel’s musings on the past complicate Shattuck’s overarching explorations of the clarifying power of history. The past, Lionel avers, is a temporal realm that each generation uses to escape the present. The past might not in fact have been better than the present but regarding it with nostalgia is a human tendency and a survival mechanism.