The History of Sound: Stories

In the collection’s title short story, “The History of Sound,” when protagonist and first-person narrator Lionel receives an unexpected piece of mail, he is transported into the past and compelled to remember his lost love. The “box of twenty-five wax phonograph cylinders” is a symbol of Lionel’s irretrievable former lover (1), and receiving the box grants Lionel sudden access to this long-dead era of his life. The cylinders usher him into a protracted bout of remembrance that contributes to the collection’s exploration of The Universality of Love, Loss, and Longing. Although he’s an elderly man in the narrative present, Lionel isn’t impervious to the lingering effects of his youthful sorrow and longing. Over the decades since parting with and losing David, Lionel’s grief has faded. However, the phonograph cylinders resurrect Lionel’s vulnerabilities and compel him to reflect on how the past has dictated his life in the present.

The short story begins and ends with episodes from Lionel’s life in the present, a narrative frame that enacts how the individual’s current reality is a mere container for his past experiences. At the story’s start, Lionel remarks that although he has devoted much of his life to writing about folk music, he’s “never written about that summer with David” (1). This admission catalyzes the subsequent temporal shift into the past. The entirety of Lionel’s career has been dictated by the love of folk music David instilled in him. At the same time, Lionel hasn’t attributed this passion to his and David’s affair. Instead, he’s felt compelled to bury his and David’s romance just like the phonograph cylinders have been buried in a stranger’s house for decades. He has compartmentalized this facet of his life to stave off sorrow and despair, but despite this survival mechanism, the heart of Lionel’s life and work has always been David. The narrative structure mirrors and authenticates this notion, with the arc of Lionel and David’s love affair appearing sandwiched between scenes from Lionel’s solitary life in the present. The short story therefore suggests that no matter how hard the individual tries to deny the past, the experiences of his youth are essential to his identity.

Playing David’s cylinders reignites Lionel’s grief while offering him insight into his and David’s story, developing the theme of The Clarifying Power of History. The closing scene where Lionel reflects on the phonograph invention while listening to David’s voice affects a melancholy mood. Lionel appreciates that “Edison hadn’t thought to use the phonograph for music” but for “recording messages,” but he confesses that hearing David’s voice from the proverbial beyond isn’t “a comfort. Only a reminder of the regret [he] thought [he’d] let go” (25). David’s voice reawakens Lionel’s buried personal history, forcing him into a confrontation with the love, loss, and longing that he’s been stifling since he was a young man. The past, the short story suggests, may be painful to encounter, but it is a valuable gateway to understanding universal facets of the human experience, and of understanding oneself.