The History of Sound: Stories

In “Radiolab: ‘Singularities,’” Anna Mott’s search for the extinct great auk leads her on a journey toward hope and healing. Her immediate attachment to the idea of the great auk offers her a sense of possibility that she hasn’t felt in some time. Discovering the 1991 National Geographic photo of Will Hunt in turn catalyzes her trip to Mule Harbor, Newfoundland, and ultimately reminds her of The Universality of Love, Loss, and Longing. In her podcast conversation with Jad and Robert, Anna asserts that she didn’t initially understand why she was so moved by the great auk image when she originally encountered it. In retrospect, however, Anna identifies her conversation with Natalie and the life she subsequently established in Mule Harbor as explanations for the auk’s role in her story. Despite the seeming irrelevance of the great auk to Anna, the mysterious bird and its history teach Anna about pursuing happiness, letting go, and finding love. Life is full of surprises, the story implies, and if the individual opens herself to them she might learn from them.

Shattuck uses a fugitive form to inspire the short story’s narrative arc. He borrows the Radiolab podcast structure to lend Anna’s otherwise atypical story a neat structure and progression. In the context of the podcast episode, Anna is compelled to orally articulate the events of her life in a neat and concise manner. She first lays out the mystery at hand, then describes the steps she took to solve this mystery, and finally reflects on how the mystery influenced her as a person. This structure isn’t an authorial gimmick but a means of enacting Anna’s experience and the themes of her narrative: Just as the podcast grants a wide audience the opportunity to relate to Anna, Anna’s experience searching for the auk connects her with a lineage of people similarly affected by the bird. As Natalie says when she hears Anna’s story: “The bird gave [her] something” and “[l]ifted [her] up” the way it has many others before her (198). The bird is therefore symbolic of history and mystery, possibility and hope all at once. To Anna and the many others impacted by the great auk, encountering the bird feels like encountering the impossible—a once-dead creature resurrected in the past and offering hope. This phenomenon suggests that the individual can be awakened to life’s beauty via her encounters with seeming instances of magic. While love, loss, and longing are fixtures of the human experience, so too are beauty, wonder, and discovery.