George Prochnik

Everything we forget about our own lives was really condemned to oblivion by an inner instinct long ago. - Stefan Zweig

It is easy to lose oneself in this text. The Impossible Exile is well written and avoids annotation all the while projecting perosnal experiences into isolated threads. The author explores the three principal locations of Zweig's post-Anschluss exile: England, the US and Brazil. Prochnik details the broader context of the wartime European refugee, the obstacles and the reception. The letters and memoirs of Brecht, Bruno Walter, Hermann Broch and others are mined. That is a delightful touch on such a sorrowful subject. Interspersed are photographs of Zweig, his second wife Lotte and the locales of their means of escape.

There is a measure of literary criticism of Zweig's work, especially his autobiography. Such is fine but it is the study of the dispossessed's plight which make this such an engrossing endeavor.
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Prochnik does an ok job of balancing science, narrative, and journalism. i like, too, the fact that he seamlessly blends the human psyche's desire for calming, life-affirming, deeply meaningful experiences that can be obtained through silence without referring to them in New Agey woo terminology or even overtly calling them "mystical" or "religious." the science behind how silence and noise affect human behavior inside and out is the topic here and it does include valid discussion of what happens when we unplug ourselves from the everyday cacophony that is the reality for most modern humans.

only one part of the book did i skip: that about "boom cars." they are vehicles that have been transformed by their owners into rolling subwoofers that can generate up to 180dB of sound. this part of the book seemed to drag on and on because he wanted to tell stories and give dialogue to every character he met when he was researching this. he did make some good points about perception of noise pollution and that not every boom car owner was disrespectful with their use of extreme volume. it also allowed him to discuss the legislative aspect of noise control: how far do we go in curbing other people's sound habits?

i appreciated the book because of what he said about there being a reason that monks and ascetics of all kinds throughout history have trudged off into the desert -for the quiet: they "come for a radical confrontation with ourselves. Silence is for bumping into yourself. That's why monks pursue it. And that's also why people can't get into a car without turning the radio on, or walk into a room without switching on a television. They seek to avoid that confrontation."

the book is obviously a work of journalism but Prochnik does provide source citations and some notes in the back but he does not, however, provide number notation directly to those end notes. there's also an index which is one of the marks of a decently crafted piece of scholarship.

well worth the read and even if, like me, you've done lots of research into this kind of thing, the breadth of Prochnik's research reveals quite a bit of insight into aspects of sound and silence not usually thought of.… (más)