Audiobook9 hours
Silence: A Social History of One of the Least Understood Elements of Our Lives
Written by Jane Brox
Narrated by Andrea Gallo
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this audiobook
Another "dazzling epic" from the author of Brilliant, exploring an overlooked yet elemental force in our lives-silence-from contemporary Cistercian monks to an extraordinary 19th-century prison. *Lev Grossman, Time The author of the "dazzling epic" (Time) Brilliant delivers an indelible view of the ways silence affects those who seek it and those who have it imposed upon them. Through her original, intertwined histories of the penitentiary and the monastery, Jane Brox illuminates the many ways silence is far more complex than any absolute; how it has influenced ideas of the self, soul, and society. Brox traces its place as a transformative power in the monastic world from Medieval Europe to the very public life of twentieth century monk Thomas Merton, whose love for silence deepened even as he faced his obligation to speak out against war. This fascinating history of ideas also explores the influence the monastic cell had on one of society's darkest experiments in silence: Eastern State Penitentiary. Conceived of by one of the Founding Fathers and built on the outskirts of Philadelphia, the penitentiary's early promulgators imagined redemption in imposed isolation, but they badly misapprehended silence's dangers. Finally, Brox's rich exploration of silence's complex and competing meanings leads us to imagine how we might navigate our own relationship with silence today, for the transformation it has always promised, in our own lives.
Author
Jane Brox
JANE BROX is the author of Brilliant, Clearing Land, Five Thousand Days Like This One, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Here and Nowhere Else, which received the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award. She lives in Maine.
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Reviews for Silence
Rating: 3.8 out of 5 stars
4/5
5 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What do prisons and monasteries have in common? This is the unexpected and unusual premise of Jane Brox’s Silence. She recreates the history of prisons in England and America, and puts the reader in the place of a prisoner, to feel the punishment – endless years of it. Then she crosses over to Christian monasteries, showing why they exist at all, how they spread, and the extra severe burden placed on women in their own monasteries. US prisons were designed to be hellish. Prisoners were hooded on their way in so they could not know where they were or the layout of the building. They stayed in their tiny cells, with little or no light, and nothing to read but the bible. Rehabilitation was a 20th century notion, all but abandoned today, as private sector prisons use inmates as slave labor, and have deals with their states to maintain them at least 90% full. So it is in the interest of both state and operator to keep the bodies coming back for more. Today, however, prisoners live together, eat together, and talk. Brox does not venture into this noisier state of affairs.Instead, she focuses on Thomas Merton, a monk with a pencil and a typewriter. He wrote books on monastic life in the middle of the 20th century that not only became bestsellers, but were smuggled into prisons where inmates could put their own lives into perspective. This is a neat link of the two unlikely axes of this book. A disproportionate amount of Silence is handed over to him and his thoughts.There is a large difference between the silence of prisons and that of monasteries. For all their silence, monasteries are communities of likeminded men, who choose to be there. They have daily routines that fill their lives. They sing hymns together. They just don’t chat. They signal a lot instead. That is very different from 19th century prisons, where men were sent to be punished. They were not allowed to make any noise, on pain of further punishment, had no community or even contact with other prisoners, and did not even know who their neighbors were. They were totally isolated. With little or nothing to do, they could and did go stir-crazy. Sending them back into complex and noisy society was an additional cruelty foisted upon them. That is the power of silence as punishment.Brox does not delve much into the psyches of those who thrill to silence – those who go for weeks and months without uttering a word – and don’t even notice it. Think of lighthouse keepers, forest fire watchers, seal hunters, desert dwellers. As long as they are absorbed by their environment and their tasks within it, they are not just at peace, but flourish. She briefly mentions Thoreau, not much of a hermit, as he could still hear the churchbells from town.Brox notes how a life of silence enhances the ability to hear and perceive. People hear details in a silent environment that are totally lost in a noisy one. When I first moved to New York City, I could discern more than twenty sources of sound just out the front door. Soon, it just became noise, and then, not even noticed. We lose a tremendous amount of processing in noise; there is much to be said for a life in a silent environment. On the other hand, forced, unwanted silence is killer for a social animal. Brox tries to bridge that gap, though she doesn’t lock it down.David Wineberg