Silence: Object Lessons - Softcover

John Biguenet

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1628921420 ISBN 13: 9781628921427

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015

Synopsis

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

What is silence? In a series of short meditations, novelist and playwright John Biguenet considers silence as a servant of power, as a lie, as a punishment, as the voice of God, as a terrorist s final weapon, as a luxury good, as the reason for torture in short, as an object we both do and do not recognize. Concluding with the prospects for its future in a world burgeoning with noise, Biguenet asks whether we should desire or fear silence or if it is even ours to choose.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in the The Atlantic.

About this title

About the Author

John Biguenet is Robert Hunter Distinguished University Professor at Loyola University, New Orleans, USA. His publications include Oyster (Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers, 2002), The Torturer s Apprentice: Stories (Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers, 2001), Theories of Translation: An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida (co-editor with Rainer Schulte, University of Chicago Press, 1992), and Foreign Fictions (Random House/Vintage, 1978). He served as the first guest columnist of The New York Times (2005-2006). He has received an O. Henry Award for short fiction, and his nonfiction, poetry, fiction and plays have appeared in such magazines as Granta, Esquire, Oxford American, and Playboy. He has twice been elected president of the American Literary Translators Association.

From the Back Cover

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

What is silence? In a series of short meditations, novelist and playwright John Biguenet considers silence as a servant of power, as a lie, as a punishment, as the voice of God, as a terrorist's final weapon, as a luxury good, as the reason for torture-in short, as an object we both do and do not recognize. Concluding with the prospects for its future in a world burgeoning with noise, Biguenet asks whether we should desire or fear silence-or if it is even ours to choose.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1628921420
• ISBN 13: 9781628921427
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160