The Hum of the World is an invitation to contemplate what would happen if we heard the world as attentively as we see it. Balancing big ideas, playful wit and lyrical prose, this imaginative volume identifies the role of sound in Western experience as the primary medium in which the presence and persistence of life acquires tangible form. The positive experience of aliveness is not merely in accord with sound, but inaccessible, even inconceivable, without it. Lawrence Kramer’s poetic book roves freely over music, media, language, philosophy, and science from the ancient world to the present, along the way revealing how life is apprehended through sounds ranging from pandemonium to the faint background hum of the world. This innovative meditation on auditory culture uncovers the knowledge and pleasure waiting when we learn that the world is alive with sound.
“A masterpiece.”—Michael Klein, author of Music and the Crises of the Modern Subject
“This book is a meditation on the ways in which sound both permeates life and mediates our experience of living. In distinct and poetic language, Kramer argues that the practice of meaning making is rooted in and swells out of sound.”—Nina Eidsheim, author of The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music
"The Hum of the World opens our ears to the primacy of sound. Dispelling the enduring myth that knowledge is inherently visual, it is a triumphant celebration of music and language as the forces that give shape to the world by dramatizing and interpreting its auditory substance. Kramer’s virtuosity as a prose writer reinforces this point: every sentence resonates with fresh understanding and aural acuity, gracefully voiced to the accompaniment of a discrete yet immense erudition. This book will change the way you listen to life." —Axel Englund, author of Still Songs: Music in and around the Poetry of Paul Celan
"The Hum of the World is a more-than-intriguing read and definitely one that will get you thinking about the role of sound within a cosmic context. . . . Recommended."
