If you somehow don’t have enough to worry about, I offer you this: it is possible, apparently, to have sudden onset deafness for no discernible reason. Such was the case for author Eliza Barry Callahan and the character in her debut novel The Hearing Test. For a year of their lives, they have difficulty hearing and face the fear of never hearing properly again.
In one powerful section, fictional Eliza spends evenings listening to music she wants to remember if her hearing loss is permanent. She “believed that the more [she] listened to these songs, the more clearly [she] would be able to replay them for [herself] in a future when [she] could no longer hear them” (87). As someone who has allowed music to be such a significant part of my life—and someone likely to blow out his ears at loud concerts—the passage seemed so sad and resonant. Callahan continues, “I limited what I listened to, worrying there might be a limit to what I could retain with specificity” (87). I’ve had that thought myself: how well can songs live in the heart of my memory? How well would I be able to replicate them if I never heard them again? The fact is, it would not go well. The following paragraph of Callahan’s novel reads:
But soon I found myself bored by the slim selection and the repetition and feared that this process of sonic tattooing might ruin the music itself. I no longer associated the songs with memories but rather the songs themselves became memories. I stopped listening to music altogether. The highest fidelity sound is in the head. (87)
I’ll put the novelty of the phrase “sonic tattooing” on pause for now to focus on the pain of this moment. I’ve framed it as sad because it resonates with me personally, but it’s also worth noting that the narrator of the book is a composer whose livelihood is connected to her ability to hear.
Beyond the central premise of the book, the plot is pretty thin. It is not event-driven, but more so a referential collage. Much of the book offers philosophical considerations of sound and silence, linguistic and literary considerations, references to composers’ works, summaries of movies, and so on. One passage offers a reflection on how the word “silence” works linguistically: “simple and unremarkable patterns around the word, such as that seeing, staring, hanging, or watching are often coupled with silence. That the adverb completely often precedes silent. That the verb fall often precedes silent. That the architecture of silence is the gaze. That silence is without transition. That silence is dressed as an injury” (31-32). Sometimes, the referentiality of the novel is alienating—namely when I do not have the same frame of reference. When Roland Barthes, Deleuze and Guattari, John Cage, and Virginia Woolf get shout-outs, though, I have the satisfaction of saying to myself, “Hey! I know that allusion!”. When I don’t know the references, Callahan’s descriptions are inconsistent in the detail they offer to invite readers like me into the experience. Especially since there are few plot events, the assemblage of allusions comes across alternatingly as sloppy and too convenient or cutesy (a nearby store called John’s Cages, for instance).
I will say, though, that one of Callahan’s references in particular was thematically fitting and deeply engrossing. Fictional Eliza has been alerted to the presence of “The Petersburg Popper. The Soviet Sonata. The Commie Contana,” a perpetual radio broadcast from Moscow. I had to double-check to make sure, but it actually exists. Known as “The Buzzer,” the transmission is a continuous buzz that is sometimes sprinkled with voice messages, bits of song, coded transmissions, etc. The parallel of the intentional buzz and the ongoing buzz in Eliza’s hearing is a really nice connection to explore, and Eliza reviews posts in a forum about the station that documents what people heard through the buzz. I find her descriptions haunting and beautiful, especially because reading about what other people heard, and everyone searching this buzz for meaning together—regardless of their ability or inability to hear—offers a depressing and tenuous kind of community. Also, the significance of the sound is out of reach for all those involved as an equalizer.
In terms of the style, I admit that for much of the book I found it a little lacking. The sentence structures seemed repetitive and a bit bland. Huge revelations are presented with the same linguistic flare as tying your shoes. That said, some moments really pop. There’s a scene in the latter part of the book where Eliza seems to have phone sex with her ex boyfriend’s ex girlfriend and the sentence-structure deteriorates in a really interesting way leading towards the, er, climax. There are also some lovely visuals that pepper the text. In one scene, she’s looking at outer space and comments on comets: “A wet white star dragged across a black sheet? A mistake—touched before dried?” (121). She remembers Virginia Woolf saying that the “gigantic cinema” should not play to a “perpetually empty house” (121). She then aligns herself with the house and says, “I saw the comet—a weak flashlight. God searching the basement” (121). Moments like that help give voice to the visual artist in Callahan.
There’s more than a touch of the philosophical of the book, too. Some of it really resonates with me, while other moments seem a little muddled or undercooked. For example, she gives a Heideggerian observation about how “the attempt to escape the frame only leads to the expansion of the frame. We end up drudging more of life back into the frame of art” (25). I also appreciated her commentary on misinterpretation: “I found clarity in misinterpretation. And I thought that our misinterpretations are perhaps the most individual and specific things we have” (54). I love the implications of that and I remember my own fair share of beloved misinterpretations. There’s a deep truth there that I hope Callahan opts to explore in other literary works. On the flip side of things, there are some more comments I’m more hesitant to praise. While I like them, when I pause to think about them I’m not entirely sure they work. For instance, the line I referenced earlier that “the architecture of silence is the gaze” has an appealing quality to it but if you try to think through the synesthesia doesn’t entirely land for me. There’s another part where a character philosophizes that “when you have no particular place to be, and you are in a foreign or unfamiliar place, you are actually moving around with the specific purpose of locating a place within yourself at which you may or may not arrive” (63). It feels true, but at the same time—is it too commonplace? And too clunky in its phrasing? I’m divided.
Overall, I think The Hearing Test is a good debut and Callahan is clearly learnèd in the discourse of sound and silence. The collage-like presentation of the book offers a snapshot of an experience more than a story. It’s a slice of life—essentially a year. Narratively, I feel like it would benefit from being a bit more constructed, which is weird for me to say because normally I love that unstructured stuff.
Happy reading!
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