Published on May 26, 2010

The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want: A Book About Noise by Garret Keizer; published by PublicAffairs; New York; 2010, 384 pages; $27.95 in hardback.

reviewed by Joseph Gresser

Garret Keizer of Sutton is not inclined to be quiet about his dislike for noise.  Mr. Keizer is a thoughtful man who writes graceful prose, but his warnings about the perils of an increasingly loud world thunder over 250 pages of his new book.

He writes that his concern for quiet was instilled in him by his father, who insisted that his son respect his hardworking neighbors’ need for sleep.  That concern for the worker’s need for a peaceful environment pervades Mr. Keizer’s book and distinguishes it from the sort of environmental writing that concerns itself with the desire of wealthy people to enjoy their leisure in a pristine environment.

Mr. Keizer suggests that poorer neighborhoods aren’t noisy because poor people are inclined to be raucous, but rather that people who would prefer to live in quieter surroundings can only afford housing in areas that richer people find intolerably noisy.

Imposing sound on unwilling ears is a form of oppression, Mr. Keizer says.

“It is possible to silence the oppressed but not to oppress them silently.  Subjugation must always make a sound,” he writes.

Prisons, he says, are not loud by happenstance, although, he asks, if society believes that criminals are deserving of a 24-hour-a-day diet of noise, why it imposes the same penalty on corrections offices who are doing society’s bidding?

One form of noise that has Mr. Keizer’s full approval is the noise oppressed people make when they struggle for freedom.  But he’s careful to distinguish such use of noise from the easy idea that all unwanted noise is an act of resistance.

Mr. Keizer writes, “If at times I have seemed to take a reactionary, peevish view of noise, it is partly because I despise the shell game that substitutes ‘transgressive’ displays of acting out for acts of disciplined resistance.”

In fact, Mr. Keizer does occasionally sound like a common scold, which generates a certain resistance to his arguments.  But his frank recognition of that tendency in himself, as well as his awareness of the ironic nature of an investigation of noise that includes transatlantic jet flights, makes his book more than just bearable, but enjoyable.

Mr. Keizer deploys an impressive erudition on a journey that carries the reader around the globe and throughout history.  He investigates London street life, which once featured street musicians who sought out places that required silence, which was available for a price.  Genghis Kahn rides through these pages, too, borne on a cloud of gunpowder, used for its terrifying sound, rather than to propel cannonballs.

Mr. Keizer is not a simple person, and his book does not follow a straight path.  Occasionally, he’s surprised by his discoveries, such as when he speaks with an anti-noise activist in the Netherlands.

He’s surprised when the activist rejects his belief that a person who wishes to make noise deserves less consideration than the person who wishes to be free of that sound.

“In the Netherlands, the starting point is that everyone is equal,” the woman explained to the startled Mr. Keizer.

Mr. Keizer never does accept that proposition.  Although he confesses to a love for the Rolling Stones, John Coltrane, and Bob Dylan, he makes it clear that he does not want to hear those sounds from someone else’s sound system.

After 250 pages of argument, which includes explanations of how different cities and nations have created legislation to regulate noise, and before 100 pages of footnotes, glossary and resource listings, Mr. Keizer provides a four-page list of suggestions on how to deal with sound disputes between neighbors.

Like the entire book, the list is carefully thought out and humane.  Anyone who wonders how to get by in this loud world would do well to find a quiet refuge and read what Mr. Keizer has to say about the subject.