The Perfect Sound by Garrett Hongo

The Perfect Sound by Garrett Hongo

A poet's audio obsession, from collecting his earliest vinyl to his quest for the ideal vacuum tubes. A captivating book that "ingeniously mixes personal memoir with cultural history and offers us an indispensable guide for the search of acoustic truth" (Yunte Huang, author of Charlie Chan).

Garrett Hongo's passion for audio dates back to the Empire 398 turntable his father paired with a Dynakit tube amplifier in their modest tract home in Los Angeles in the early 1960s. But his adult quest begins in the CD-changer era, as he seeks out speakers and amps both powerful and refined enough to honor the top notes of the greatest opera sopranos. In recounting this search, he describes a journey of identity where meaning, fulfillment, and even liberation were often most available to him through music and its astonishingly varied delivery systems.
 
Hongo writes about the sound of surf being his first music as a kid in Hawai'i, about doo-wop and soul reaching out to him while growing up among Black and Asian classmates in L.A., about Rilke and Joni Mitchell as the twin poets of his adolescence, and about feeling the pulse of John Coltrane's jazz and the rhythmic chords of Billy Joel's piano from his car radio while driving the freeways as a young man trying to become a poet.
 
Journeying further, he visits devoted collectors of decades-old audio gear as well as designers of the latest tube equipment, listens to sublime arias performed at La Scala, hears a ghostly lute at the grave of English Romantic poet John Keats in Rome, drinks in wisdom from blues musicians and a diversity of poetic elders while turning his ear toward the memory-rich strains of the music that has shaped him: Hawaiian steel guitar and canefield songs; Bach and the Band; Mingus, Puccini, and Duke Ellington. And in the decades-long process of perfecting his stereo setup, Hongo also discovers his own now-celebrated poetic voice.

Garrett Hongo was born in Volcano, Hawai'i, lived as a child in Kahuku on O'ahu, and grew up thereafter in Los Angeles. He is the author of two previous collections of poetry, three anthologies, and Volcano: A Memoir of Hawai'i. His poems and essays have appeared in The Kenyon Review, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. He has been the recipient of several awards, including fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. He lives in Eugene, Oregon, and teaches at the University of Oregon, where he is Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780375425066
ISBN 10	0375425063
Title	The Perfect Sound
Author	Garrett Hongo
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2022-02-22
Number of pages	544
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.