The Perfect Sound

Garrett Hongo

$72

Hardback

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English

Pantheon
15 March 2022

Music

"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."

By: Garrett Hongo
Imprint: Pantheon
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 38mm
Weight: 986g
ISBN: 9780375425066
ISBN 10: 0375425063
Pages: 544
Publication Date: 15 March 2022
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

GARRETT HONGO was born in Volcano, Hawai'i, and grew up on the North Shore of O'ahu and in Los Angeles. His most recent books are Coral Road- Poems and The Mirror Diary- Selected Essays. A regular contributor to SoundStage! Ultra, Hongo lives in Eugene, Oregon, and is Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon.

Reviews for The Perfect Sound

Soulful . . . Hongo delivers a memorable memoir on reflection and artistry, as rendered through his audiophile tendencies . . . As he describes in lyrical, fervent passages, his penchant for spinning vinyl on cheap turntables would eventually become a love for elaborate equipment, amplifiers, speakers, and vacuum tubes . . . [A] paean to the power of music. -Publishers Weekly Music throbs in the background throughout this spirited memoir . . . Along the way, the author offers a history of the invention of the vacuum tube, amplifiers, and the various permutations of the phonograph. A memoir of self-discovery via homage to the richness of sound. -Kirkus Reviews Garrett Hongo is a master, but be advised: this memoir will have you spending hundreds of dollars on audio devices, and hours of delight and even awe as you read. It is not all about stereos-it is an aria of living, hearing, feeling, writing. Masterful. -Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The House of Broken Angels 'Exuberance is beauty,' says William Blake, and this is a truly exuberant book: exuberant about music, about language, about life. Read and drink in its spirit! -Mark Edmundson, author of Song of Ourselves: Walt Whitman and the Fight for Democracy