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Zero Decibels: The Quest for Absolute Silence
Have our noise-soaked lives driven us mad? And is absolute silence an impossible goal—or the one thing that can save us? A lively tale of one man’s quest to find the grail of total quiet.---
“ I don’t know at what point noise became intolerable for me,” George Michelsen Foy writes as he recalls standing on a subway platform in Manhattan, hands clamped firmly over his ears, face contorted in pain. But only then does Foy realize how overwhelmed he is by the city’s noise and vow to seek out absolute silence, if such an absence of sound can be discovered.
Foy begins his quest by carrying a pocket-sized decibel meter to measure sound levels in the areas he frequents most—the subway, the local café, different rooms of his apartment—as well as the places he visits that inform his search, including the Parisian catacombs, Joseph Pulitzer’s “silent vault,” the snowy expanses of the Berkshires, and a giant nickel mine in Canada, where he travels more than a mile underground to escape all human-made sound. Along the way, Foy experiments with noise-canceling headphones, floatation tanks, and silent meditation before he finally tackles a Minnesota laboratory’s anechoic chamber that the Guinness Book of World Records calls “the quietest place on earth,” and where no one has ever endured even forty-five minutes alone in its pitch-black interior before finding the silence intolerable.
Drawing on history, science, journalistic reportage, philosophy, religion, and personal memory, as well as conversations with experts in various fields whom he meets during his odyssey, Foy finds answers to his How does one define silence? Did human beings ever experience silence in their early history? What is the relationship between noise and space? What are the implications of silence and our need for it—physically, mentally, emotionally, politically? Does absolute silence
actually exist? If so, do we really want to hear it? And if we do hear it, what does it mean to us?
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 30 million Americans suffer from environment-related deafness in today’s digital age of pervasive sound and sensory overload. Roughly the same number suffer from tinnitus, a condition, also environmentally related, that makes silence impossible in even the quietest places. In this respect, Foy’s quest for silence represents more than a simple psychological inquiry; both his queries and his findings help to answer the question “How can we live saner, healthier lives today?”
Innovative, perceptive, and delightfully written, Zero Decibels will surely change how we perceive and appreciate the soundscape of our lives.
“ I don’t know at what point noise became intolerable for me,” George Michelsen Foy writes as he recalls standing on a subway platform in Manhattan, hands clamped firmly over his ears, face contorted in pain. But only then does Foy realize how overwhelmed he is by the city’s noise and vow to seek out absolute silence, if such an absence of sound can be discovered.
Foy begins his quest by carrying a pocket-sized decibel meter to measure sound levels in the areas he frequents most—the subway, the local café, different rooms of his apartment—as well as the places he visits that inform his search, including the Parisian catacombs, Joseph Pulitzer’s “silent vault,” the snowy expanses of the Berkshires, and a giant nickel mine in Canada, where he travels more than a mile underground to escape all human-made sound. Along the way, Foy experiments with noise-canceling headphones, floatation tanks, and silent meditation before he finally tackles a Minnesota laboratory’s anechoic chamber that the Guinness Book of World Records calls “the quietest place on earth,” and where no one has ever endured even forty-five minutes alone in its pitch-black interior before finding the silence intolerable.
Drawing on history, science, journalistic reportage, philosophy, religion, and personal memory, as well as conversations with experts in various fields whom he meets during his odyssey, Foy finds answers to his How does one define silence? Did human beings ever experience silence in their early history? What is the relationship between noise and space? What are the implications of silence and our need for it—physically, mentally, emotionally, politically? Does absolute silence
actually exist? If so, do we really want to hear it? And if we do hear it, what does it mean to us?
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 30 million Americans suffer from environment-related deafness in today’s digital age of pervasive sound and sensory overload. Roughly the same number suffer from tinnitus, a condition, also environmentally related, that makes silence impossible in even the quietest places. In this respect, Foy’s quest for silence represents more than a simple psychological inquiry; both his queries and his findings help to answer the question “How can we live saner, healthier lives today?”
Innovative, perceptive, and delightfully written, Zero Decibels will surely change how we perceive and appreciate the soundscape of our lives.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published May 18, 2010
11 people are currently reading
191 people want to read
About the author
George Michelsen Foy
6 books10 followersGEORGE MICHELSEN FOY is the author of ZERO DECIBELS: The Quest for Absolute Silence, and twelve critically acclaimed novels. He is the recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship in fiction. His articles, reviews, and stories have been published by Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Harper's, The New York Times, and Men's Journal, among others, and he has been an investigative reporter, writer, and/or editor for BusinessWeek, The International Herald Tribune, and The Cape Cod Register. He teaches creative writing at New York University and is married with two children. Foy divides his time between coastal Massachusetts and New York.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
August 8, 2015
A thought-provoking, extended meditation on the concept of silence in our obnoxiously noisy world, George Michelsen Foy’s ZERO DECIBELS: THE QUEST FOR ABSOLUTE SILENCE (Scribner, 2010, 180pp), is intellectual essaying at its best, pushing to comprehensiveness. I loved one riff on “the silence of the disappeared,” which evokes the ubi sunt motif and is prompted by visiting the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings:
“What did they say, those who disappeared, when the water was gone, the snow too deep, when the soldiers came; when they realized their children would also perish? What happned to the pleas of those tortured before dying, where are their words, what did they have to tell us, what happened to the timbre an tone of their individual voices? What sounds remain of the 2 million Armenians slaughtered by Ottomans, the 20 million Ukranians, kulaks, and dissidents murdered by Stalin’s Russia, the 20 million killed in Mao’s China, the 6 million Jews, the Romanians, gays, handicapped, leftists, exterminated by the Nazis? Where are the songs of those assassinated Bosnians, Serbs, Rwandans, Congolese, Cambodians; of the disappeared children in Uganda and Argentina? History is fat with thugs who with one slash of the sword, one burst of assault rifle, one flick of the bomb-release toggle, crush the intricate and fine, the sweet and sour tapestry of family life: the giggles of children, the stories of grandparents, the transports of sex, the kitchen gossip. Literate societies, when visited by catastrophe, at least leave some echo of their existence in text and image; but set against the domestic music of people going about their daily business, even this is as nothing.”
Another motif is his Thoreau-like complaint about “Coping with Overload”:
“…another form of hostile sound exists, the volume of which is not necessarily high, but that is pervasive as household dust. It is the noise of useless information. It is the constant background chatter of radios, TVs, iPods, stereos, video games, cell phone, podcasts, audio bites. It’s the marketing calls, the recorded come-ons, the loudspeakers at Logan Airport….”
He recommends something like mindfulness as a survival tactic:
“Most of us in Western societies live whether we want to or not amid loud and perpetual business. And that busyness without respite is driving us…both deaf and mad. Being able to halt the noise—stop the constant racket, shut down the TV, not look at a screen or at any other vehicle for unwanted information—has become in my mind a precondition for health, physical and especially mental. To preserve sanity in our daily lives we must disconnect ourselves at least once in a while from the array of hugely powerful mechanical sensors that keep our minds ‘extended’—wired into the limitless data streams, news bites, and telemetry that are both signal and lifeblood for the information society.”
The search for absolute silence takes him to the Parisian catacombs, a silent vault at Harvard, a nickel mine in Canada, and finally to a Minnesota laboratory’s anechoic chamber, “the quietest place on earth.” He comes to accept the impossibility of experiencing the absolute, given the noise of his own body, his life itself: “On some profound stratum the body knows that hearing is not only a tool for survival, it is a signal of life. To hear something is to be alive, to make sound is to live.”
Foy’s mind—and writing--is lively and engaging throughout, moving from fact to metaphor as he considers scientific data (he wields a decibel meter like a Geiger counter), history, philosophy, religion, and personal experience.
“What did they say, those who disappeared, when the water was gone, the snow too deep, when the soldiers came; when they realized their children would also perish? What happned to the pleas of those tortured before dying, where are their words, what did they have to tell us, what happened to the timbre an tone of their individual voices? What sounds remain of the 2 million Armenians slaughtered by Ottomans, the 20 million Ukranians, kulaks, and dissidents murdered by Stalin’s Russia, the 20 million killed in Mao’s China, the 6 million Jews, the Romanians, gays, handicapped, leftists, exterminated by the Nazis? Where are the songs of those assassinated Bosnians, Serbs, Rwandans, Congolese, Cambodians; of the disappeared children in Uganda and Argentina? History is fat with thugs who with one slash of the sword, one burst of assault rifle, one flick of the bomb-release toggle, crush the intricate and fine, the sweet and sour tapestry of family life: the giggles of children, the stories of grandparents, the transports of sex, the kitchen gossip. Literate societies, when visited by catastrophe, at least leave some echo of their existence in text and image; but set against the domestic music of people going about their daily business, even this is as nothing.”
Another motif is his Thoreau-like complaint about “Coping with Overload”:
“…another form of hostile sound exists, the volume of which is not necessarily high, but that is pervasive as household dust. It is the noise of useless information. It is the constant background chatter of radios, TVs, iPods, stereos, video games, cell phone, podcasts, audio bites. It’s the marketing calls, the recorded come-ons, the loudspeakers at Logan Airport….”
He recommends something like mindfulness as a survival tactic:
“Most of us in Western societies live whether we want to or not amid loud and perpetual business. And that busyness without respite is driving us…both deaf and mad. Being able to halt the noise—stop the constant racket, shut down the TV, not look at a screen or at any other vehicle for unwanted information—has become in my mind a precondition for health, physical and especially mental. To preserve sanity in our daily lives we must disconnect ourselves at least once in a while from the array of hugely powerful mechanical sensors that keep our minds ‘extended’—wired into the limitless data streams, news bites, and telemetry that are both signal and lifeblood for the information society.”
The search for absolute silence takes him to the Parisian catacombs, a silent vault at Harvard, a nickel mine in Canada, and finally to a Minnesota laboratory’s anechoic chamber, “the quietest place on earth.” He comes to accept the impossibility of experiencing the absolute, given the noise of his own body, his life itself: “On some profound stratum the body knows that hearing is not only a tool for survival, it is a signal of life. To hear something is to be alive, to make sound is to live.”
Foy’s mind—and writing--is lively and engaging throughout, moving from fact to metaphor as he considers scientific data (he wields a decibel meter like a Geiger counter), history, philosophy, religion, and personal experience.
March 14, 2022
Certainly worthy for some of the observations presented. Not a fan of the author's style, which can sometimes veer off point and even become self-indulgent: too much personal, tangential information that has no real bearing on the topic (I could not care less about his so-called fugginVolvo and the too frequent, almost diarrheal ruminations).
That said, the topic is compelling and the research thought-provoking — the main reason I stuck with it to the end.
The next book that I just started reading is The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want: A Book About Noise and it's comparatively a work of finer writing as the author stays focused on the story he's mapped; already the first ten pages feel tighter and more satisfying than most of the 180 pages of Foy's book.
That said, the topic is compelling and the research thought-provoking — the main reason I stuck with it to the end.
The next book that I just started reading is The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want: A Book About Noise and it's comparatively a work of finer writing as the author stays focused on the story he's mapped; already the first ten pages feel tighter and more satisfying than most of the 180 pages of Foy's book.
October 7, 2025
(I am shocked this book only has seventeen written reviews, wtf?)
I really enjoyed this. The writing was thoughtful and detailed in the right, weird, honest, places. Felt like taking a walk in the wintertime.
I’ve been overly fixated on sound since reading “The Great Animal Orchestra,” and this book again drove home the fact the world would be a better place if it was more quiet— and we would be better people if we listened more.
Silence is impossible. But quiet is buildable!
I really enjoyed this. The writing was thoughtful and detailed in the right, weird, honest, places. Felt like taking a walk in the wintertime.
I’ve been overly fixated on sound since reading “The Great Animal Orchestra,” and this book again drove home the fact the world would be a better place if it was more quiet— and we would be better people if we listened more.
Silence is impossible. But quiet is buildable!
Read
May 27, 2023The author mixes the quest for audible silence with the issue of too many sensory inputs and other kinds of noise we allow in our lives. Still much of it was interesting.
January 9, 2011
Here in the heart of peaceful Midwestern suburbia, I call them the loathsome threesome. While I must admit that I'm probably more easily annoyed by their obnoxious, strident clamor than most people, the leaf blower, the snow blower and the power lawn mower are all able to transform me into a complete grump, whenever my otherwise lovely neighbors haul them out for their paces. Fortunately, it's rare to hear them all on the same day, but each of them is particularly effective at destroying an otherwise perfectly peaceful morning or afternoon. It was with this curmudgeonly attitude that I approached novelist George Foy's new book, Zero Decibels: the Quest for Absolute Silence, hoping I'd finally found an ally in quietude.
You can read the rest of my review at Zero Decibels.
You can read the rest of my review at Zero Decibels.
October 31, 2010
This is a terrific book that I ordered from the library after hearing an interview with him on a NPR show (or maybe on CSPAN BookTV). The book is one of those most satisfying of non-fiction pieces: enough personal information to let us see some of what makes the author tick, good writing (some terrific prose, in fact, which may be why he teaches creative writing at NYU) and interesting reportage on what could be a dry topic.
If you’ve curiosity about the affects of noise in our world on humans (with a little bit of reference to animals — but just enough to make you feel awful for them), as well as a little history about noise, I’d recommend the book.
If you’re sound sensitive and wonder how to live in a noisy world, I’d still recommend it.
If you’ve curiosity about the affects of noise in our world on humans (with a little bit of reference to animals — but just enough to make you feel awful for them), as well as a little history about noise, I’d recommend the book.
If you’re sound sensitive and wonder how to live in a noisy world, I’d still recommend it.
September 19, 2011
Read this when I had a few hours home alone... Which would have been very quiet except that I ran the blasted dishwasher :-). Agree with other posters... The side trips into money problems, former girlfriends, and the "misery" of relatively gentrified Manhattan (kids in a fancy pants school, but the apartment is too small... Wife chooses to be SAHM, but loathes it.... Whines about the espresso "fees" of working using the free WiFi at a local coffeehouse - go to the library, dude! ... Then practically decides to "slum it" by moving.... to the "low rent" district.... of Cambridge MA??? Gimme a break!) win him a big Boo Hoo from me. But I did think the topic was fascinating - now I want a gadget to measure the dB in MY life!!
August 19, 2012
Odd mixture of non-fiction and voyage of self-discovery. Didn't work too well for me, in part because I didn't warm to the authorial main character, in part because it seemed a bit of a random walk (through the various dimensions of sound and also vaguely related topics that tickled the author's interest) and I like a bit more structure. Lots of interesting facts and some interesting thoughts, though, but strangely enough the best bit of the book for me was when he engaged in some analysis of silence in Hamlet and King Lear -- those few lines were tremendously insightful. I'd recommend to Foy to find a way to include much more literary criticism in his next non-fiction work.
February 6, 2011
I pulled this book off the shelf at the library the instant I saw it. More and more hypersensitive to noise myself, this author had to be a kindred spirit of sorts. I really enjoyed the first third of the book. My interest waned in the middle, and it picked back up again towards the end. Overall, great subject matter and some interesting research went into this book even if I was bored at times by the author's tendency to over philosophize.
March 6, 2011
English professor in creative writing writes a non-fiction book about his quest for some quiet in his life. A light mixture of science, philosophy, and history with an accurate description of the onslaught of sound that modern life gives us. Fun to read, a bit flowery at times. At 180 pages, it could have been a long magazine article. This book interested me because I've had tinnitus since 1999.
July 10, 2012
Reading this book was an amazing journey for someone like me, music lover and science aficionado. I've found myself covering my ears standing on the Broadway line subway platform (just the way the book starts) so I could picture everything George Foy was going through. It's intriguing and enlightening at the same time!
Absolutely loved it, makes you appreciate your ears a bit more, as well as each and every noise (or music, or noisy music) you happen to have around you.
Absolutely loved it, makes you appreciate your ears a bit more, as well as each and every noise (or music, or noisy music) you happen to have around you.
July 8, 2010
This book was unexpectedly good. If you are interested in exploring what "silence" means (or for that matter, how we define "sound") and its impact on our lives, you will be drawn into this book. Foy looks at sound/silence from a variety of aspects, pulling not only from personal experiences and scientific research but also from cultural practices and historical beliefs.
September 27, 2010
I'm not sure how much my feeling about this book is tempered by the mawkish New-York-woe-is-me writing style. I liked the topic a lot - I'm very interested in anything that talks about how I can shut down my godforsaken brain - and I do think he did a good job of pulling in topics from all over the place. But the style just didn't get it for me. A good library check out.
January 22, 2011
I am personally drawn to more and more silence as I age, so the author's drive to examine it is such depth was fascinating to me. It was simply and beautifully written without too many dry scientific facts and was made even more compelling by the inclusion of his personal story. Much of the content I feel will be with me as permenent knowledge.
March 25, 2012
such an awesome story (non-fic) of a guy who is so on the ball and going everywhere for the sake of decibels and silence. must read for sound freaks and mixolcologists entertainingly good read on a general science of sound.
June 28, 2010
I enjoyed this science book, or was it a memoir? Interesting thoughts on just what silence is, from a medical, historical, and personal basis.
September 16, 2010
I enjoyed reading this book. Took me a while to get through it because of all the noisy distractions around me. I learned though, that it is possible to find a quiet place.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews