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Living Comfortably Behind a Wall of Sound
ELLA, my 16-year-old daughter, walked into the kitchen the other day and asked if I had remembered to transfer $40 to her checking account.
I did not reply.
“Don’t even try to engage with her while she’s ‘reading,’ ” my husband warned Ella, sarcastically making air quotes as he said the word reading. He then added, “She can’t hear a thing when she’s wearing those earbuds.”
“How do you know?” Ella asked.
“I just asked her if she knew where I left my sunglasses and she didn’t respond,” he said.
The same thought occurred to them simultaneously: Was I faking?
I smiled beatifically, pointed to my earbuds and shrugged. Then I waved to them, as if they were tiny figures on a distant horizon, old acquaintances I would love to talk to if our paths should one day cross.
Or not. I kind of liked living apart from these people even while sitting in the same room.
Of course, this was not the outcome I had envisioned three days earlier, when I began an experiment on whether I could finally read without reading.
Don’t laugh. Not reading is something we may have to get used to sooner than you think. Consider, for instance, that two days ago Audible.com, the company that already sells digitized versions of more than 40,000 different book, magazine and newspaper titles, started selling (for $19.95) an audio version of the first serial thriller novel by best-selling writers to originate as an audio download instead as a paper book.
In other words, you can only listen to “The Chopin Manuscript.” More hear-only books like this one — which was written by 15 authors, and narrated by the actor Alfred Molina — are in the pipeline; Audible.com has moved into a new facility with recording studios and plans to create more original content. “This is part of an evolution,” said James Pearson, a spokesman.
My own evolution from reading to listening had a slightly different motivation: frustration. Every time I try to read, whether it was late at night in bed or in the afternoon at the library or at 6:45 a.m. at the kitchen table, somebody appears at my shoulder to interrupt.
I also vowed to evolve by limiting my intake of words for a week to audio versions (of everything from my morning newspapers to various novels that sat forlorn on my bedside table). I might even take a chapter or two of “The Chopin Manuscript” while I was at it.
“No cheating,” my husband said the first morning, shielding the newspaper headlines from my gaze as I headed to my computer.
I figured it would be a cinch to get started because, thanks to my husband’s addiction to gadgets, we had about 10 billion iPods lying around.
At Audible.com, I found the weekday digest versions of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and downloaded them to my computer. Next I had to decide which of our many, many iPods to copy them onto.
“None of those will work,” my husband said, glancing up briefly when I showed him a selection that my oldest daughter had left behind when she left for college.
“Why not?” I asked.
“That one is too heavy to use when you go running,” he said. He also whistled in appreciation at one so old it was “probably the original model.”
Once again, I had that sinking feeling that he had strong-armed me into agreeing to buy yet another unnecessary gadget.
After a morning with no news and after spending $214.42 for a new mint green iPod nano, I laced on sneakers and headed out to run while listening to two novels (“Swann’s Way” by Marcel Proust and “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger).
I had high hopes that the books would distract me during the awful, uphill part of my four-mile loop, the stretch when I limp past homes whose residents would surely call 911 if they happened to see me.
In fact, I did get totally wrapped up in the unusual first chapter of “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” as the protagonist and her husband meet in a library for what appears to be the first time, but then she reveals she has known him since she was 6, although she’s never seen him looking this young. He has no memory of her.
As I focused on the puzzle of time travel, instead of being propelled uphill, I found myself walking. I was paying attention to the story.
Under the circumstances, I decided against risking the Proust.
The next morning, I tried the news again. But as I listened to the 53-minute digest version the day’s report, my family kept interrupting. While I could hear in one ear an analysis of the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy (“very cautious about giving in to what the markets want”), in the other I couldn’t block out, “Can you sign this?”
“Here’s the second story,” the soothing narrator said.
Second story? How would I ever get to the features sections?
That afternoon, as I walked home from the market carrying groceries and wearing the iPod — I was deep in Chapter 4 and completely addicted to time travel — I had a eureka moment. I realized that nobody in the store had spoken to me, not my neighbor in line next to me, not even Barbara who checked me out in Lane 1.
Then it hit me. I hadn’t made eye contact with anyone. Were earbuds and a vacant look all it took to get left alone?
Yes. By Day 3, for the most part my family was talking around me. These people didn’t respect reading. But in the oversaturated world of multimedia we inhabit, they all deferred to listening. My white earbuds acted like a stoplight.
By now, I had completely abandoned attempts to listen to newspapers in favor of time travel. The novel required 17 hours of listening. As I hit the halfway mark, I heard Ella say (but thankfully, not to me), “Does she love audio books more than us?”
I was cheered the fourth morning to see that my husband was signing a stack of school forms at breakfast. I sat down next to him and hit the play button.
By Day 5, I felt an inner peace that I associated with not having the slightest idea of what was going on in the world. I had no direct knowledge of ongoing wars or market meltdowns. My only concern was that my ears were becoming very sore.
But I hit a wall the next day. I reached a maudlin section of the novel. The book’s charm evaporated as the plot turned tear-jerker. Two hours of listening to go. So I cheated. I pulled out my oldest daughter’s abandoned paperback copy of the time travel book — and skimmed the last few chapters in about 15 minutes.
Then I realized I was vulnerable without the earbuds.
The next morning, I started to listen to Chapter 1 of “The Chopin Manuscript.”
“The piano tuner ran through ascending chords, enjoying the resistance of the heavy ivory keys,” the narrator began.
I sighed. Not before breakfast. I turned off the iPod, but kept wearing the earbuds. Moments later, Ella entered the kitchen as my husband made coffee.
“Did you ever transfer the $40?” she asked me, before noticing the earbuds.
Sorrrry, she mouthed, I’ll ask Dad.
So far, I like evolving.
E-mail: Slatalla@nytimes.com
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