Advanced Search Request a Book

ORDERS

Readings Orders 0

DEMANDS

Readings Demands 0

The Perfect Sound:a Memoir In Stereo
[Paperback - 2023]
garrett hongo
On Demand
Availability in 4-6 weeks on receipt of order
List Price: $19
Our Price: Rs.3695 Rs.3141
Standard Discount: 15%
You Save: Rs.554
Additional Category: Music - Engineering & Technology
Publisher: Vintage | ISBN: 9780307386359 | Pages: 544
Shipping Weight: .505 | Dimensions: 5.15 x 1.15 x 8.06 inches

More Buying Options

Hardback Rs.5053

Description

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.

About the Author

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.

Bestsellers in Bio & Autobiography

View All
Tuesdays With Morrie: An Old Man, A Young Man, And Life's Greatest Lesson
[Paperback - 2006]
mitch albom
In Stock
List Price: $8.99
Our Price: Rs.1195 Rs.1075
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.120
The Letters Of Vincent Van Gogh (Translation)
[Paperback - 1996]
van gogh
Out of Stock
Availability in 2-4 weeks on receipt of order
List Price: £12.99
Our Price: Rs.2295 Rs.2065
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.230
Long Walk To Freedom
[Paperback - 2013]
nelson mandela
In Stock
List Price: £14.99
Our Price: Rs.2995 Rs.2695
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.300
Letters To Milena
[Paperback - 2018]
franz kafka
In Stock
List Price: £9.99
Our Price: Rs.2245 Rs.2020
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.225
Night
[Paperback - 2006]
elie wiesel
Out of Stock
Availability in 4-6 weeks on receipt of order
List Price: $12.99
Our Price: Rs.2195 Rs.1975
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.220
Crying In H Mart: 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards Winner
[Paperback - 2022]
michelle zauner
In Stock
List Price: £9.99
Our Price: Rs.2145 Rs.1930
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.215
Ecce Homo
[Paperback - 2004]
friedrich nietzsche
In Stock
List Price: £8.99
Our Price: Rs.2195 Rs.1975
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.220
Diana: Her True Story-In Her Own Words
[Paperback - 2019]
andrew morton
Out of Stock
Availability in 2-4 weeks on receipt of order
List Price: £10.99
Our Price: Rs.2745 Rs.2470
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.275
Mr & Mrs Jinnah: The Marriage That Shook India
[Paperback - 2022]
sheela reddy
In Stock
List Price: Rs.1395
Our Price: Rs.1395 Rs.1255
Standard Discount: 10%
You Save: Rs.140
Spare: The Duke Of Sussex
[Hardback - 2023]
prince harry
In Stock
List Price: £28
Our Price: Rs.4995 Rs.2497
Standard Discount: 50%
You Save: Rs.2498