Searching for Silence at the NYPL

Quiet, please! While waiting for an event with George Prochnik, the crowd at the New York Public Library’s Celeste Bartos Forum was assailed by a barrage of sound—car horns, church bells, tape hiss—all examples of the noisy world the author says has overwhelmed us. Prochnik advocates a kind of sonic environmentalism, the creating and preserving silent places. He spoke about his new book, In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise, with the NYPL’s Paul Holdengraber.