Third Ear
Reflections on the Art and Science of Listening
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
This illuminating book weaves personal stories of a multilingual upbringing with the latest scientific breakthroughs in interspecies communication to show how the skill of deep listening enhances our curiosity and empathy toward the world around us
Third Ear braids together personal narrative with scholarly inquiry to examine the power of listening to build interpersonal empathy and social transformation. A daughter of Holocaust survivors, Rosner shares stories from growing up in a home where six languages were spoken to interrogate how psychotherapy, neurolinguistics, and creativity can illuminate the complex ways we are impacted by the sounds and silences of others.
Drawing on expertise from journalists, podcasters, performers, translators, acoustic biologists, spiritual leaders, composers, and educators, this hybrid text moves fluidly along a spectrum from molecular to global to reveal how third-ear listening can be a collective means for increased understanding and connection to the natural world.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Elizabeth Rosner is a poet and novelist as well as a thoughtful essayist, and Third Ear is a brief impressionistic meditation on both the science of hearing and the art of listening. Structured like a memoir, the book begins with Rosner’s multilingual childhood as the daughter of European Holocaust survivors, then moves through her early years in Hebrew school—where she first discovers the spiritual nature of hearing—and on to the COVID era and its many losses. Rosner writes in a discursive, fragmentary style that moves swiftly from fascinating scientific facts to unusual personal behaviors (there are people called “podfasters” who deliberately listen to audio programming at three to four times regular speed despite it being proven that comprehension breaks down at 2x). Third Ear is a delightfully odd, endlessly entertaining reading experience that will have you examining how you listen to your world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Dialogue is happening all around us," according to this lyrical blend of memoir and science. Novelist Rosner (Survivor Café), the daughter of German- and Polish-born Holocaust survivors, recounts growing up in a multilingual household in Upstate New York, where her parents' accents marked them as outsiders. Recalling how she and her parents have struggled to listen to each other, Rosner describes how when she was a child, she covered her ears and chanted "English" whenever her mother tried to sing Russian lullabies, and contends that her parents coped with trauma from WWII by yelling at her. Though her mother died suddenly at age 70 before Rosner had a chance to make amends, she suggests that her relationship with her father improved toward the end of his life and offers a poignant account of listening with him to the audiobook of Survivor Café, which Rosner wrote about his experiences at Buchenwald. Interspersed with the personal narrative are passages about sound's role in the natural world; for instance, Rosner explains that humpback whales "compose ever-changing songs to communicate," and that elephants can "talk" by making rumbling noises other elephants detect through their feet. Rosner justifies the unlikely juxtaposition of personal recollections and animal trivia by suggesting that both demonstrate how, in the words of naturalist David G. Haskell, "to listen... is to be open to the vitality and creativity of life." This soothes the soul.
