I

What Is Silence?
II
Selling Silence
Seeking Silence
Silence Versus Solitude
Voluntary Silences
III
The Representation of Silence
Silent Reading
Silence on Stage
The Unspeakable
IV
The Silenced Moment
The Silence of Dolls
Silencing
Silence and Secrets
V
The Future of Silence

John Biguenet is the Robert Hunter Distinguished University Professor at Loyola University New Orleans, USA. He has published ten books, including Oyster, a novel, and The Torturer's Apprentice: Stories, as well as The Rising Water Trilogy: Plays and Silence (Bloomsbury, 2015). Six of his plays have been produced nationally and internationally. An O. Henry Award winner for short fiction and past president of the American Literary Translators Association, he worked as a student intern on the first issue of New Orleans Review in 1968 and edited the magazine from 1980 to 1992.

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
What is silence? In a series of short meditations, novelist and playwright John Biguenet considers silence as a servant of power, as a lie, as a punishment, as the voice of God, as a terrorist's final weapon, as a luxury good, as the reason for torture-in short, as an object we both do and do not recognize. Concluding with the prospects for its future in a world burgeoning with noise, Biguenet asks whether we should desire or fear silence-or if it is even ours to choose.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.