Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Why can none of us hear our own recorded voice without wincing? Why is the telephone still full of such spookiness and erotic possibility? Why does the metaphor of ventriloquism, the art of 'seeming to speak where one is not', speak so resonantly to our contemporary technological condition? These are the kinds of question which impel Steven Connor's wide-ranging, restlessly inquisitive history of ventriloquism and the disembodied voice. He tracks his subject from its first recorded beginnings in ancient Israel and Greece, through the fulminations of early Christian writers against the unholy (and, they believed, obscenely produced) practices of pagan divination, the aberrations of the voice in mysticism, witchcraft and possession, and the strange obsession with the vagrant figure of the ventriloquist, newly conceived as male rather than female, during the Enlightenment. He retrieves the stories of some of the most popular and versatile ventriloquists and polyphonists of the nineteenth century, and investigates the survival of ventriloquial delusions and desires in spiritualism and the 'vocalic uncanny' of technologies like telephone, radio, film, and the internet. Learned but lucid, brimming with anecdote and insight, this is much more than an archaeology of one of the most regularly derided but tenaciously enduring of popular arts. It is also a series of virtuoso philosophical and psychological reflections on the problems and astonishments, the raptures and absurdities of the unhoused voice."--BOOK JACKET.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

Do disembodied voices make people more uneasy than voices that appear to come from natural sources? If so, has this always held true throughout history? Connor takes us closer to the answers with this book, which is less an entertaining reading experience than a scholarly treatise on what makes the voice appealing or terrifying. This will serve as a unique textbook for communications coursework on ventriloquism as an entertainment and cultural phenomenon. Connor, an English academician for many years, brings a curious affirmation to the art of ventriloquism by providing evidence supporting the perception that human beings become unsettled when they can't tell where the voices are coming from. A thorough bibliography on this esoteric subject is included. As it is suitable for only a limited, scholarly audience, this is recommended for larger academic and research libraries. (Index not seen.)--David M. Lisa, Wayne P.L., NJ Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Catherine Saint Louis - New York Times Book Review