The Perfect Sound: A Memoir in Stereo

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 Hawaiʻi, 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.

Author: Garrett Hongo
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Published: 02/22/2022
Pages: 544
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.90lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.50w x 1.50d
ISBN: 9780375425066

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 09/01/2021 pg. 19
Publishers Weekly 11/22/2021
Kirkus Reviews 12/01/2021
Library Journal 12/01/2021 pg. 89
Booklist 01/01/2022 pg. 28

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 The Mirror Diary: Selected Essays and Coral Road: Poems. He has been the recipient of several awards, including fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. Hongo lives in Eugene, Oregon, and teaches at the University of Oregon, where he is Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences.