Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "My voice comes and goes..." (more)
Key Phrases: Mary Glover, New York, Monsieur Alexandre (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

`How the world of mediumistic displays, of possession and exorcism, of glossolalia and witchcraft, led us to Victorian parlour entertainments and then to Toy Story is the absorbing substance of this book.' Economist, December 2000

`a genuinely unusual and rich source for the curious ... There is much in this book, much more than the subject matter suggests ... Connor has pulled together an enormous amount of material in the service of a compelling story.' The Linguist List

`There is much in this book, much more than the subject matter suggests. Connor has pulled together an enormous amount of material in the service of a compelling story.' The Linguist List

`This book is erudite and broad in scope. Its strength is the way it links cultural phenomena in new ways. ... Connor gives us an intelligent study of a domain of skilful cultural creativity, against a background of several millennia of appalling irrational behaviour.' Raphael Salkie, Times Higher Education Supplement, Friday 16th march 2001

`fascinating ... highly recommended, not least for its sheer breadth of scholarship.' Brian Boyd, Irish Times (Dublin) 13.01.01.

`ventriloquism is defined in the largest and most colourful sense.' Peter Ackroyd, The Times 8/11/00.

`this incredibly erudite work ... is easily the best account of the dark business at the roots of the art ... a scholarly but wry style that is a pleasure to read.' Andrew Martin, New Statesman 11/12/00.

'comprehensive history...peppered with shrewd observations' The New York Times Book Review

`Connor manages to retain a remarkably even-handed tone as he moves from the Delphic Oracle to the Witch of Endor, Dickens to Beckett, the gramophone to the World Wide Web' TLS

`Dumbstruck triumphantly reclaims ventriloquism from the condescension of posterity' TLS

Product Description

Ventriloquism, the art of "seeming to speak where one is not", speaks so resonantly to our contemporary technological condition. We now think nothing of hearing voices--our own and others'--propelled over intercoms, cellphones, and answering machines. Yet, why can none of us hear our own recorded voice without wincing? Why is the telephone still full of such spookiness and erotic possibility? And why does the magician's trick of speaking through a dummy entertain as well as disturb us? These are the kind of questions which impel Dumbstruck, Steven Connor's wide-ranging, relentlessly inquisitive history of ventriloquism and the disembodied voice.
Connor follows his subject from its early beginnings in ancient Israel and Greece, through the outcries of early Christian writers against the unholy (and, they believed, obscenely produced) practices of pagan divination. Surprisingly, he finds that women like the sibyls of Delphi were the key voices in these male-dominated times. Connor then turns to the aberrations of the voice in mysticism, witchcraft and possession, and the strange cultural obsession with the vagrant figure of the ventriloquist, newly conceived as male rather than female, that flourished during the Enlightenment. He retells 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 the telephone, radio, film, and the internet.
Brimming with anecdote and insight, Dumbstruck is a provocative archeology of a seemingly trivial yet profoundly relevant presence in human history. Its pages overflow with virtuoso philosophical and psychological reflections on the problems and astonishments, the raptures and absurdities of the unhoused voice.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 472 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 18, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198184336
• ISBN-13: 978-0198184331
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #425,491 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars cultural ventriloquism suddenly verrrry interesting, October 10, 2004

By	Scout (Louisiana, USA) - See all my reviews

I enjoyed this text, recommended by a colleague, for other reasons, but thought of it immediately when the possibility of George W. Bush's use of a wire and "ear" during the first debate with John Kerry began to surface on the internet in the last day or so. Talk about the "vocalic uncanny"! Is "wiregate" merely(!) a part of the trend of increasing technological possibilities for problematizing the relation between voice and body?
Are you talking to me?
Is this thing on?
Steven Connor should write the next chapter. Meanwhile, read his deft connections and analysis of diverse phenomena associated with "cultural ventriloquism" and think about the (allleged) voice in our president's ear, and what that does to the (alleged) significance of his speech as he (allegedly) addresses the citizenry.
Is ventriloquism more acceptable if we are in on the trick?
Are we in on this (alleged) trick, anyway? I mean, we all know how packaged and predicted and rehearsed the responses to the questions posed in the debates are anyway--but a line has been (allegedly) crossed here, and that's the line Connor's book charts. Good stuff, and timely.

1 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars How can this volume possibly sell for $96.00?, July 9, 2006

By	Michael C. Jacobs "miguelito_cin" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Does it come with a ventriloquist dummy... AND a ventriloquist?

5 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars HUH?, July 6, 2005

By	Trivia Girl "Triva" (LA, CA) - See all my reviews

This book is an example of psuedo-intellectual overthinking of the highest order. It's dense, wordy and unreadable in every way. Why would any writer spend what appears to be LOTS of time and energy on this of all subjects: Ventriloquism's effect on CULTURE?!

The resultant product amounts to little more than an uninteresting mess.

Skip it.