Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Let Me Clear My Throat: Essays
    Unavailable
    Let Me Clear My Throat: Essays
    Unavailable
    Let Me Clear My Throat: Essays
    Ebook268 pages8 hours

    Let Me Clear My Throat: Essays

    By Elena Passarello

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “A remarkably entertaining and thought-provoking look at the human voice and all of its myriad functions and sounds . . . Wonderful” (Library Journal, starred review).
     
    From Farinelli, the eighteenth-century castrato who brought down opera houses with his high C, to the recording of Johnny B. Goode affixed to the Voyager spacecraft, Let Me Clear My Throat dissects the whys and hows of popular voices, making them hum with significance and emotion.
     
    There are murders of punk rock crows, impressionists, and rebel yells; Howard Dean’s “BYAH!” and Marlon Brando’s “Stellaaaaa!” and a stock film yawp that has made cameos in movies from A Star is Born to Spaceballs. The voice is thought’s incarnating instrument and Elena Passarello’s essays are a riotous deconstruction of the ways the sounds we make both express and shape who we are—the annotated soundtrack of us giving voice to ourselves.
     
    “Standout pieces include a biography of the most famous scream in Hollywood history; a breakdown of the relationship between song and birdsong; and an analysis of the sounds of disgust. Akin to: A dinner party at which David Sedaris, Mary Roach and Marlon Brando are trying to out-monologue one another.” —Philadelphia Weekly
     
    “The beauty of Ellen Passarello’s voice is that it’s so confidently its own . . . I began randomly with her essay wondering what the space aliens will make of ‘Johnny B. Goode’ on the Voyager gold record and couldn’t stop after that.” —John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateOct 9, 2012
    ISBN9781936747504
    Unavailable
    Let Me Clear My Throat: Essays
    Author

    Elena Passarello

    Elena Passarello is an actor, a writer, and recipient of a 2015 Whiting Fellowship in nonfiction. Her first collection with Sarabande Books, Let Me Clear My Throat, won the gold medal for nonfiction at the 2013 Independent Publisher Awards. She lives in Corvallis, Oregon.

    Related to Let Me Clear My Throat

    Related ebooks

    Popular Culture & Media Studies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Movement and Flow

      May 10, 2019

      A FEW YEARS AGO my mother had a phase in which every three or four months something would short in her heart or brain, and she’d slump to the floor. Whatever did this left no trace; we guessed some kind of seizure. By the time I’d find her in the eme

      11 min read

    • Article

      A Rare and Beautiful Creature: On the Life and Work of Frank Stanford

      Sep 22, 2017

      It seems fair to suggest that the anxiety of influence—a creative necessity for so many poets—may have failed to penetrate the mobile-homed hamlets where Stanford roamed, rambled, mused, and wrote with prolific intensity. The post A Rare and Beautifu

      5 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Winslow, Kois, Tóibín, and More

      Jan 17, 2023

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new release titles from De’Shawn Charles Winslow, Dan Kois, Colm Tóibín, and more—that are publishing this week. Want to learn more about upcoming titles? Then go read our most recent book preview. Want to he

      7 min read

    • Article

      Return To The MFA

      Aug 12, 2020

      I REMEMBER a story I last workshopped in my MFA program. It’s a story about Soma, a call-center agent in India who has to ignore daily encounters with American racism. In my story’s climax she has to empathize with a white woman accusing Indians of b

      12 min read

    • Article

      The New 2022 Nonfiction

      Aug 17, 2022

      The New 2022 Nonfiction
      13 min read

    • Article

      Drafting My Memoir

      Oct 10, 2022

      In her bestselling book Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott shares one of her now-famous secrets of good writing: shitty first drafts. “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts,” she writes. So true. But Lamott has another piece of advice abo

      2 min read

    • Article

      Joseph Cassara Wants His Characters to Break Your Heart

      Feb 1, 2018

      The Puerto Rican drag queen is a recognizable personification of New York in the 1980s, the neighbor (and opposite) of the white, Gordon Gekko-style master of the universe with his slicked-back hair. In The House of Impossible Beauties, debut novelis

      12 min read

    • Article

      An Anti-Racist Poetry Reading List

      Jun 8, 2020

      These recent poetry collections offer poignant narratives and snapshots of racial injustice in America. The post An Anti-Racist Poetry Reading List appeared first on The Millions.

      1 min read

    • Article

      Deadlines

      Aug 18, 2021

      A prize of $5,000, publication by Graywolf Press, and a six-week residency at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Umbria, Italy, is given annually for a poetry collection by a poet who has not published a book of poems in a standard edition. The winning

      21 min read

    • Article

      Diving Through Windows

      Dec 13, 2017

      BY JUSTIN HOCKING I dwell in Possibilit y — / A fairer House than Prose — / More numerous of Windows — / Superior — for Doors — —Emily Dickinson My wife and I live in a 1907 Craftsman bungalow with original crown glass windows. They were hand-blown i

      6 min read

    • Article

      Pilgrim Bell

      Aug 18, 2021

      The self I am today.Involves me.As a lake. Involves.Its cattails.It bears me.Tolerates.My cotton. I would prefer.Not. To be outlived.By anyone. I reserve the right.To refuse. Enchantment. The fables I tell.Always end. Wrong.The good archer.Dead.By a

      1 min read

    • Article

      On The Shelf

      Apr 14, 2020

      Reverse Cowgirl by McKenzie Wark is not your average autobiography. The book mirrors the fragmented and sometimes confusing nature of the author’s life. Wark freely admits she has no answers to the many questions she poses or to the situations confro

      3 min read

    • Article

      Submission Calendar

      Feb 16, 2022

      Submission Calendar
      2 min read

    • Article

      Page One

      Oct 12, 2022

      “My cousin Galaxy’s baby fell out of a two-story window and survived.” A Coastline Is an Immeasurable Thing: A Memoir Across Three Continents (Ecco, November 2022) by Mary-Alice Daniel. First book, memoir. Agent: Jin Auh. Editor: Gabriella Doob. Publ

      2 min read

    Reviews for Let Me Clear My Throat

    4.5/5

    8 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      This is excellent writing. The essays in the collection, all examining some aspect of the human voice, sparkle with wit and insight.