"Call Me Lloyd" and Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World by David Owen
Published by The New Yorker, February 4, 2008
Genre: Personal Essay, Video Essay, Book
Format: Read online \\ Watch the video.
David Owen is a longtime staffer and essayist at The New Yorker who has also written a pile of books following his investigations and personal interests--interests including golf, water rights, standardized testing, and more. I stumbled on his personal narrative "Call Me Lloyd" about the impact of nicknames and quickly added his books to my must read list, starting with his Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World.
As someone currently teaching, this essay reminds me of how much of a cardboard character teachers are to students. This idea can be disheartening, but I imagine it's a similar feeling to what actors might experience. Millions of people know them, but millions of people don't know them at all. Reading as a general human, it's fun to consider the power of nicknames. If Don Carver graduates high school and ends up opening a deli, was it the affirmation of hundreds calling him Carver that subconsciously pushed him in that direction?
"Call Me Lloyd" doesn't address the question of nominative determinism. Instead, Owen paints a picture of his own high school experience during the first years of the 1970s in Kansas City, Missouri. It was smoking in the boys room, aged gym coaches, fun friends, clove cigarettes, parties in basements, and football locker rooms. All the friends, teachers, and parents had nicknames--sometimes in jest and sometimes in camaraderie. The nickname does much to carry the memories and at times, the nickname changes as life rolls through a new stage. Reading the essay gave me a feeling of nostalgia for community, the kind of small-town community where Grandpa can tell stories about the Smith family for three generations, including the Smith uncle who left town to join the Navy. Reading the essay also made me think about how much high schools are like small towns: drama, characters, commotion, gossip, and fun.
"Lloyd" is David's dad's name. He would've been a junior-to-the-third had his parents actually named him Lloyd. Lloyd became the football player, nerdy middle-schooler turned bad boy high schooler, smoker, smart kid who evolved to leave the Lloyd in his hometown.
The power of nicknames, then, is to define a part of your life and to connect those who lived that part of life with you.
The video I linked at the top is to an 8+ minute intro to Owen's Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World. Owen introduces his inspiration for the book and connects some of the research related to the health effects of noise pollution. What would you imagine happened to reading scores after a school installed sound-deadening panels in the ceiling to neutralize the clack of the subway above? What about an experiment where scientists fabricated traffic noise and played the traffic noise in the forest? Impact?
LOVELY BIT
“If we could see the sound we generate, it would look like litter--as though we're driving through the countryside throwing things out of the car."
"Calling myself Dumdum for a couple of weeks turned out to be a good move and a valuable lesson in human nature: people are predisposed to like people with disarming nicknames."
RATING
David Owen is a Harvard graduate who has been writing for decades. I love to see someone who pursues so many different interests find a path where this kind of disparate interest works as an asset versus a distraction.
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