WORLD SOUNDSCAPE PROJECT
SOUND REFERENCES IN LITERATURE



820.

Hermione's mother, a round, friendly, owlish woman in a pinafore, was shaking a chip-pan on the kitchen stove...We stood so near the window, we could hear the chips spitting ... Everything there in the warm kitchen, from the tea-caddy and the grandmother clock, to the tabby that purred like a kettle, was good, dull, and sufficient.

Dylan Thomas, 'The Followers,' from Adventures In The Skin Trade, New Directions, 1964, p. 176.

TIME: early 20th c.

PLACE: a city in Wales or England

CIRCUMSTANCE: two young men have followed a young woman home and are listening outside her kitchen window

 

821.

Uncle Jim, in his black market suit with a stiff white shirt and no collar, loud new boots, and a plaid cap, creaked and climbed down. He dragged out a thick wicker basket from a heap of straw in the corner of the cart and swung it over his shoulder. I heard a squeal from the basket and saw the tip of a pink tail curling out as Uncle Jim opened the public door of 'The Pure Drop.'

Dylan Thomas, 'The Peaches,' from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, New Directions, 1955, p.10.

TIME: early 20th c.

PLACE: Wales

CIRCUMSTANCE: a young boy sits outside as his uncle stops at the pub. A pig squeals from inside a basket.

 

822.

The two fat women near the door giggled 'Good night, Mr Jones' out of the rich noise and the comfortable smells.

...'There are too many drunken gipsies,' he said as we rolled and rattled through the flickering, lamp-lit town.

He sang hymns all the way to Gorsehill in an affectionate bass voice, and conducted the wind with his whip ... He stamped on the shaft, and we rattled on through a cutting wind.

...He led the hollow, shaggy statue (of the horse) towards the stable; clop, clop to the mice-house. I heard locks rattle as I ran to the farm-house door.

Dylan Thomas, 'The Peaches,' from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, New Directions, 1955, p. 11-12.

TIME: early 20th c.

PLACE: Wales

CIRCUMSTANCE: the boy's uncle drives home from the pub in the cart.


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