[Canetti's] precise and intense involvement with three languages, most intimately with German, corresponds to the locus of his writing: between the conventional literary genres as well as between different fields in the social sciences…. The thoroughness with which the novel [Die Blendung (Auto-da-fé)] and the two early dramas, Die Hochzeit (The Wedding, 1932) and Komödie der Eitelkeit (Comedy of Vanity, 1934) record a confusing variety of "acoustic masks,"—a character's speech habits that outline his individual functions and interactions in a group as definitely as would a visual mask—is indeed exhausting and requires intense concentration from the reader/listener/spectator. Canetti has always demonstrated his respect for his audience by demanding that kind of concentration and justifying it with the precision of his language.

Canetti, who considers himself to be essentially a dramatist in all his writings, developed the concept of the "acoustic mask" under the influence of...