Lionel

Lionel is the main character and first-person narrator of the title short story “The History of Sound.” He also appears in the final short story “Origin Stories” as a secondary character. At the beginning of “The History of Sound,” Lionel is an elderly man who is living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One day, he receives a “box of twenty-five wax phonograph cylinders, sent from Brunswick, Maine” (1). Because he and his late lover David made the cylinders together decades prior, listening to them instantly transports Lionel to the scenes of his past. While listening to audio messages from David and the songs he and David recorded, Lionel is compelled to muse on the trajectory of his life.

Lionel is an earnest character whose personal experience is defined by his entanglement with David. He and David met in 1916 when they were both studying music at the New England Conservatory. Their love...