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66 Mercer L. Rev. 325 (2014-2015)
Hearing Voices: Reading as Listening in Literature, Law, and Theology

handle is hein.journals/mercer66 and id is 359 raw text is: Hearing Voices: Reading as Listening in Literature, Law, and Theology by James Boyd White* Jack Sammons has always written from the center. Whether he is writing about teaching, or the legal profession, or law, or religion, or music, or baseball, or manners, everything he says comes from the same mysterious and powerful place: coherent, honest, generous, and sincere, not at all aggressive, but insistent upon the value and importance of the inquiry at hand. Jack writes as the whole person he is, with a constant and deep integrity. As we all know, an important part of what Jack has written about is the world of sound and music, to which he is richly alive. I think especially of The Law's Melody,1 in which he builds a whole ontology, and ethics too, on a musical base. For him, the analogy between law and music leads to a vision of meaning emerging out of mystery, a process in which we can participate but which we cannot control, and thus one that constantly calls upon us to live out of the great theological virtues of hope and faith. One of my debts to Jack's work is that I have myself become much more aware of the world of sound, in contrast to the world of sight. Here I want to build on what I have learned from Jack over the years. My remarks are meant as a sort of meditation on sound and hearing in connection with three fields that are of importance to us both: literature, law, and theology. In particular I want to focus on what I will be calling the voice, especially on the way we hear voices when we read. My idea, perhaps * Hart Wright Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Michigan School of Law. Amherst College (A.B., 1960); Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (A.M., 1961); Harvard Law School (LL.B., 1964). 1. Jack L. Sammons, The Law's Melody, 55 VILL. L. REV. 1143 (2010). 325