How To Disappear

The experience of the unseen listener.

If this book had been titled How to listen or How to be all ears, the title would have been appropriate to the content and directly explained the book’s focus. Why, then, does the title seem to obscure its subject rather than reveal it, running counter to a title’s traditional function? Because this book is grounded in the experience of the unseen listener. Speakers are seen when they speak, whereas listeners recede into the background of the scene dominated by speakers. The title of this book conceals its subject in a desire to protect the listener from returning to the spotlight once he or she has left it.