Ann Quin on Tape: Three’s Auralities

Abstract

This article attends to the aural dimensions of Ann Quin’s Three (1966). It argues that just as high modernist texts developed symbiotically with the emergent sound technologies of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, so might Quin’s novel be read for its engagement with the tape recorder which rose to commercial prominence after 1945. Aiming to contextualize Quin’s writing on tape, the article considers the history and prehistory of the medium, as well as its appropriation by Quin’s contemporaries in music, film, and the visual arts. Through the figure of tape, Three finds ways of valuing ambience and materiality, while resisting transactional and suspicious forms of knowledge.