Are these the voices of our dead friends or just the gramophone

The expression Are these the voices of our dead friends or just the gramophone? names a central uncertainty in Mike Noonan’s experience: a voice can arrive through a medium that seems ordinary and mechanical, yet sound as if it carries the dead into the present. The question first arises in connection with a historical photograph and the unrecorded music of Sara Tidwell and the Red-Tops; it returns as Mike hears Jo in remembered phrases, voices, and signs. Rather than settling whether these sounds are memory, recording, or haunting, the novel makes their ambiguity part of how grief and the past remain active.

The Question of a Lost Recording

When Mike asks about the history of Sara and the Red-Tops, he learns that an old photograph of the group had been found and was thought to have been taken at the Fryeburg Fair in 1900. Ed had wished to hear a record made by them. Mike answers that none was ever made, then recalls the question as a haiku by the Greek poet George Seferis: Are these the voices of our dead friends / or just the gramophone? The absent record matters: the music Mike later hears cannot be checked against a surviving commercial recording, leaving its source unsettled.

That uncertainty becomes concrete when Mike hears Sara’s music during the uncanny period around the night of July seventh and the morning of July eighth. A rough, lively ensemble sound builds from acoustic guitars, harmonica, one or perhaps two upright basses, and forceful percussion that seems to come from boxes rather than a drum. A contralto voice joins it, laughing, urgent, and ominous. Mike recognizes the singer as Sara Tidwell, who never made a record in her life; he experiences the sound as Sara Laughs, not as a known recording. The question therefore points to a gap between historical evidence and present experience: a voice seems unmistakable even though no record exists to account for it.

Repetition, Memory, and Mechanical Sound

The wording recurs when Mike considers John Storrow’s possible courtship of Mattie. Storrow says that he cannot pursue her while representing her, though later things might change. Mike hears himself echo the possibility, thinks of Storrow’s unringed hands and their resemblance to Sara’s hands in the old photograph, and again wonders whether the voices of dead friends are only a gramophone. The phrase links a present conversation to an image of the past, making resemblance and recollection feel like another kind of playback.

The motif becomes more intimate when Mike speaks a line from Jo’s copy of The Moon and Sixpence: You funny little man, said Strickland. The line recalls the moment when he understood that Jo was dead, and later, alone in a room, he says it aloud without intending to. The television changes channels by itself, passing from baseball to All in the Family, Ren and Stimpy, and then Casablanca, Jo’s favorite film. Mike asks whether she is there; Bunter’s bell rings once, faintly, and Mike becomes sure that Jo is the presence with him. The remembered line and the television’s images do not establish a simple mechanical or supernatural explanation. Their force comes from how precisely they connect ordinary media and household objects to Jo’s memory.

Voices as Message and Presence

At Sara Laughs, the Memo-Scriber’s counter has advanced from 000 to 012 while Mike slept. When he plays the tape, a voice says Oh Mike, pauses after a faint click, and says it again. Mike recognizes the sound from Jo’s office, where a draft had rushed past his face, but the slowed recording makes the words intelligible. Then the voice is gone. The device gives the event a recorded form, yet it does not remove the uncertainty: the tape contains a recognizable address without identifying who or what produced it.

A separate intrusion arrives through the telephone when Mike tries to call Mattie. Instead of a dial tone, he hears a distant, cheerful male voice singing a children’s rhyme about following a girl to school. Before he can ask who is there, Mattie answers. Mike’s confusion gives way to the possibility that the familiar tune has somehow connected him to her and Kyra. Here sound is not a preserved message but an unexpected bridge across distance, again making ordinary communications equipment an uncertain channel.

The distinction between hostile and loving presence sharpens during the supernatural struggle in Jo’s studio. Mike hears furious, breathless voices in moving air, then catches Sara’s snarling voice ordering Jo away. A moment later, he recognizes the rushing shriek as Jo screaming, and understands that Sara is hurting her. After Sara’s hate is burned away, the sound changes to a plaintive, almost human bird cry. Jo remains visible as a dim form, exhausted and diminished, while the Outsider is gone. Mike understands Jo’s silent words and describes their marriage as a zone. In this climax, the voices are not interchangeable traces: sound registers the conflict, the change in Sara’s presence, and Jo’s continuing effort to help him.

Grief and the Continuing Bond

The question’s emotional range extends beyond fear of haunting. After Mike believes his writing may have resumed, he cries on the railroad-tie steps leading down to the lake. He mourns the years without Jo, friends, and work; he is grateful that the workless period may be ending; and he cries with fear after realizing that he has been walking a white line since Jo’s death and has somehow been carried out of harm’s way. The passage does not identify who carried him. Its refusal to settle that question leaves room for the same uncertainty that governs the voices.

At the end, Mike recalls telling Kyra not to leave love letters lying around because they can come back to haunt a person. He says that he is haunted anyway, but that he closed his book of dreams by his own choice. He remains bound to Jo’s memory while turning his care toward Kyra, the child sleeping down the hall whom he calls his little guy. The expression’s question is thus not simply whether the dead can speak. It also asks how memory persists through voices, objects, and repeated words—and how a bereaved person can acknowledge that persistence without surrendering the living responsibilities that now matter most.