How long does it take to read Silence?
John Cage
Silence by John Cage takes about 5 hours 4 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 4 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1961. 276 pages, about 75,900 words.
11 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 8 hours 26 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 4 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 10 minutes |
The page count is the median across 11 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Silence, A Year from Monday, M, Empty Words and X (in this order) form the five parts of a series of books in which Cage tries, as he says, "to find a way of writing which comes from ideas, is not about them, but which produces them." Often these writings include mesostics and essays created by subjecting the work of other writers to chance procedures using the I Ching (what Cage called "writing through").
Subjects: Addresses, essays, lectures, History and criticism, Music, Musique, Histoire et critique, Composition (Music)
