Authors or Literary Characters with Tinnitus

[Ariadne]

I'd really appreciate it if any of you could let me know of some good authors or characters with tinnitus. A fiction book that mentions tinnitus would be fantastic, but I'm also interested in knowing about authors who live, or did live with it.

Thank you very much.

 

[bSiDeQuiEtWaTeRS]

That's an interesting question. I don't know of any, although I don't read a lot. Hopefully someone else can tell you of some authors or characters with tinnitus. No doubt there are authors with it, but if they've mentioned that in an interview or somewhere I don't know.

 

[echosata]

I'm pretty sure Ernest Hemingway had tinnitus. Though I don't know many other authors, or characters, who do.

You would think with how many explosions, loud music, etc., are in a lot of genres of books characters would have some ringing in their ears!

 

[Aaron_B]

Paul Harding, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, has been open about his tinnitus.

"The differences between being a rock drummer and writing are superficial. The obvious ones: you're playing with a couple of other people on stage, and you're doing it at an ungodly volume. I'm clinically half deaf and I have tinnitus and a ringing in my ear all the time."

Paul Harding's Magical 'Tinkers'

 

[RocketJSquirrel]

The title character in the movie "Baby Driver" has tinnitus and it plays into the movie's plot.

Wikipedia has a list:

List of People with Tinnitus

 

[ricky1960]

There's a minor character in Celine's "Journey to the End of the Night" (1932) that has tinnitus. I believe his name is Henrouille. His wife does not understand why it annoys him, but it bothers him so much that he essentially dies from it. Celine himself suffered from tinnitus which he acquired during World War I.

 

[ECP]

In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," the main character is a murderer who hears a ringing sound in his ears... but then he thinks it's less like a ringing and more like a pulsing sound. Then he believes the sound is coming from the floorboards, under which is the body of the man he killed. So he concludes that he's hearing the heartbeat of the dead man's ghost, and he goes into full-blown panic mode.

I used to think that this was just a horror story about a murderer who was driven to insanity by his own guilty conscience, but one could make the argument that the murderer may have had tinnitus and just didn't know it.

LOL, I find his confusion very relatable. There have been times when I'd hear a high-pitched sound coming from somewhere in the room or the other side of the wall, and I'd mistake it for a new tinnitus tone inside my head. Sometimes, the only way for me to know for sure is to my ask my husband, "Do you hear that sound too, or is it just me?"

Poe was also well known for a poem called "The Bells," in which he uses the word "tintinnabulation" to describe the sound they make. The word "tintinnabulation" is etymologically similar to "tinnitus."

And here's a mythological character who has hyperacusis: the Norse god Heimdall.

Heimdall had hearing so acute that he could hear the grass growing, and he could hear the wool growing on sheep. Heimdall was also in charge of guarding a rainbow bridge leading to the home of the gods. He possessed an incredibly loud horn so that he could sound the alarm if the bridge were to be invaded. The horn was so loud that it could be heard all over the world.

As far as I know, Heimdall didn't suffer in any way from his acute hearing. There are no reports of pain or anything like that. But still, I cringe at the thought of his condition, and I know I wouldn't want to blow that horn when the time comes.

I read somewhere that Heimdall may have sacrificed an ear in exchange for wisdom, just as Odin sacrificed an eye.

 

[Lins12]

In the first Hunger Games, Katniss gets tinnitus and hearing loss. But it's not developed at all in the subsequent books. Really just mentioned in one line that she gets it after being near an explosion.