Perhaps because of being a math teacher with an avid interest in cosmology, the author has acquired an expectancy of alternatives such as "if not real, then imaginary" all the way to "if not matter, then antimatter." This has led to the "what if factor" demonstrated in his novel. "What if" (to the first power) a man can hear sounds emanating from paintings in a museum? To what end, you might ask: perhaps a hobby of cataloging masterpieces based on tones from one to four? But "what if" (squared), in the presence of a foreign object the original painting becomes silent, as silent as a movie poster or even a reproduction. What did the painting have that the poster didn't have? What, then, did it lose? Is this cause for alarm? In Shell Tones, it is!

Tone is often decisive in whether we love or dislike a story, novel, or even critical essay. Yet literary critics rarely treat tone as a necessary or important element of literary style or critique. There are surprisingly few analyses of what tone is, how texts produce tone, or the ways tone--as an essential element of narration--contributes to character, story, mood, and voice. Tone's 24 micro-chapters offer a playful, eclectic, and fast-paced guide into the creation of tone in a variety of modern and contemporary works of literature by such varied writers as Hemingway, Woolf, and Sedaris, as well as in criticism, advertising, and machine-authored texts. Judith Roof shows how tone is a crucial element in all writing, as it produces the illusion of a telling voice; creates a sense of character, personality, and attitude; inflects events recounted; anticipates certain directions and possibilities; and creates an ambiance that simultaneously produces, enables, and shapes narratives and characters. Tone gives us a lively and original way to rethink the practice of literary criticism.