The plot centers on two music students, played in the movie by Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor, who fall in love. They spend a summer roaming the Maine woods while collecting folks songs recorded on wax cylinders—the earliest technology for recording sound.
Decades later, the cylinders are discovered in the basement of a house in Brunswick, stirring old memories and longings.
In an interview with the Portland Press Herald, Shattuck spoke of his decision to set the story in Maine and his close ties to the state. “I’m a very New England writer, and the landscape is always kind of a character in my writing,” he said. “When you drive from Massachusetts and you drive north to Maine, there’s always that moment when the windows are rolled down and you can smell the forest.”
Before becoming a full-time writer, Shattuck studied Arctic terns as an ornithological field assistant on a Maine island, completed an artists’ residency in Winter Harbor, and made visits to an uncle in Damariscotta. He also plays the banjo and has fond memories of playing folk music with Maine musicians.
As he created the story, Shattuck said he wanted to find a place with a rich history of music that was also distant enough that it would warrant music collectors going and collecting folk song. “And I know there are a lot of phonograph wax cylinder folk songs from Maine.”
As for his decision to set part of the story at Bowdoin College, Shattuck said the place left a lasting impression on him after he toured the campus as a high school student. “It always seemed like a really fun liberal arts college to go to… I don’t know, maybe I could teach there or something, for a semester.”
The History of Sound is scheduled to be released in theaters throughout the US on September 12, 2025.
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