"Allen Shawn is afraid of heights, water, fields, parking lots, tunnels, and unknown roads. He avoids subways, elevators, and bridges. He is afraid of both closed and open spaces and of any form of isolation--yet this is a memoir of enormous bravery. He is the son of New Yorker editor William Shawn and brother to playwright/actor Wallace Shawn. His twin sister is autistic. His father led a double life that introduced strict taboos to his household. Shawn examines these influences, his father's and mother's phobias, and his own struggle with agoraphobia with generosity, wit, and insight, interwoven with both Freudian psychology and cutting-edge brain research, attempting to decipher the psychological and biological puzzles that have plagued him for so long

When Allen Shawn and his twin sister, Mary, were two, she began exhibiting signs of what would be diagnosed many years later as autism. At the age of eight, with almost no warning, her parents sent Mary to a residential treatment center, to never live at home again. Fifty years later, Shawn realized that his fate was inextricably linked to his sister's, and that their natures were far from being different.

"A poignant, compelling, and clear-eyed memoir of a life in music, with the dogged pursuit of composing at its center. Perhaps no art form has ever splintered into as many factions, genres, languages, philosophies, and mutually exclusive audiences as the art of music did in the mid-twentieth century. Allen Shawn's memoir fascinatingly evokes this tumultuous time, while weaving together his art and his life, hinting at their unexpected and sometimes paradoxical interconnections. Shawn grew up in an atmosphere of cultural privilege in New York City, the son of New Yorker editor William Shawn. An instinctive composing prodigy at age ten, it took him until the age of thirty to compose music he was proud of. Shawn sketches his childhood and long apprenticeship, his experiences composing for theater, dance, and concert hall, his forty years as a teacher at Bennington College, and his unexpected emergence as a writer. The book balances an account of his musical evolution, ups and downs, and life choices, offering glimpses into family life and of the many people with whom he interacted, including Leon Kirchner, Earl Kim, Nadia Boulanger, Pierre Petit, Jacques-Louis Monod, J. D. Salinger, John Updike, Benny Goodman, Louis Malle, and Vivian Fine. Along the way, Shawn offers reflections on such issues as social class, aging, loneliness, politics, and music education. In The Realm of Tones: A Composer's Memoir is a unique and touching account of one individual's internal search for self-expression and self-understanding, and of his effort to construct a life around it"--