Looking For Peace And Quiet At Home

Jonathan Prager is a 40-something Manhattan comedian in search of silence.

"His last apartment, he said, was a living hell. He could hear the squeak of his neighbors' faucets, the ring of their phone and the clatter of the plastic marbles their child would drop on the floor....(He has a house in Connecticut, but he said he found no peace there, either. There are lawn mowers and leaf blowers and a neighbor's pool with a noisy filter.)"

"Like many before him, Mr. Prager was learning that domestic sonic bliss might be attainable, but at a price. Quiet has always been a luxury in cities. In New York, "neighbor noise" competes with outside noise to make noise complaints the No. 1 reason people call the city's environmental complaint line.

And quiet is now the consummate domestic prize in the ever-expanding exurbs, where family members rattling around in cavernous great rooms and pursuing separate amusements - their TiVo'd movies, their pinging Xboxes, their YouTube-blaring computers - are driving one another crazy."