The many voices of “A Jericho’s Cobble”

Tom Shachtman read from his new book, “A Jericho’s Cobble Miscellany,” at the Scoville Memorial Library on Sunday, May 17.

Shachtman and Harriet Shelane read excerpts from the points of view of an 18th-century settler in the wilds of New England, a contemporary high school senior who cannot wait to get herself out of town, a Native American sachem and an upright piano.

The book tells the story of a fictional New England village that Shachtman said he imagines as being about 20 miles east of Great Barrington.

It is a tale told through several genres: fiction, newspaper stories, oral histories, poetry, plays and emails.

Shachtman said he was inspired by Edgar Lee Masters’ “Spoon River Anthology,” in which small-town Americans’ stories are told in free-verse form by the deceased.

“I thought it was a wonderful idea, but I didn’t want everybody to be dead.”

Shachtman said there are more than 100 distinct voices in the book and that he began with 50 to 100 pages of notes on all sorts of topics.

“It’s not one story. It’s many stories. That’s why it took five years.”

Shachtman was asked how closely Salisbury resembles Jericho’s Cobble.

“Of course there are similarities. I’ve lived here for 30 years.”

He said certain stories in the book, such as an arson attack at the Town Hall and the transformation of the local weekly newspaper from a for-profit to a nonprofit, have obvious local precedents.

“But these are not unique to us,” he added.

About that upright piano: Shachtman paused before reading that particular excerpt and looked at the audience.

“Not all the speakers are living or dead. Some are inanimate objects.”

He then read “An Upright’s Lament.”

“I haven’t been seriously caressed in a long time,” the passage begins.

The piano, a 1903 Hamilton, goes on to say it has been relegated to “the seldom-used back dining room of the Grey Griffon Inn with its fading wallpaper.”

“In my heyday, when many people still knew how to play a piano, I was the focus of attention in the pub, where late of an evening, after enough alcohol had been downed, there would always be someone opening me up and striking my keys, to general enjoyment.”

But times have changed, and the piano is not optimistic.

“I fear the coming winter’s continuously roaring fires in the inn’s many fireplaces: Their dry heat will wick away the last bit of moisture from my woods, leaving me fit only for the garbage heap and the lumber pile.”