Blindness
Jose Saramago
What a disturbing, beautiful, mesmerizing book.
As I have mentioned earlier, I am trying to acquaint myself with more recent Nobel laureates (See The Tin Drum), so I took on Saramago’s Blindness. A reader leaves this book forever changed, and while I loathe using such a hackneyed phrase, it is nevertheless true here.
The book centers on an anonymous city; the characters are of no nationality, and it is this universality which adds to the terror of the tale. This is the story of everyone.
At the beginning of the novel, a man sitting in his car waiting for a traffic light to change is suddenly struck blind with a “white blindness.” The doctor can find no cause for his blindness. Soon, others are struck, and panic spreads. Not knowing the cause of the disease or how it is spread, frightened officials corral all of the blind into an abandoned mental asylum. If they try to escape, they will be shot. The terror has begun. Soon their limited space is overcrowded, and opportunists try to take advantage of the situation. It seems even the blind can be driven to the most brutal acts of desperation; eyes are not required. Interestingly, one “blind” woman can see—the wife of the first man struck blind pretends to have lost her sight so she can remain with her husband. Unfortunately, her sight forces her to witness some of the most disturbing acts I have read in fiction.
Saramago’s style is also disturbing. Interestingly enough, I enjoyed his style even though I hate similar devices in other authors. There are no paragraphs in Blindness; rather, it is just one, long, block of text. Punctuation is also limited, including quotation marks. You might think this makes reading difficult, but it doesn’t.
While this tale is horrifying on its own (after awhile, the illness spreads so that it is impossible to contain; people have gone blind while just walking in the streets and are trapped, unable to find home. It becomes a world where every man must fight for himself, and kindness is rare), Saramago is too good of an author to simply present a creepy story without deeper implications. Instead, this story is more, and its themes are important to anyone who strives to be more than just human.
In a nutshell: read it read it read it.
Bibliolatry Scale: 6 out of 6. Perfection.
2 comments:
I am not really sure why I bought a copy of this book. I saw this book listed on one of those meme's that is going around. You may know the one. It has a list of books and you indicate whether you've read them or not, whether you want to bother reading them or not, and then highlight the authors you've never heard of. Anyhow, Jose Saramago was one of the authors I had never heard of and so I decided I should buy his book. Only after reading the back and deciding it might be worthwhile, that is.
I am glad to see that you enjoyed it so much--that makes me feel justified in my impuslive purchase.
Having a tough time getting through this one...waiting for it to pick up. I wont give up though!
Jason in Naples
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