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David's Reviews > Blindness
Blindness
by
by
** spoiler alert **
Review updated January 10th 2008:
My track record with foreign Nobel laureates leaves something to be desired. Somewhere in a box in this apartment there is a book by Patrick White. I've read the first 30 pages three times. Every trip to the bookstore involves wilful ignoring of undoubtedly worthy offerings by Naguib Mahfouz and Wole Soyinka, with Orhan Pamuk joining the list of guilt triggers last year. If it weren't for my totally catholic reading tastes in college (Canetti, Sartre, Lessing, Gordimer, Grass, Hesse, Milosz), my record would be wretched indeed.
So I approached Saramago's "Blindness" with some trepidation and a slight "time to eat my vegetables" attitude. Sure, it came highly recommended by friends whose judgement I trust. But would that old Nobel jinx kick in again?
The short answer: No worries. I should have known that my friends wouldn't steer me wrong. I steamed through this book in less than 24 hours. A powerful and disturbing story, Saramago's parable draws you in and grips you. Written in a deceptively simple style, it's horrifying, but thought-provoking and completely plausible.
It has left me eager to read more of this author's work. I highly recommend it.
Added January 10th, 2008 [SPOILER ALERT]
There are two obvious points one could take issue with - why does the doctor's wife retain her sight throughout, and the general recovery at the end. Given the overall fable-like setting - neither of these issues bothered me particularly. The first seems completely essential - this character's humanity underscores the moral bankruptcy of the fear-induced government response, but also offers a note of hope in what would otherwise be a bleak and pointless story. The ending also seems to me to be dramatically necessary, similar to the rescue at the end of "Lord of the Flies", the book that "Blindness" reminds me of most closely.
The dramatic necessity of the restoration of normality is beautifully discussed in DeQuincey's essay "On the Knocking at the Gate in macbeth":
http://www.4literature.net/Thomas_De_...
My track record with foreign Nobel laureates leaves something to be desired. Somewhere in a box in this apartment there is a book by Patrick White. I've read the first 30 pages three times. Every trip to the bookstore involves wilful ignoring of undoubtedly worthy offerings by Naguib Mahfouz and Wole Soyinka, with Orhan Pamuk joining the list of guilt triggers last year. If it weren't for my totally catholic reading tastes in college (Canetti, Sartre, Lessing, Gordimer, Grass, Hesse, Milosz), my record would be wretched indeed.
So I approached Saramago's "Blindness" with some trepidation and a slight "time to eat my vegetables" attitude. Sure, it came highly recommended by friends whose judgement I trust. But would that old Nobel jinx kick in again?
The short answer: No worries. I should have known that my friends wouldn't steer me wrong. I steamed through this book in less than 24 hours. A powerful and disturbing story, Saramago's parable draws you in and grips you. Written in a deceptively simple style, it's horrifying, but thought-provoking and completely plausible.
It has left me eager to read more of this author's work. I highly recommend it.
Added January 10th, 2008 [SPOILER ALERT]
There are two obvious points one could take issue with - why does the doctor's wife retain her sight throughout, and the general recovery at the end. Given the overall fable-like setting - neither of these issues bothered me particularly. The first seems completely essential - this character's humanity underscores the moral bankruptcy of the fear-induced government response, but also offers a note of hope in what would otherwise be a bleak and pointless story. The ending also seems to me to be dramatically necessary, similar to the rescue at the end of "Lord of the Flies", the book that "Blindness" reminds me of most closely.
The dramatic necessity of the restoration of normality is beautifully discussed in DeQuincey's essay "On the Knocking at the Gate in macbeth":
http://www.4literature.net/Thomas_De_...
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
October 1, 2007
–
Finished Reading
October 23, 2007
– Shelved
I think Saramago had the doctor's wife retain her sight because we the readers needed someone's eyes through which to see the events.