Blindness (Harvest Book)
by Jose Saramago
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Book Reviews of Blindness (Harvest Book)
Book Review: A surprise! ...a page-turner with brains and soul...
Summary: 5 Stars
For months I delayed cracking the cover of "Blindness." After all, based on the book's description, the white blindness at the center of the story was obviously an allegory for something or other, and Saramago won the Nobel Prize for literature. The two combined seemed a sure recipe for disaster, a guarantee that the book would be heavy-handed and awkward, top-heavy with political messages, and as wooden as a dime-store Indian.But, lo! A surprise! Sure, blindness is an allegory; sure, the book is at times heavy-handed and awkward. But Saramago's passionate storytelling and aching humanity paces the book brilliantly. This is a page-turner with brains and soul, "Lord of the Flies" meets Virginia Woolf. If this book were a woman, she'd be a stunning organic farmer/carpenter with a mysterious past-a woman who drinks tea and bets the horses.
But I digress.
Saramago's prose structure, oft described as a handicap in reader reviews, is perfectly suitable to the novel. Saramago tosses quotes, names, and paragraph breaks overboard, which effectively throws a burlap sack over our reader's eyes, leaving us sightless in the midst of swirling, dangerous drama. You can hear voices, but you can't identify their origin. You can imagine your confines, but only after a serious amount of groping and blundering into sharp-edged objects.
But simultaneously, you are the doctor's wife's eyes, and you share her pain at being able to view the horror of the blindness. You witness the moral decrepitude of your fellow human being. You witness rape. You witness murder. You watch children crap all over themselves, and feel their burning humiliation.
Unlike "Lord of the Flies," even the most inhuman brutes in these troubled times show glorious rays of divinity. Even the big lug, the ringleader, displays his vital spark at the moment of his death-which occurs at the climax of a rape. The old woman who eats raw chickens and rabbits and leaves their bones scattered about the house like some fairy-book witch, is an object of pity rather than scorn, despite her vicious selfishness.
All in all, "Blindness" is a brilliant book. I plan to go out and read more of his work...
Book Review: Am I blind?
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm very glad to be done with this book, though I'm not quite sure that I'm glad to have read it. Some people hold this novel up as some kind of a modern-day classic, on par with Camus and Dante, but I don't really see it. (Am I blind?)True, Saramago pulled a neat narrative trick with the absence of quotation marks, which forces the reader to stumble through the novel like one who's lost his sight. Many found this device annoying, but I got used to it rather quickly. Another trick that added to the feeling of blindness was the minimal amount of visual description in the novel. Clever, sure, but this also left the novel feeling lifeless and, well, nondescript. And speaking of nondescript, many of the characters in the book were never fully fleshed out. Again, this is something that Saramago probably did on purpose to instill a feeling of blindness, but at a huge sacrifice. We're never told enough about the characters in the novel to care strongly about them on an individual basis. One notable exception is the doctor's wife, but there are six other main characters in the novel that, by the end, the reader doesn't know a whole lot about.
The novel starts off slowly, then builds momentum when the blind are forced into a mental institution together. Pretty much the entire time they were in the institution, about half the novel, I was enthralled. However, when they leave the institution to roam the city they begin with this morose, fatalistic philosophizing that ends up putting a real drain on things. At this point, the novel desperately needed some humor, even if it was pitch black. Again, I know why Saramago built the novel in this way, and yes it fits and makes sense, but it's hard to take page after page after page of this. It's not so much the apocalyptic filth that I had the problem with; rather it was the mortal insights that they kept spouting ad nauseam.
I do think this novel has merit. It is insightful and entertaining, to a point. I encourage interested parties to read it for themselves - chances are you'll like it more than I did. Many think "Blindness" is an important piece of literature. I only wish I felt the same way.
Book Review: "If you can see, look. If you can look, observe."
Summary: 5 Stars
"Blindness" is my first reading of anything by Saramago. After thumbing through it in the bookstore and looking at its sheer density, seeming lack of dialog, paragraphs, and usual punctuation, I decided to leave it alone, until now.
This tale of a pandemic of blindness in an anonymous country is absolutely terrifying. Randomly the white blindness comes and a nation is transformed. The thin veneer of civilized behavior is taken away as one, then another, then another is struck blind with amazing efficiency. None of the characters is given a name. They are described only by their attributes, such as "the boy with the squint" or "the doctor" or "the girl with the dark glasses," yet all emerge as distinct personalities. As I drifted deeper and deeper into this well of blindness, I realized that every stylistic nuance the author used was plotted to merge me into the experience of complete blindness, confusion, frustration, and chaos. Eventually only one pair of eyes is able to see. Is there any reason why this is so? None is given.
The government in all its paternal and dictatorial wisdom decides to isolate the victims and confine them in an abandoned mental asylum. The asylum is guarded by terrified soldiers. Soon the walls are bursting with victims, all blind, all helpless but one. There the story of the twentieth century itself unwinds in stark terror. Utter depravity takes root, and control of the food supply is used as the ultimate source of power over almost everyone. The drive for survival forces the interred to lose all sense of self-respect and dignity. Yet within this absolute house of horrors are acts of amazing kindness and courage, pity and mercy. And these are what redeem humanity from itself. We could be inside Hitler's concentration camps or Bush's Guantanamo or Stalin's gulag. The feelings generated in Saramago's asylum take you to the very edge of endurance.
This novel goes right to the heart of what it means to be alive, to be cruel or kind, to be civilized or not. It is truly a shattering and extraordinary work. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Book Review: A Harrowing, but Beautiful Book
Summary: 4 Stars
What an amazing work of fiction! This is a very tough read, not only because of Saramago's use of language, but also because of its subject matter. The language, however, perfectly matches the themes of the book and the characters, while stumbling blindly (literally and figuratively!), attempting to exist in a strange new world of confusion and chaos, each have something to teach the thoughtful reader. The characters have only their personalities and physical traits to identify them; none are named. I was reminded of works like the "Canterbury Tales," "Pilgrim's Progress," and even "The Fairie Queene" in that this novel is also the tale of a journey, and a parable for our times. In their movement through blindness, despair, pain, frustration and, eventually, redemption and/or death, the characters mirror the best and worst in all of us. Each in his own way is an "Everyman," showing us how each individual can have an impact on the society as a whole, for better or for worse. The blindness is a disease of the body and the spirit, contagious and ubiquitous. It is to be feared not only for the obvious reasons, because it takes away sight, but for what it reveals in each person it strikes. Stripped of their sight, these people are then forced to come to grips with their individual demons. Some manage better than others, rising to the occasion, while others fall from grace quickly and almost effortlessly.
Sometimes I had to take a break from my reading, because the book was so intense and I got so wrapped up in the experiences of the characters that I often felt like I was in the middle of it myself. Very tough to take, sometimes, but so compelling that I had to continue to read.
"Blindness" is the first book I've ever read by Jose Saramago (I, too, am wondering why it's taken me so long to discover him!), but after having read it, I've already purchased "Baltasar & Blimunda" and "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ." Saramago is obviously an inventive and thought-provoking writer, one whose works I'd like to continue to explore.
Book Review: Blind As A Bat
Summary: 4 Stars
I come to Saramago late. He has obviously been a prolific author, whose great talents brought him to the attention of the Nobel committee. I recently picked this book up, read it quickly, and found it intriguing. No doubt it will make an exciting film. Its basic plot is by now well-known; surely I needn't write another summary.The book is certainly well-written, although it must be said that this is an English translation. No doubt much is lost in word-play, subtlety, and so on. The book is exciting. I didn't find it especially insightful, deep, moving , and even meaningful. It belongs to that genre of fiction that carries a heavy load. It is an allegory, not unlike "Animal Farm " or "Lord of the Flies," which is to say that there is a deliberate lack of psychological insight in favor of sweeping actions that are meant to hint at larger meanings about mankind instead of about individuals. AS the society descends into chaos, we have brilliantly disturbing accounts of human manipulation and violence. The power of the mob comes to the fore and it is chillingly rendered, showing if nothing else what we are really like and really capable of. These sections could have been written by an American at the mid-point of the 20th century given our celebration of these sorts of depictions, especially on film. It's grim picture of mankind. It is hard to believe that any one over 12 would doubt that this is precisely how people behave under duress. What makes this especially deplorable as a picture of human beings is its accuracy; anyone who watched Katrina unfold knows all too well that an incompetent government unwilling or unable to act leaves its people vulnerable to hoodlums, rapists, and killers. Left without water and food, the New Orleans coliseum dwellers more or less lived through what is depicted here by Saramago's all too vivid and accurate imagination. Here Saramago, it seems to me, sees that in the modern age we live in danger not of a Hitlerean take-over, but in danger of total abandonment, where in the face of a real national disaster our government simply turns off the phones and leaves us to fend for ourselves.