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Interviews | June 19, 2009

Dave: IMG Jim Lynch Makes Landscape Art... Out of Text



jimlynchIf Carl Hiaasen set one of his novels on a residential stretch of boundary line between British Columbia and Washington, or if Richard Russo's characters had relatives in the Pacific Northwest, the result might be something like Jim Lynch's Border Songs. Continue »
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23 Local Warehouse Literature- A to Z


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Blindness

by Jose Saramago

Blindness Cover

Awards

Winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers-among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears-through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses-and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit. The stunningly powerful novel of man's will to survive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Review:

"Beautifully written in a concise, haunting prose...this unsettling, highly original work is essential reading." Library Journal

Review:

"Saramago's Blindness is the best novel I've read since Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Love in the Time of Cholera. It is a novel of enormous skill and authority....Like all great books it is simultaneously contemporary and timeless, and ambitiously confronts the human condition without a false note struck anywhere. Saramago is one of the great writers of our time, and Blindness, ironically is the product of his extraordinary vision." David Guterson, author of Snow Falling on Cedars

Review:

"Blindness may be as revolutionary in its own way and time as were, say, The Trial and The Plague were in theirs. Another masterpiece." Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Review:

"Saramago writes phantasmagoria — in the midst of the most astonishing fantasy he has a meticulous sense of detail. It's very eloquent stuff." Harold Bloom, author of The Western Canon

Review:

"It is the voice of Blindness that gives it its charm. By turns ironic, humorous and frank, there is a kind of wink of humor between author and reader that is perfectly imbued with fury at the excesses of the current century. Blindness reminds me of Kafka roaring with laughter as he read his stories to his friends....Blindness' impact carries the force of an author whose sensibility is significant." The Washington Post

Review:

"Blindness is a shattering work by a literary master." The Boston Globe

Review:

"More frightening than Stephen King, as unrelenting as a bad dream, José Saramago's 'Blindness' politely rubs our faces in apocalypse....A metaphor like 'white blindness' might easily seem forced or labored, but Saramago makes it live by focusing on the stubbornly literal; his account of a clump of newly blind people trying to find their way to food or to the bathroom provides some surprisingly gripping passages. While this epidemic has a clear symbolic burden, it's also a real and very inconvenient affliction." Salon

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 6 comments:
Katherine Adams, January 7, 2009 (view all comments by Katherine Adams)
Perhaps I've watched too many "Twilight Zone" marathons. Perhaps I just like consistent punctuation. I definitely don't need the author to hit me over the head with the obvious problems (particularly physical situations involving the bowels) that a sudden and unexplained blindness epidemic would unleash on the public.

Whatever the case, I'm curious why this particular novel received such acclaim. The plot is certainly unique in that only one character is unaffected by the "plague," and a lot of the prose is terrific.

My time wasn't wasted readng the book; I just expected quite a bit more from such a respected author, and the novel that received so many awards.

This is one of those times I'll probably see the movie; perhaps it will help me envision the book differently in retrospect.
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(2 of 5 readers found this comment helpful)
Shoshana, September 14, 2008 (view all comments by Shoshana)
Blindness is an example of ray gun science fiction ("What if there were an awesome ray gun?!"), that is, the story's reason for existing is to answer the "what if?" In science fiction, the impetus of this subgenre is often an invention, a new discovery, or contact with aliens. Saramago's device is a sudden, contagious blindness of unknown etiology and mechanism. This is fine so far as it goes. McCarthy's The Road relies on a similar narrative strategy ("What if there were a cataclysmic event?") In this case, the technique allows the author to imagine a cascade of social and cultural events that would follow from the original event (again, similar to The Road). This is fine so far as it goes. Saramago does a good job of envisioning the increasingly dire circumstances of the protagonists, and the plot is sufficiently engrossing. However, Blindness shares several of The Road's flaws: There is minimal punctuation (which in this case, at least provides the reader with a parallel visual impairment), the characters' voices and personalities are largely interchangeable, and the resolution, while different in kind from McCarthy's, provokes a similar disappointment--the return to the story's "home" is too tidy and oversimplified, and ultimately demonstrates the author's failure of creativity, boldness, or both. Call it a 3/5 star read: Not bad, but not especially memorable, either.
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Megan Willis, September 28, 2007 (view all comments by Megan Willis)
Saramago's frightening work of a world caught in white blindness is graphic to a point where the reader feels uncomfartably trapped in the confines of its pages. The work is ultimately brilliant in its use of one women's healthy eyes to uncover the horror of her companions' whited out world. "Blindness" is unforgettable read that explores variations in human character critically and realistically.
Saramago relies only on the period and comma, but I found his work easily read. Just be prepared for no quotation marks and hardly any clues as to who is speaking (although they are there when necessary). Run-on are also prevalent throughout. It's his style and the flow is easily followed.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780156007757
Translator:
Pontiero, Giovanni
Author:
Pontiero, Giovanni
Author:
Saramago, Jose
Publisher:
Harvest Books
Location:
San Diego :
Subject:
General
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
Continental european fiction (fictional works
Subject:
Psychological fiction
Subject:
Blindness
Subject:
Allegories
Edition Number:
1st Harvest ed.
Series:
Harvest Book
Series Volume:
2952-1
Publication Date:
October 1999
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Pages:
352
Dimensions:
8.03x5.28x.88 in. .73 lbs.

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