Review: "Blindness" by José Saramago

By writing a book where all but one character has suddenly been struck blind, Saramago presents himself with several challenges of technique. It is impressive to see a story written where visual descriptions have so little meaning and the best way of explaining events is to refer to tangible objects, sounds, feelings. Also an interesting literary choice is that up till more than half way through the book the characters are all passively acted upon, generally in increasingly negative ways as they are locked in an insane asylum and subject to the worst instincts of humanity in distress. While both these techniques challenge more conventional ways of storytelling, the second in particular made it difficult for me to really give myself to the story. We are generally given characters who have some realm of action that we can root for, and the choice to limit the protagonists to cowering in their blindness seems to suggest a moral stance on modern life and human ability that I personally don't agree with. Added to this is Saramago's slow and considered voice, page long paragraphs, punctuated regularly with commas, which read almost more like poetry than prose. While it is a unique and masterful narrative voice it was also somewhat distracting from reading the story itself- the language never quite disappeared (a problem I've had with all the Saramago I've read so far). Nonetheless, Saramago knows how to write a brilliant and gripping tale, and once the inmates finally escaped I was bound, curious to find out if they would survive and if everyone would regain their sight...



Here's also Walter Benjamin's 1940 Survey of French Literature and the discovery of some of Kafka's missing papers [via].

In further literary news, Salmon Rushdie wins the all-time best of Booker prize.