Blindness (Movie Tie-In)
by Jose Saramago
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jose SaramagoEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-09-02
ISBN: 0156035588
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Mariner Books
Book Reviews of Blindness (Movie Tie-In)
Book Review: "We shall go mad with horror, he thought."
Summary: 5 Stars
"Some will die sooner if we go there, said the first blind man, Anyone who is going to die is already dead and does not know it, That we're going to die is something we know from the moment we are born, That's why, in some ways, it's as if we were born dead" . . .
It is an imperative difficulty, trying to matter in the 21st century, as I'm sure it was an issue the creative dealt with before and during the turn of the century. Saramago, God-hating, Communist-affiliated pessimist, would probably argue the same, or perhaps he would be courageous enough to avoid the issue. In Blindness, his novel that is more supernatural parable than direct confrontation to the realm of creativity, succeeds because of its creativity, but it is more importantly successful because it is of the highest forms of literature-the style of the piece binds the book together, elevating the masterfully haunting ideas within.
Anyone can write a novel about psycho-social situations, particularly in confined, experimental settings (see Skinner, or Orwell, or Huxley, or even Steinbeck!), and anyone can write a novel about the depressed end of humanity (most sci-fi books do it, and do it very well), but to take these ideas, place them in a story woven with intimate details but through a narrator that is as displaced as the reader-that is trying, a task that Saramago achieves perhaps because of his pessimism, or perhaps because he has seen, in Portugal and elsewhere, the effects of exile in his own life (he has displaced himself intentionally in clash with his government and political views).
There are numerous ways to approach this book, but the difficulty in describing it without giving it away is equally immense as the book's very own concept of construction. Its architecture is a reminder that majority, but not all of, the book's plot takes place inside a mental institute, where the narrator's own blindness allows the reader the chance to get a sense of how it must feel in a world where an epidemic of "the white blindness" has confined certain "infected" individuals, forced by the military (guns) and later themselves (pipes, masculinity) in an enclosed space where conflicts abound. The biggest? How do we care for ourselves? We take for granted that we can perceive and know ourselves through our five senses, but Saramago's concern is that we don't know ourselves at all. And this conflict is even more challenging to both the reader and the characters of the story when we realize we are indeed starting to know some of the characters, all who brilliantly have been even more displaced by their lack of proper noun names, their distinctive few traits overshadowing their minor traits (which still, mind you, do come out eventually), and the squalor with which we see time move about even faster than it does with sight.
In trying to review the genius of this book, it is important not to give away too much. The crisp sentences, with Homeric descriptions, the rhythm that reads more often than not like poetry or chantings, and the vague but gritty realism all turn this book into a snowball effect that fortunately is more open-ended, ambiguous, and ambitious, than any book I have read in a long time. Archetypes abound. Major and minor lessons are learned (for example, humanity's cruelty toward one another, or how nasty the human body really can be), and the ride is intense from the beginning to the end. The crisis and climax of the book? Unforgettable. Read this but read it to mean something for you. This book is meant for discussing. This book is meant as a gateway. This book is meant to be shared.
For fans of: magical realism and the fantastical; of Nobel Laureates; of parables and the supernatural.
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