Blindness - Jose Saramago, trans. Giovanni Pontiero
Blindness - Jose Saramago, trans. Giovanni Pontiero
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 assaulting 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 is a powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses - and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit.
I'm kind of not too sure what to say about this book as a whole. In a way it was kind of disjointed. They're in the hospital, and then they're not, and now they have a whole new set of challenges to deal with (To be fair, the exit wasn't quite as random as I made that sound, but it was still pretty abrupt.).
The writing style is... somewhat difficult to deal with, and definitely kind of annoying. Saramago uses no quotation marks, and doesn't start a new paragraph for each line of dialogue, either. He's also very fond of commas. So a conversation can be very difficult to follow, since the only way to tell that a new person is now speaking is a comma followed by a capital letter - of course, if the word "I" is used, that just confuses matters further. It also makes it a hard book to read in any other setting than, say, a lazy afternoon when you have nothing to do and nowhere to be, and can just keep reading until you feel like stopping. Interrupted or brief spurts of reading are a little harder, because a paragraph can easily go on for pages, so it's hard to find a good place to stop and put your bookmark. Any time you get bumped or otherwise momentarily distracted, it's also a bit of a challenge to figure out where the heck you were in this sea of words.
I have to admit that, because of the nature of the subject matter of he book, the way he handles dialogue is interesting. As a newly-blind person, one would have a certain amount of difficulty following conversations, especially those involving many people, and early on, when you haven't yet learned to recognize certain voices. And I would totally give Saramago credit for that choice, were it not for the fact that I know he writes like that all the time. So while it actually kind of works for this book, I still classify it as annoying.
Now, I gotta say that whoever wrote the blurb for this book really... sugar-coated what really happened to the women in this hospital. "Assault" doesn't really cover it. "Assaulting women," to me, says you don't wander the halls alone, in case you get jumped for a quickie you didn't want. Wat was done to these women is so far beyond that, in so many ways... I saw it coming, to some extent, and would have, even if the blurb had not pre-warned me, because when your thugs demand that you hand over everything you have of value right up front in exchange for your food, that's only going to suffice as payment for so long, and after that... When you have nothing material left, you go ofter other things, and women is usually the first thing on that list. I didn't quite expect it to the level it was, though. Saramago describes it as something to the effect of "everything that can be done to a woman and leave her alive." This isn't just rape; it's not just satisfying a urge. What was done to these women, even more so than most rape, had nothing to do with sex, and everything to do with power and destroying other people. And in a lot of ways, I kind of feel like Saramago didn't actually fully understand that, because after it was over, the women were physically hurt, yes, and even emotionally damaged, to a certain extent, but ultimately, they bounced back very quickly, and went about their business. I realize that in their situation, they kind of had to, in a way, so I can see how some of them might, even if it's just a matter of burying it for now to deal with it if a time of less crisis shows up, but there is no way that some of them, maybe even most of them, wouldn't have been utterly destroyed by what was done to them. For many women, a rape by a single man, with no previous connection, so no trust broken, is devastating and can take years to get over. Being raped repeatedly all night by almost two dozen men in a huge violent orgy would be so damaging, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, that you're not going to get over it in a matter of days. You're just not.
Furthermore, there are the men. When the thugs show up and demand that you hand over your women when requested in order to receive your food, when whether or not you eat depends on your women getting raped, just as a base, that is extremely emasculating. Furthermore, men are very territorial. They just are, as a general rule. With some exceptions, most men do not want to share their partners. If their woman gets raped, that's bad enough, because that will have an effect on her partner too. But, and here's the really tricky part, when your woman essentially agrees to be raped in exchange for food, she becomes a whore. Intellectually, you know that it's not by choice, and there's nothing either you or she can do about it, but somewhere deep in your mind remains the fact that she has given up her body in exchange for material gain. And that is going to cause internal conflict for these men, and it is going to have repercussions in their relationships. I'm not suggesting they would necessarily be irreparably damaged forever, but there would be consequences.
So yeah. On one hand, I am kind of glad Saramago didn't dwell on that part of the story for much longer than he did, but on the other, I do feel like he kind of ignored the ramifications of something like that, and I think that was a mistake. But plenty of other horrible things happened, from people starving to death, to people dying of infection, to people being shot by panicked soldiers, and maybe he sees the "assaulting of women" as just one more horrible thing. How do you rank horrible things, really? It's so subjective, and the worst thing for one person is not the worst thing for someone else.
Anyway, moving along, he did do a good job of painting a very bleak, very horrifying picture of what could happen, and likely would. There was nothing in this book (aside from what I mentioned above) that I found unrealistic, or that I am not quite sure would happen, more or less, if such an epidemic were to hit. And I do shudder to think of the clean-up that will have to be done when everyone recovers their sight.
One other thing I wanted to mention is one specific to translated works into English. It's something that actually did occur to me when I was reading the French translation of Inkheart, but now I know, at least, what this translator did with it. And that is the formal vs. informal "you." Most languages, at least the European ones - I don't know about the Asian or Middle Eastern ones - have a formal you and an informal you, and there is generally pretty strict protocol dictating their use. You use the informal with a child or someone who has given you permission to do so. You use the formal with pretty much everyone else, especially people you've just met, or your superiors/authority figures/etc. When someone gives you permission to use the informal, it's kind of a big deal. And anyone reading a book in a language that has that would understand. But English doesn't use that convention, and I've often wondered how it would be translated. Well, this translator, at least, chose to sub in the French, so you have a character saying, "Please call me 'tu.'" And I have to wonder how many English-speakers reading that would necessarily get it, and not just be confused. I guess monolingual people aren't that common anymore, but still. If you spoke no French, would that make any sense at all? I also find it interesting that the translator chose to sub in the French. The book was written in Portuguese, and published in English by an American publisher, so it sort of surprises me that they wouldn't sub in Spanish, if that's what they were going to do. French seems like an odd choice. But in any case, it's kind of a weird thing, that I suspect translators hate, because there just isn't a way of translating it into English in a way that really conveys the meaning of it. I'll have to ask about it when I go back to school.
OK, so I also just read another review of the book, and someone else's comments on it. Apparently the blind community is quite offended by the book, as it appears to portray blind people as helpless and almost animal, and with a tendency toward depraved, criminal behaviour. The initial reviewer pointed out that in a situation where everyone were to become suddenly blind, they would be pretty helpless, and when forced into unlivable conditions, they probably would become pretty depraved pretty quickly. However, the point remains valid that people who have been blind for a while have had the chance to adapt, and really are quite adept. But where were they. There was the one who was part of the thug group in the hospital, but he was the only one, it seemed. I suppose having previously-blind people to act as guides to the newly-blind might have taken away some of Saramago's parable-ness or something, but I do think leaving them out like that is a little weird, because they definitely would have a part to play in this story were it to happen in real life. I probably would have addressed that if I'd written this book. Another group missing, by the way, was children. There was the one boy, but what about all the others? There was pretty much no mention of any other children in this book, and that was also a little weird.
Next up: Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
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 assaulting 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 is a powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses - and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit.
I'm kind of not too sure what to say about this book as a whole. In a way it was kind of disjointed. They're in the hospital, and then they're not, and now they have a whole new set of challenges to deal with (To be fair, the exit wasn't quite as random as I made that sound, but it was still pretty abrupt.).
The writing style is... somewhat difficult to deal with, and definitely kind of annoying. Saramago uses no quotation marks, and doesn't start a new paragraph for each line of dialogue, either. He's also very fond of commas. So a conversation can be very difficult to follow, since the only way to tell that a new person is now speaking is a comma followed by a capital letter - of course, if the word "I" is used, that just confuses matters further. It also makes it a hard book to read in any other setting than, say, a lazy afternoon when you have nothing to do and nowhere to be, and can just keep reading until you feel like stopping. Interrupted or brief spurts of reading are a little harder, because a paragraph can easily go on for pages, so it's hard to find a good place to stop and put your bookmark. Any time you get bumped or otherwise momentarily distracted, it's also a bit of a challenge to figure out where the heck you were in this sea of words.
I have to admit that, because of the nature of the subject matter of he book, the way he handles dialogue is interesting. As a newly-blind person, one would have a certain amount of difficulty following conversations, especially those involving many people, and early on, when you haven't yet learned to recognize certain voices. And I would totally give Saramago credit for that choice, were it not for the fact that I know he writes like that all the time. So while it actually kind of works for this book, I still classify it as annoying.
Now, I gotta say that whoever wrote the blurb for this book really... sugar-coated what really happened to the women in this hospital. "Assault" doesn't really cover it. "Assaulting women," to me, says you don't wander the halls alone, in case you get jumped for a quickie you didn't want. Wat was done to these women is so far beyond that, in so many ways... I saw it coming, to some extent, and would have, even if the blurb had not pre-warned me, because when your thugs demand that you hand over everything you have of value right up front in exchange for your food, that's only going to suffice as payment for so long, and after that... When you have nothing material left, you go ofter other things, and women is usually the first thing on that list. I didn't quite expect it to the level it was, though. Saramago describes it as something to the effect of "everything that can be done to a woman and leave her alive." This isn't just rape; it's not just satisfying a urge. What was done to these women, even more so than most rape, had nothing to do with sex, and everything to do with power and destroying other people. And in a lot of ways, I kind of feel like Saramago didn't actually fully understand that, because after it was over, the women were physically hurt, yes, and even emotionally damaged, to a certain extent, but ultimately, they bounced back very quickly, and went about their business. I realize that in their situation, they kind of had to, in a way, so I can see how some of them might, even if it's just a matter of burying it for now to deal with it if a time of less crisis shows up, but there is no way that some of them, maybe even most of them, wouldn't have been utterly destroyed by what was done to them. For many women, a rape by a single man, with no previous connection, so no trust broken, is devastating and can take years to get over. Being raped repeatedly all night by almost two dozen men in a huge violent orgy would be so damaging, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, that you're not going to get over it in a matter of days. You're just not.
Furthermore, there are the men. When the thugs show up and demand that you hand over your women when requested in order to receive your food, when whether or not you eat depends on your women getting raped, just as a base, that is extremely emasculating. Furthermore, men are very territorial. They just are, as a general rule. With some exceptions, most men do not want to share their partners. If their woman gets raped, that's bad enough, because that will have an effect on her partner too. But, and here's the really tricky part, when your woman essentially agrees to be raped in exchange for food, she becomes a whore. Intellectually, you know that it's not by choice, and there's nothing either you or she can do about it, but somewhere deep in your mind remains the fact that she has given up her body in exchange for material gain. And that is going to cause internal conflict for these men, and it is going to have repercussions in their relationships. I'm not suggesting they would necessarily be irreparably damaged forever, but there would be consequences.
So yeah. On one hand, I am kind of glad Saramago didn't dwell on that part of the story for much longer than he did, but on the other, I do feel like he kind of ignored the ramifications of something like that, and I think that was a mistake. But plenty of other horrible things happened, from people starving to death, to people dying of infection, to people being shot by panicked soldiers, and maybe he sees the "assaulting of women" as just one more horrible thing. How do you rank horrible things, really? It's so subjective, and the worst thing for one person is not the worst thing for someone else.
Anyway, moving along, he did do a good job of painting a very bleak, very horrifying picture of what could happen, and likely would. There was nothing in this book (aside from what I mentioned above) that I found unrealistic, or that I am not quite sure would happen, more or less, if such an epidemic were to hit. And I do shudder to think of the clean-up that will have to be done when everyone recovers their sight.
One other thing I wanted to mention is one specific to translated works into English. It's something that actually did occur to me when I was reading the French translation of Inkheart, but now I know, at least, what this translator did with it. And that is the formal vs. informal "you." Most languages, at least the European ones - I don't know about the Asian or Middle Eastern ones - have a formal you and an informal you, and there is generally pretty strict protocol dictating their use. You use the informal with a child or someone who has given you permission to do so. You use the formal with pretty much everyone else, especially people you've just met, or your superiors/authority figures/etc. When someone gives you permission to use the informal, it's kind of a big deal. And anyone reading a book in a language that has that would understand. But English doesn't use that convention, and I've often wondered how it would be translated. Well, this translator, at least, chose to sub in the French, so you have a character saying, "Please call me 'tu.'" And I have to wonder how many English-speakers reading that would necessarily get it, and not just be confused. I guess monolingual people aren't that common anymore, but still. If you spoke no French, would that make any sense at all? I also find it interesting that the translator chose to sub in the French. The book was written in Portuguese, and published in English by an American publisher, so it sort of surprises me that they wouldn't sub in Spanish, if that's what they were going to do. French seems like an odd choice. But in any case, it's kind of a weird thing, that I suspect translators hate, because there just isn't a way of translating it into English in a way that really conveys the meaning of it. I'll have to ask about it when I go back to school.
OK, so I also just read another review of the book, and someone else's comments on it. Apparently the blind community is quite offended by the book, as it appears to portray blind people as helpless and almost animal, and with a tendency toward depraved, criminal behaviour. The initial reviewer pointed out that in a situation where everyone were to become suddenly blind, they would be pretty helpless, and when forced into unlivable conditions, they probably would become pretty depraved pretty quickly. However, the point remains valid that people who have been blind for a while have had the chance to adapt, and really are quite adept. But where were they. There was the one who was part of the thug group in the hospital, but he was the only one, it seemed. I suppose having previously-blind people to act as guides to the newly-blind might have taken away some of Saramago's parable-ness or something, but I do think leaving them out like that is a little weird, because they definitely would have a part to play in this story were it to happen in real life. I probably would have addressed that if I'd written this book. Another group missing, by the way, was children. There was the one boy, but what about all the others? There was pretty much no mention of any other children in this book, and that was also a little weird.
Next up: Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman