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A review by rbcp82
Seeing by José Saramago
5.0
Two things first:
1) I was surprised to find a review of this book by Ursula LeGuin in the Guardian.
2) The novel has the best epigram:
Let's howl, said the dog
---- The Book of Voices
Writer of allegory, but super realist in regards to human nature. "...not only does the universe have its own laws, all of them indifferent to the contradictory dreams and desires of humanity, and in the formulation of which we contribute not one iota, apart, that is, from the words by which we clumsily name them..."
threat to the stability of the system; a brutal blow against the democratic normality.
what can't be cured must be endured
Like Thomas Bernhard and Roberto Bolano, Jose Saramago is one of the most distinguished distinguishable writer, mainly due to his distinctive use of syntax in narrative. When I was in my 20s, I read several novels of his, much to my liking, and his novel "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ," still lingers in my soul, the book more than any others that confirmed and supported my view on religion.
As can be seen from a similar cover, "Seeing" is a companion piece to "Blindness," his most well-known work. I read this in 2020, during the pandemic and racial turmoil due to police violence in the U.S.A. It was fortunately for me to have found this book at this very moment.
The author never reveals what caused this plague of blank ballot.
Scapegoat...
...that the proof will appear when it's needed...
...the voters, who are the supreme defenders of democracy. P. 6
...what is happening here could cross the border and spread like a modern-day black death... P. 51
...the simple right not to follow any consensually established opinion. P. 61
... the immediate removal of the government to another city, which will become the country's new capital, the withdrawal of all the armed forces still in place, and the withdrawal of all police forces, this radical action will mean that the rebel city will be left entirely to its own devices...
The most common occurrence in this world of ours, in these days of stumbling blindly forward, is to come across men and women mature in years and ripe in prosperity, who, at eighteen, were not just beaming beacons of style, but also, and perhaps above all, bold revolutionaries determined to bring down the system supported by their parents and to replace it, at last, with a fraternal paradise, but who are now equally firmly attached to convictions and practices which, having warmed up and flexed their muscles on any of the many available versions of moderate conservatism, become, in time, pure egotism of the most obscene and reactionary kind. P.99
It seemed that the police were, after all, not essential for the city's security, that the population itself, spontaneously and in a more or less organized manner, had taken over their work as vigilantes. P. 102
"Bring me results and I won't ask by what means you obtained them."
...That there are cases when the sentence has been handed down before the crime has even been committed... P. 229
...If there's no guilty party, we can't invent one... <-- Police superintendent.
...But it's not only when we have no eyes that we don't know where we're going...
...As I've learned in this job, not only are the people in government never put off by what we judge to be absurd, they make use of absurdities to dull consciences and to destroy reason... P. 268
...how often fears come to sour our life and prove, in the end, to have no foundation, no reason to exist. P. 300
...no doubt, of a professional criminal of the worst kind
...I can understand that necessity knows no law, that the ends justify the means.
Ending is too much.
1) I was surprised to find a review of this book by Ursula LeGuin in the Guardian.
2) The novel has the best epigram:
Let's howl, said the dog
---- The Book of Voices
Writer of allegory, but super realist in regards to human nature. "...not only does the universe have its own laws, all of them indifferent to the contradictory dreams and desires of humanity, and in the formulation of which we contribute not one iota, apart, that is, from the words by which we clumsily name them..."
threat to the stability of the system; a brutal blow against the democratic normality.
what can't be cured must be endured
Like Thomas Bernhard and Roberto Bolano, Jose Saramago is one of the most distinguished distinguishable writer, mainly due to his distinctive use of syntax in narrative. When I was in my 20s, I read several novels of his, much to my liking, and his novel "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ," still lingers in my soul, the book more than any others that confirmed and supported my view on religion.
As can be seen from a similar cover, "Seeing" is a companion piece to "Blindness," his most well-known work. I read this in 2020, during the pandemic and racial turmoil due to police violence in the U.S.A. It was fortunately for me to have found this book at this very moment.
The author never reveals what caused this plague of blank ballot.
Scapegoat...
...that the proof will appear when it's needed...
...the voters, who are the supreme defenders of democracy. P. 6
...what is happening here could cross the border and spread like a modern-day black death... P. 51
...the simple right not to follow any consensually established opinion. P. 61
... the immediate removal of the government to another city, which will become the country's new capital, the withdrawal of all the armed forces still in place, and the withdrawal of all police forces, this radical action will mean that the rebel city will be left entirely to its own devices...
The most common occurrence in this world of ours, in these days of stumbling blindly forward, is to come across men and women mature in years and ripe in prosperity, who, at eighteen, were not just beaming beacons of style, but also, and perhaps above all, bold revolutionaries determined to bring down the system supported by their parents and to replace it, at last, with a fraternal paradise, but who are now equally firmly attached to convictions and practices which, having warmed up and flexed their muscles on any of the many available versions of moderate conservatism, become, in time, pure egotism of the most obscene and reactionary kind. P.99
It seemed that the police were, after all, not essential for the city's security, that the population itself, spontaneously and in a more or less organized manner, had taken over their work as vigilantes. P. 102
"Bring me results and I won't ask by what means you obtained them."
...That there are cases when the sentence has been handed down before the crime has even been committed... P. 229
...If there's no guilty party, we can't invent one... <-- Police superintendent.
...But it's not only when we have no eyes that we don't know where we're going...
...As I've learned in this job, not only are the people in government never put off by what we judge to be absurd, they make use of absurdities to dull consciences and to destroy reason... P. 268
...how often fears come to sour our life and prove, in the end, to have no foundation, no reason to exist. P. 300
...no doubt, of a professional criminal of the worst kind
...I can understand that necessity knows no law, that the ends justify the means.
Ending is too much.