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A review by bajammies
Blindness by José Saramago
I just... don't know how to rate this. "I wanted to throw it across the room in primal frustration" isn't a star option, and neither is "It crawled under my skin, an inoperable cyst of thought". I'm being melodramatic. But the book took me hostage and drove me there.
First, the anger.
Its grammatical style is despicable, mostly because I don't buy it as anything other than gimmick. If Saramago intended to convey blindness to the reader, the last thing he should have done is remove punctuation. It just doesn't work! I was continually dragged out of the story to retrace my way laboriously through the words I'd just read. It was exhausting, and it made me artificially conscious of my sight at all times. Was this your intention, Jose? If so, for the love of mercy, why? P.S. I hate you. P.P.S. Nothing personal, I'm sure you're a nice Portuguese man.
The book is obnoxiously cynical about the inherent morality of human beings. Disaster stories are a great backdrop for good versus evil struggles; the first three-quarters of this story, the main characters succumb to evil (through complacency and senseless "martyrdom") with frustratingly little provocation, and in the last quarter, evil is inexplicably underrepresented. It's as though Saramago's saying human goodness can't stand up to a fight. Which makes me want to punch him in the face a little, allegorically speaking.
Second, the pondering.
This book is undeniably artistic, arguably beautiful. As painful as it was to read most of it, pushing through my angst allowed me to discover a forceful thought in these pages: human existence as we know it is only possible when we are perceived by others. Don't try chewing on that sentence, because it's just my least lame attempt. Read the book yourself and get your mind blown, if you're willing to bleed from your tear ducts a little.
First, the anger.
Its grammatical style is despicable, mostly because I don't buy it as anything other than gimmick. If Saramago intended to convey blindness to the reader, the last thing he should have done is remove punctuation. It just doesn't work! I was continually dragged out of the story to retrace my way laboriously through the words I'd just read. It was exhausting, and it made me artificially conscious of my sight at all times. Was this your intention, Jose? If so, for the love of mercy, why? P.S. I hate you. P.P.S. Nothing personal, I'm sure you're a nice Portuguese man.
The book is obnoxiously cynical about the inherent morality of human beings. Disaster stories are a great backdrop for good versus evil struggles; the first three-quarters of this story, the main characters succumb to evil (through complacency and senseless "martyrdom") with frustratingly little provocation, and in the last quarter, evil is inexplicably underrepresented. It's as though Saramago's saying human goodness can't stand up to a fight. Which makes me want to punch him in the face a little, allegorically speaking.
Second, the pondering.
This book is undeniably artistic, arguably beautiful. As painful as it was to read most of it, pushing through my angst allowed me to discover a forceful thought in these pages: human existence as we know it is only possible when we are perceived by others. Don't try chewing on that sentence, because it's just my least lame attempt. Read the book yourself and get your mind blown, if you're willing to bleed from your tear ducts a little.