Enough time has passed that I can talk about Jose Saramago's novel, Blindness, without my raving fangirl side coming out. I think.

When I initially pondered blogging the book, I figured I could write 'It's brilliant, I love it' over and over until I ran out of characters. (Characters, not character -- I imagine I'd run out of character sooner than that.)

But, frankly, I loved this book. In a year of simply excellent reading, this book is top of the list. And I can't really explain why.

Sure, Saramago has enough prose-quirk to fascinate me, enough quirky rendition of dialogue and oddly inconsistent-but-never-discordant POV shifts. Sure his allegorical style is alluring. Sure, his insights into the human psyche have that deep thrum of verisimilitude that marks a true Observer of the Human Race ("a powerful sense of the folly and heroism of ordinary lives", as reviewer Andrew Miller put it). But what *is* it sets Saramago apart from meaner spirits like, say Kozinski or Kafka*?


Who would have believed it. Seen merely at a glance, the man's eyes seem healthy, the iris looks bright, luminous, the sclera white, as compact as porcelain. The eyes wide open, the wrinkled skin of the face, his eyebrows suddenly screwed up, all this, as anyone can see, signifies that he is distraught with anguish. With a rapid movement, what was in sight has disappeared behind the man's clenched fists, as if he were still trying to retain inside his mind the final image captured, a round red light at the traffic lights. I am blind, I am blind, he repeated in despair as they helped him to get out of the car, and the tears welling up made those eyes which he claimed were dead, shine even more.
-- Jose Saramago, Blindness, Chapter 1 (excerpt here).


This is a quirk of the book, by the way: the method of drawing attention to the act of seeing ("all this, as anyone can see, signifies that he is distraught with anguish"); & of equally reminding us of the blindness of his population. Blindness is both textual and meta-textual.

Those of a more scientific bent (...you know what I mean) will probably hate the book immensely. First of all, when a plague of white-blindness hits the population of this place (there's no name for the city, just as there's no name for any of the characters -- all of them referred to by title or feature, ie. 'the doctor's wife', 'the man with the squint', etc), there's no explanation for it. There's no explanation as to how it starts, how it spreads, where it's located (eyes or brain), how it can ever be resolved. None. But for those of us content with the idea it's some kind of expression of the human soul ('none so blind', & all that), it's perfectly acceptable. And Saramago's gentle touch isn't wasted: there's no attempt to pound the lesson home. There's just the occasional aside & the evidence that you can choose to live kindly or choose not to: it's nothing to do with your physical ability.

What's interesting in Saramago's book is the way society copes with the plague. Or, rather, fails to cope. Some people will band together and some others will become marauders -- stealing food, violently abusing their peers, ultimately degenerating into a grim warlike state where life is cheap, & people are too blind to bury the dead (how, after all, can you bury the dead when you can't tell where the dead are already buried?). Food is critically short, electricity and plumbing no longer work, people drop dead on the side of the road and are left there amongst the rubbish and excrement, their bodies to be eaten by animals.

Despite that, it's a beautiful book.

It's about survival -- living despite all the dying -- and love. It's about watching the way people try to prop up their 'civilisation' against the odds, holding onto small rituals, attempting the maintenance of dignity (turning their backs to change clothes in a world where no one can see them; hiding the fact they've soiled themselves while sleeping in filthy sheets -- the logistics of washing impossible when everyone is blind & utilities have stopped working & the army is guarding the gate). And about what happens, of course, when you're the one person left who *can* see, how that sight enslaves you, how it reveals horrors that are invisible to the rest of the population, what a solitary burden that is -- and what a burden it is to be relieved of that.

And though I spent a long time pondering Saramago's almost Dickensian moral code (that There Are Good People and There Are Bad), in the end with a deft flick of the wrist, Saramago unseated that simplistic rendition with a deft but kind psychological observation



[...] and Saramago's powerful achievement is to make his readers wonder: What have we wrought by choosing so selectively what we can bear to look in the face?
Jesse Barrett, SALON | Oct. 16, 1998


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* I confess to not reading Kafka. Somebody told me he's a mean version of saramago & I figured I wouldn't. I really can't stand Kozinski, though.