Blindness by Jose Saramago

Okay, for once in a long while I can honestly say I read something that did not live up to my expectations.

Perhaps having recently read Camus's The Plague made me desensitized to the contagious outbreak/quarantine aspects of this story, because in this story I found them to be agonizingly drawn out. Yes, of course the government is going to round everybody up into camps of horrible conditions, of course they are going to say it is for their own good, of course it won't be, of course members of the government will start getting sick themselves, blah blah. Standard. But.

Let me back up. Blindness's strengths lie in the nature of the outbreak, which is one of (you guessed it!) blindness. A strange blindness where the afflicted can only perceive a "milky sea of white." Naturally, this white blindness was described repeatedly throughout the book, which felt repetitive and sometimes annoyed me. I was very interested in the bigger picture of a blindness epidemic, but Saramago focused on a small group of individuals reacting to the outbreak. It's not his fault he didn't give me what I wanted, and he's not a poor writer because of it, but I certainly felt unsatisfied when I was done with the book.

It opens very strongly, though - the sudden and inexplicable appearance of a medically unknown type of blindess is described effectively, stunningly, and quite beautifully. As the instances of blindness increase, a quarantine is established, and all the blind (or exposed to blind) people are sent to a facility that used to be an insane asylum. This I found to be unnecessarily overt thematic foreshadowing, why not a mere abandoned hospital? I'm not so stupid that I don't understand quarantined people, especially blind ones, will eventually display myriad types of insanity. Anyway.

Our plot focuses around one woman, the wife of the opthamologist who examined the very first person to go blind. After the first blind man visited the opthamologist's office, the doctor goes blind himself. As he is being loaded into the ambulance that will undoubtedly take him to the quarantine, his wife lies and says she, as well, has been striken with the illness. She never does, however, go blind, and she becomes the vehicle for exploring the disintegration of society. She is, literally, the only one who can see it.

Saramago's style of dialogue is dense. There is almost constant dialogue - many nameless characters are speaking, and their declarations are separated only by commas. There are few paragraph breaks, as well, so every chapter feels relentless. This is very effective in conveying a sense of blindness - tracking the speaker of the dialogue is practically as difficult for the reader as it is for the blind, and all the characters are reduced to little more than disembodied voices calling out repetitive phrases and worries.

I'm not sure what else to really say about this book. It was certainly interesting - I was never bored while reading it, and the thought of -everyone- being blind is much more terrifying than I initially gave it credit for. There are, ironically, very intense visuals that I retain from the story, and it definitely made an impact on me. However, there was just something missing that made it hard for me to completely engage with the story or the characters.

I have the feeling that, over time, this will seem like a much better book than it seemed when I first completed it. I just wanted to write about it now, while it's still fresh in my mind. Maybe I'll come back to it as I process it. Or at least when I'm not frantically writing during my lunch break. Ha ha.

Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille

Be careful, guys. I recommend a lot of things that are a tad "off," you know. Like, about serial killers and sexual perversions and whatnot. But those books have got nothing on this. Holy crap.

Here is what the quotes on the back of the book say:

"Bataille's works . . . indicated the aesthetic possibilities of pornography as an art form: Story of the Eye being the most accomplished artistically of all pornographic prose I've read." -Susan Sontag

and then the intense one:

"Bataille denudes himself, exposes himself, his exhibitionism aims at destroying all literature. He has a holocaust of words. Bataille speaks about man's condition, not his nature. His tone recalls the scornful aggressiveness of the surrealist. Bataille has survived the death of God. In him, reality is conflict." -Jean Paul Sartre

And, get this, the book is only ONE HUNDRED PAGES long! That's it! For so much intensity?! I could hardly believe it.

And I didn't believe it. Not at all. Within the first chapter, there is some really disgusting talk of peeing into cunts and whatnot. Not exactly what I expected. The perversions only get worse (or better?). I felt duped.

Let me back up.

The story revolves around the narrator, a young man, a woman he meets when he is young and who he discovers his sexuality with, and two other significant figures: an innocent young girl they corrupt and drive insane, and a wealthy Englishman who provides monetary support when they are running from the law. A bullfighter and a priest both provide important symbolic roles, even as very minor characters.

If I were to outline for you exactly what these two main characters participate in, you might not believe me. Really, you wouldn't. I don't want to ruin anything, though, in case you do read the book. Let's just say - deriving sexual pleasure from pissing on the face of a dead woman with open eyes is not the worst of it. Not by a long shot.

But I had the stomach, I muscled through. Despite the depravity, one thing this book definitely ISN'T is boring. About fifty pages through, I finally took a break and stopped to think about what I'd been reading. I didn't find any of it to be titillating, and found the majority of it to be so disgusting that I couldn't refrain from actually frowning as I read it. And then something happened. It hit me. The point of the book came shining down like sun on an otherwise gross San Francisco afternoon.

Even sexual meaning is arbitrary. Don't just gloss over that sentence. Really read it, and think about. In a culture obsessed with sexual norms that are, by the by, very straight and narrow, the notion that our love of pecks on the cheek and the missionary position (hallmarks of chaste, proper sexual union) is just as legitimate as a sexual desire to drop soft-boiled eggs into a toilet and then pee on them is a SHOCK.

People will accept perversion, but only one step at a time. They say, okay, well, I guess oral sex is all right. Or, I'm okay with men sleeping together, just as long as I don't have to see them kiss in public (or some variation thereof). Fetishes are recognized. We can thank (?) the internet in large part for making all kinds of pornography available and transparent. But let me tell you - I've been on the internet, and I have not seen anything like what was described in this book written before we even had the goddamn television.

Only through extremes, I suppose, will we truly be able to grasp that all meaning, even sexual meaning, is arbitrary, and therefore equally valid. I do not want to participate in ANYTHING they described in this book (one thing, maybe, but it's very tame), and yet by the end I could see how it was sexy. I could understand. It's a matter of association, really, and how the manner in which we first encounter sexuality can set a standard for the rest of our adult lives in terms of sexual and romantic preferences.

Go through the book of your life and put italics in random places, and the "meaning of life" for you can change drastically. That is what this book made me realize about my sexual preferences. If, for whatever I reason, I had had more cause to remember the "Little Mermaid" themed fantasies I had as a child, and ignored the traditional "Hollywood star at a fancy party" ones, then I could have turned into a person who wants to fuck fish. I am, also, a potential pervert. So we all are. And, weirdly, that's something to celebrate.

I'm not sure if I'm getting this across properly, because I'm very tired and I just wanted to write down some of my thoughts before my enthusiasm for the book wears off.

I guess what I'm saying is, Bataille uses depraved imagery to depict a divine truth about humanity - our possibilities are endless, even if they are arbitrary. Meaning is a complete jumble, and most of the meanings we choose for ourselves are so naturally developed that we don't consciously realize we're choosing them. And yet, those same very natural, very normal and indispensable meanings would be rejected by everyone else. The protagonist of the book declares that he likes not "pleasures of the flesh," but "dirty" things. He, the corpse-loving piss-playing menstrua-sniffing murderer, is offended by the idea of "pleasures of the flesh." (A phrase that, incidentally, always makes me think of soft-core porn. Can you conceive of soft-core porn as offensive?)

And, although this paints a picture of complete isolation at your very core, your sexuality, I don't think that's the point. If you let your disgustingness develop naturally, you can easily find the right people to be disgusting with.

Even writing this I am getting re-excited! What a great book. What a great great book. Suddenly, the quotes on the back no longer seem overly intense, but not intense enough. I'm shocked.

[I only recommend if you have both a strong stomach and a strong mind. If you do, then I recommend highly, more highly than anything else I've reviewed.]