READIN

Tuesday, December 25th, 2007

I'm loving Saramago's style of writing dialogue without yet totally getting it -- it draws me in and hypnotizes me, but I sometimes find myself struggling in mid-paragraph to track who is saying what. The characters are always threatening to sound like automata, I think in part because of this clipped, almost dismissive rendering of their speech; but in small ways their humanity comes through.

posted evening of December 25th, 2007: Respond
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At the pedestrian crossing the sign of a green man lit up. The people who were waiting began to cross the road, stepping on the white stripes painted on the black surface of the asphalt, there is nothing less like a zebra, however, that is what it is called.

This is a promising start to Blindness -- the descriptive language, the comic timing. Also the final line of the first chapter is very nice: "That night the blind man dreamt he was blind."

It will take a little while to really get into the rhythm of the dialogue -- I'm reminded of how it takes some time to get into the groove reading Gaddis.

posted afternoon of December 25th, 2007: Respond
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Thursday, December 20th, 2007

🦋 Blindness

Meredith Sue Willis has a blog! (Found via South Orange Journal's list of links.) One without permalinks, which I haven't seen much of lately. But if you scroll down to December 12 you will see she is recommending José Saramago's Blindness. This is good timing because I had been looking for a book to read, Blindness was on my list but forgotten, I think now is a good time to find a copy and read it.

posted afternoon of December 20th, 2007: Respond