I'm on break from school and when I'm on break, I tend to binge on non-academic books. I even go so far as to read (gasp!) genre fiction, such as espionage novels (love Le Carre) and fantasy/science fiction.
If you'll indulge my old guard old media inclinations, I would like to say something about books.
First book I grabbed for pleasure-reading was one recommended by a friend: Blindness, by the Portugese writer Jose Saramago, who won the Novel Prize for Literature in 1998. So give me credit for that: once released from the shackles of reading-for-papers, I reached for genuine literary fiction. And I have to admit there was some trade off in terms pleasure: you can't really describe a book about a world suffers from an epidemic of blindness and slips into madness and anarchy as being pleasurable--at least not in the way that most folks describe pleasure these days (which is titillating rather than evocative/provocative).
But there is certainly much with which to engage the reader which might be considered in a more Aristotelian sense. An interesting premise taken in unexpected directions, characters that I cared about and found authentic, a wily narrative style in which the omniscient narrator revels in his(her) all-seeingness and occasionally makes wry marginal comments. I would have to say the narrative voice is the most remarkable thing about the book; it represents the word games and distinctive verbal performance that wins you literary prizes.
The book reminded me of The Plague by Albert Camus: a similar premise, using a human disaster to do a sociological reading of society. For Camus, the Plague represented Nazi-occupied France and the Resistance, but also the existential situation of 20th century humanity; for Saramago, blindness represents...? It's not clear, which is, of course, appropriate. Certainly the vestiges of European existentialism remain, with, the fear of terrorism (though the book was written before 9-11).
One possible critique. The friend who recommended the book to me said he had to read it for a class. He said none of the women could make it through the gang-rape scene. Yes, there is a gang-rape scene, and it is hard-going. But the chapters that follow show the centrality of the scene for the plot and themes of the novel, and there is retribution for the act which starts a chain that ends in the liberation of the women, and the men and child, who are imprisoned in a hospital for most of the book. But that is a man speaking: I would like to hear more from the women on that subject.
Posted by jeb at January 23, 2005 9:46 PM | TrackBack