Blindness

I don't think I mentioned this before, but I randomly joined a book club on meetup.com, a site where people can plan activities and clubs and random other people can join in on them. It's a great way for people of all ages to come together. I understand that some people have big reservations about meeting strangers on the internet, whether it be for dating, becoming roommates or friends. I, however, have embraced it (well not dating...). Seattle can also be a pretty unfriendly city, so its great to have an online portal of people who want to meet up (hehe) and do something! Anyways, after sitting and following the group for a couple months, I finally took the plunge and went to a book club meeting. We discussed the Novel Room by Emma Donoghue, which I had read last year. The people there were of all sorts of ages, and I tending to navigate only to people my age, had a little trouble expressing my thoughts. However, by the end of the conversation I felt comfortable with all the people in the room and helped vote for the book, Blindness to be our June book read.

Blindness was intense. Basically, the book is about an epidemic that sweeps the nation that leaves every single person blind...except one lady. The government, in the beginning, attempts to thwart the burgeoning epidemic by quarantining the blind people-and this is who the book follows. It illustrates how much of our society is done by seeing and through the feelings of shame, accountability, responsibility and judgement-all of which are primarily done by seeing others and others seeing you. Without this, things can go haywire. The book at times was scary and was very harsh on humanity. Eventually, everybody goes blind-and the book continues into how the group carries on in the real world. It is definitely a must read. There is a definite reason why this book won the Novel Prize for Literature; it captivates the reader, and scares the hell out of them in illustrating how much of our society and sense of 'self' and propriety is based on the judgement of others. Without these judgements, accountability is lost-and where does that leave us? Do we take care of ourselves and others because we are humans? Or, do we do it so it will reflect well upon us-when others SEE us do it? Anyways, just read the book.

Lastly, one thing that was interesting about the book was the fact that the author wanted to write as if he were blind-and thus, no dialogue. Entire conversations are catalogued in the book, but since the narrator cannot see who is saying what there is very little "Hi" said Bob, "Hey babe" said Julie, etc. Rather, it is a block of conversation separated by commas. At times, this can be confusing and daunting (pages with no paragraphs or dialogue indentations), but it also allowed the book to be read as if you could not see who was saying each part. Most of the times, you could get it, but by taking away the visual sense of the book, it made the narrative more authentic.

Alright! I need to head to bed, busy day tomorrow with an alumni social and all!

This is my favorite picture on the whole, wide internet.