I know that
Blindness by Jose Saramago is an ILXor favourite bcz that’s how I found out about it. I thought it was an excellent book so have just read its recently published sequel
Seeing, which is set in the same city four years later when the majority of people are returning blank ballots in elections, leading the government to declare a state of emergency and to try to find out what’s happening.
I was very disappointed. Seeing was, finally, pointless and unconvincing. Beyond sharing some of the same characters as Blindness it doesn't work as a sequel. I don't know whether coming to it fresh, without having read the earlier book, might be better but it would also be strange to get halfway through a book and suddenly be told that, oh yeah, four years ago everyone in the country went blind then got their sight back but we haven't mentioned it 'til now.
The writing in Blindness was extremely physical and gripping and tense, even if also distanced and ironic; the writing in Seeing is all slightly clunky distance and irony and (I hope) deliberately bad philosophy. None of the characters matters or seems real, they're just pushed about like a child would push pieces of unwanted greens around their plate.
The biggest problem is that from about half way through, when the characters from Blindness reappear, nothing that happens makes any sense whatsoever, even as "the paraphernalia of magical realism" (as the back of the book claims.) In fact, everything that happens is actively stupid.
The book cover also never mentions any connection to Blindness which is a little odd.
Anyone here have any opinions?
― Raw Patrick (Raw Patrick), Thursday, 1 June 2006 11:19 (nineteen years ago)
I read the first chapter once, laffed and laffed and laffed. I've always thought distance and irony to be a big part of what Saramago is *about* (actually, maybe clunkyness too, to some extent -
"The Gospel According To Jesus Christ", awesome though it is, certainly fits in here) But I didn't read the rest of it, and didn't read
"Blindness", so...
Saramago is mostly, erhm, not that well regarded here in Portugal as far as social/political criticism goes, though he's widely worshipped as a writer of course. After this book came out he held a little debate about What The Left Should Do In Portugal, which was very defeatist and weird. He actually put this book's main premise as a possibility (what if we all just didn't vote?), and Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa (a moderate right-wingah who'd been invited) noted that, uhm, this would mean the right would win. One leftist commentator noted that "it really is a sad day when we need the right to tell us that".
More literal translations of the book's respective titles, btw, would be "An Essay On Blindness" and "An Essay On Clarity". If that matters.
― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Thursday, 1 June 2006 20:27 (nineteen years ago)
I think the English translation leaves out the roffles.
Saramago does seem, from the evidence of Seeing, to be the type of person who would be involved in a self-defeating, and possibly somewhat baffling, political intervention.
― Raw Patrick (Raw Patrick), Friday, 2 June 2006 09:54 (nineteen years ago)
five months pass...
i'm thinking of reading this. is it a good book or just a 'commentary?'
― a name means a lot just by itself (lfam), Wednesday, 8 November 2006 17:14 (eighteen years ago)
oh i just read a review that said it ends with him wondering how to end it. if that is the "shocking" ending then zzzz
― a name means a lot just by itself (lfam), Wednesday, 8 November 2006 17:21 (eighteen years ago)
five years pass...
that is not how this book ends.
― desperado, rough rider (thomp), Friday, 17 February 2012 03:36 (thirteen years ago)
I did not know this existed! I love Blindness.
― dream words & nightmare paragraphs from a red factory in a dead town (Abbbottt), Friday, 17 February 2012 03:41 (thirteen years ago)