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Brad's Reviews > Blindness
Blindness
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Not at all disturbing, not at all compelling and not at all interesting, Jose Saramago's Blindness only succeeds in frustrating readers who take a moment to let their imagination beyond the page. Yes, Saramago's story is a clever idea, and, yes, he creates an intentional allegory to force us to think about the nature of humanity, but his ideas are clearly those of a privileged white male in a privileged European nation. Not only do his portrayals of women and their men fall short of the mark, but Saramago has clearly never had to fend for himself in the world. If he did, he'd realize that there were a thousand easy answers to the dilemmas he created for his characters, and he could have then focused more on the internal filth of their souls than the external excrement of their bodies. Blindness is not worthy of a Nobel Winner.
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Leona
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Jun 17, 2015 04:35PM
I completely agree with you. I wanted to like this book, but the writing was stilted and the scenarios did not ever seem real. The details felt contrived and not fully thought out. You put it perfectly.
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I completely agree with you. I wanted to like this book, but the writing was stilted and the scenarios did not ever seem real. The details felt contrived and not fully thought out. You put it perfectly.
first review I've read that I agreed with, I don't understand the high rating, including from my friends, I found this book boring and irritating, I am willing to contribute some to the reader for the audio book but I think if I'd been reading it I would have actually given up and not finished
I am thankful to come across this review. I too strongly disliked this book. But I was alone in my book club, they all liked it. So I am glad to find solidarity!As for the privileged white male perspective, maybe what you mean is that he is obviously a city dweller. In my opinion, people who live in rural areas would be able to cope better than these characters did. However, generally speaking, people who live in cities have much more specialized skills. One example that comes to mind for me is when they are interned, they begin urinating in the halls. If the bathroom would be that problematic for them, they could have gone outside and dug a latrine to urinate in.
I totally agree with your review. I understand what you say about the white male perspective (I would add the oldaged point of view), . The female characters just seemed to me really unvelievable,
It is reassuring to see I am at least in good company with this book and I will likely just follow Marisa Grimes' example. I am more than halfway, but the actions have become cartoonish. I cannot believe or relate to any of this behavior. A run or hike now sounds good to take the mood off.
So glad to read others didn't care for this book! I am at a loss for the high rating. I too feel that he focused way too much on external excrement. It became so annoying.
I agree completely. I very rarely quit a book once I’m a good quarter of the way invested, but I did with this one. Part of me wanted to keep going because the story started so fast paced and interesting. I met holding out for a while that the doctor’s wife would come into play. They’d find she could still see and run tests on her to see why she was immune, something along those lines. But as I kept reading, which was a struggle in itself with the weird prose style and over use of commas, I began thinking the story was going to make a sensible turn less and less. That’s when I got on here to read reviews and spoilers to decide if I should bother continuing, and I’m glad I saw your posts and some others because I have hundreds of books on my to-read list and it’s clear that I needn’t waste any more time on this lousy one.
I think this review was posted by a privileged white male. Why is it that white Americans are always the quickest to raise a ruckus over white privilege? From Sarmago's Wikipedia "Born to landless peasants.... Although Saramago was a good pupil, his parents were unable to afford to keep him in grammar school, and instead moved him to a technical school at age 12.After graduating, he worked as a car mechanic for two years."
Yes! I feel so much is unrealistic. Having studied psychology and sociology where we have had to look at the Zimbardo and Milgram studies and the case study of Kitty Genevese which was later disproved... no I don’t think ppl would be shitting on the floor, covered in their own filth and still thinking about sex and raping. Currently living through a pandemic and that has also made it seem to me this novel just doesn’t hold up.
Agreed. I just don't understand the love for this. How many times do I need to read about them stepping in their own crap? This was a huge disappointment. Great idea, not compelling in execution.
I didn’t love this book. But there’s an epidemic of this trash-talking language of race and buzzwords that’s spat out by over-parented zoomers raised on social media. “Privileged�? How would Brad know? How this has currency currency in today’s world is beyond me and a little unnerving. It’s not really any solace to know that it’ll come back around to bite Brad too. Brad will not escape unscathed.
Since when is a Portuguese man considered “white?� I mean this book was awful. Period. I don’t care if the dude who wrote it was pink and purple polka dots. It was trash and his promotion of his political views.
I agree. This whole book was a mess and I hated every page. I wish I’d have just put it down and moved on, but I have this thing about finishing books. I think I understand where you were coming from with the controversial ‘privileged white male� statement, but that same idea could’ve been expressed differently. The only time rebuttals for negatively reviewed books gets obnoxious to me is when people claim you just ‘didn’t get it� or that some deeply profound meaning behind it just went over your head.
Like, yeah, I got it. The story wasn’t about literal blindness. Still sucked though.
Describing Saramago as a privileged white male in a privileged European nation is just the best joke I've read today... considering that he was literally born to a *very poor* family of peasants and lived under one of the worst dictatorships in Europe 🥴
A white American calling Saramago a privileged white male 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Huh. Interesting review and responses. I went into this book "blind"--no pun intended--as I always do. I randomly acquire second-hand books and just start reading them, I don't even read the back cover to see what it's about, I like to just start reading. I had no idea if this was going to be fiction, non-fiction, comedy, drama... So I was pretty horrified by the turn of events, and it took me a long while to figure out the bigger picture/allegory/symbolism. I don't know if being privileged white characters makes any difference to the point of the story. I won't go so far as to suggest you re-read it but I feel like maybe you missed something the first time around.
Well, remind me not to read your book if you didn't find anything disturbing in the almost chapter-long gang rape ordeal. Considering this review came out shortly after your book, I think it reads a little jealously. Hence the last comment. ;)
You go on at length about "a thousand easy answers to dilemmas":😉 Can you give us one, just one, example of such a solution, in the context of an apparently highly contagious disease in a country that is actually rather poor and not at all "privileged" (Portugal is not a "privileged country"), with a marginally democratic but weak government that is not at ALL "privileged"? With all due respect, I think maybe *you* are the privileged one, living in one of the most privileged countries in the world.
Hysterical. LOL. Nice hat, though.
It's been more than a decade, and sometimes I still send this review to random people as an example of American ignorance. Calling an extremely poor mechanic living under a repressive dictatorship a "privileged white male in a privileged European country" is definitely something.
I think you missed the point of the book but fair play to you for rating a masterpiece the way you did. Saramago was a humble man, from humble families, he's seen the fall of dictatorship and the rise of global capitalism. He believed in equity, and for me this book shows a lot of that as well as the danger of having power. Obviously we all have different interpretations of what we read, but if this book doesn't make you think about nothing else will.
As a "privileged white male", Jose Saramago was forced to live much of his adult life in exile from his native Portugal during the 35 year Antonio Salazar dictatorship. Your review is a rant of a highly personal nature that has nothing to do with Sarmago's novel & it isn't even clear that you read it.
I was delighted to come across Brad's review. My thoughts exactly. I found this book to be pretentious, overly intellectualized and in the end pointless. Author goes out if his way to prove a point: people are inherrently evil. The book just presents us with a conclusion that is basically forced upon the reader, leaving no room for making up one's mind over the nature of human beings and no nuances. Once one of the senses dissapears, people become brutes. Find that to be overly simplistic and naive way of "looking" at the world.
I disagree with u, the novel was written around 1995, we can expect it to be feminist. Even if I don't like and can't defend the scenes where (spoiler) the womens were r@ped and everyone agreed so easily, and even worst, used their bodies in the same way; the doctor's wife is presented as the one who gides, the one who waits patiently and think what to do, and that for me is a good representation of a protagonist, one who can be the lider
