Whatever the cause of this act of blindness, benign or malignant, Saramago effectively captures the Kafka-like surrealism and commotion in much the same manner as his earlier book, not just in allegorical substance but in accumulative style wherein the stream of run-on paragraphs and unpunctuated dialogue adds to the sense of chaos. It's an initially off-putting stumbling block that a reader quickly learns to hurdle, however, and soon enough settings and characterizations become breezily distinguishable.
It is in the cinematic cast wherein Saramago takes a U-turn from the Romero-esque cine-tension that vividly rendered the Orwellian paranoia and obsession suitably framed and inlayed within Blindness. “What amazes me,” notes one character about the permeating disquiet, “is that there isn’t a single shout, a single long live or down with, not a single slogan saying what it is the people want, just this threatening silence that sends shivers down your spine, Forget the horror movie language...”
I’m not sure that Monty Python and Keystone-cop police procedurals make for fitting alternatives, however — it certainly does nothing to sustain the foreboding mood set up by the political crises. Consider the ultimate decision made by the government to confront the evil: Run Away! Or put in the more dignified language of rhetorical rationalization: the call is made for the “immediate removal of the government,” the police and the armed forces “to another city, which will become the country’s new capital.” The point being, to give the rebels a time out to think long and hard about just what they’ve done and who they‘ve hurt — to understand, that is, “the price of being cut off from the sacrosanct unity of the nation, and when it can no longer stand the isolation, the indignity, and contempt” … well, they’ll come crawling back, “begging for forgiveness.” Ah, nothing like a little unrealpolitik to make impetuous insurrectionists see the error of their ways.
Saramago painstakingly describes — in this disjointed, rudderless work lacking cohesion and insight — the absurd and cartoonish after-midnight retreat ("shh! Be ve-wy, ve-wy quiet,” you almost expect to hear in Fuddish appeal). Which is no less painstaking than the belabored chapters describing the three “who’s-on-first” detectives who, ordered to proceed with foregone politically-expedient conclusions, are assigned to investigate the "conspiratorial" link between the “blindness” mystery and the current blank-votes scandal.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net, which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States. Nice work!
2 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Thank you, Natalie.
3 - Reason
Incidentally, while the always-corrupt ruling party on the right and the opportunistic party in the middle are alternately bumbling or puppet-mastering their way to allegorical world domination, the almost-mythic party of the left, alluringly mysterious and always altruistic, is behaving with utmost dignity and valor, and with a forced hagiographic depiction of ethical uprightness. Because that's the way it is in the real world.
Are you serious?? Did you read the same book I just finished?? Geeeeeeez!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
4 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Perhaps you could explain yourself better. And can Reason pick up on Sarcasm enough to know I wasn't being literal-minded? Or is the problem that you did get it and still disagree? I really can't tell.