Blindness

Jose Saramago

That night the blind man dreamt that he was blind.

I had heard much about Saramago concerning his lack of punctuation and paragraphing, but was pleasantly surprised that despite such conveniences, his book was still easy to read. I rarely lost track of who was speaking even though the switches between various characters and the narration are often only noted by a capitalized letter. Whatever Saramago withholds in punctuation he makes up for in the logical flow of conversation.
As far as the story goes, I thought Blindness was a brilliant idea. A disease of blindness which robs an entire city (or perhaps more) is one of the most terrifying things I can imagine. Saramago demonstrates very clearly how dependent we are on sight. I tried to rethink the story with different senses being absent but the most chaotic has to be a loss of sight. Although we imagine we have a healthy respect for how much we rely on sight, Saramago's Blindness opens the door to the true inner workings of our minds and how much of a role the input from our eyes plays.
But while the concept of Blindness is staggering and awesome, concepts are not enough to make a story. Blindness lacks much of what makes a real story step out from the common mass of tales. Once the concept is laid out, the story progresses as most could have worked out in their own minds. There is little in Blindness beyond its guiding concept which really sends the reading into contemplation. While gripping in many parts, particularly because of the pathetic willingness of many of the characters to accept abuse--like so many dumb inhuman sheep--the story only rises to impressiveness in instances. And the same can be said of Saramago's narration. He has his moments of rhetorical genius, but they are moments only in the many pages.
I am not yet certain what to make of the ending, but I wish that Saramago had toyed more with the idea of blindness with perfect eyes. He only ever hints at this idea and in the last moments of the book explodes it, but more could have been done throughout the book to challenge just how much we who are not blind actually see. Whatever the case, the book is worth a perusal, perhaps more.