Planet of the Blind by Stephen Kuusisto
From Amazon
"In the country of the blind," the old
adage asserts, "the one-eyed man is king." But in Stephen Kuusisto's superb new
memoir, The Planet of the Blind, the world of a one-eyed man is a kingdom
of confusion and quixotic struggle. Born with only residual vision, one eye
capable of 20/200 vision and the other unseeing, Kuusisto was led by the
insistence of his mother and the ignorance of the society around him to an
elaborate and harrowing attempt to appear sighted. At times the effort was
life-threatening, as with the bicycle he rode from the ages of 10 to 30 ("Were
my years of cycling an actuarial gift?" he wonders), and at other times
profoundly humiliating, as when his stumblings and collisions are assumed to be
signs of habitual drunkenness. Indeed, the almost inconceivable effort of
maintaining his sighted masquerade leads to all sorts of self-destructive
behavior, from obesity to anorexia, from booze and cigarettes to drugs and
perilous clambers up fire escapes.
Most biography is a recounting of struggle that leads to success and
achievement, but Kuusisto's story is of a lifelong struggle that leads to
acceptance. For this gifted poet, the barely glimpsed visual world is an
irresistible temptation, despite pain, embarrassment, and failure. When he
finally submits to the white cane and a guide dog, suddenly he can envision a
"Planet of the Blind," a place where those without sight live in peace with
their own lives, where "everyone is free to touch faces, paintings, gardens," a
place where beauty is behind the eye of the beholder. --John Longenbaugh
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