EYE POWER

by Hoopes Ann & Townsend Hoopes ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 28, 1979

Can you suffer failing depth perception as a result of intensive typing? Is myopia (nearsightedness) the curse of the scholarly class? the overstressed? the posturally ""warped?"" So the Hoopes would have it. She is chairman of a health food store; he is a former Undersecretary of the Air Force, a writer, and now president of the Association of American Publishers; and together they are proselytizing for a ""new school"" of training optometrists. Balance on a two-by-four rail while reading block letters in tune to a metronome. . . run a mile a day. . . draw circles with both hands on a blackboard to an ever-increasing beat. . . eat right, give up smoking, and you, too, can have more fun and less anxiety, straighten out the kinks, up your IQ, lower your need for bourbon, play a better game of tennis--maybe even change your eye color from pale slate to bright blue. There are those who have reason to think that myopia occurs when light rays come to a focus at a point in front of the retina because the eyeball is too long or because of some other structural shortcoming. No, it's more culture and habit, say the Hoopes, and, quoting their mentors, they recommend convex, not concave lenses, and training exercises to make you enlarge your field of vision, improve spatial relations, etc. For them it's all a matter of brain and muscle power and they spell out ways to get the muscles back in shape. To underscore the message, the Hoopes tell us about Henrietta and Martin and Gertrude and themselves and their four children and the guy whose eyes got brighter, all through eye training. To be sure, there are conditions in which the muscles controlling convergence and other coordinated eye movements are not working properly and exercises can be therapeutic. But your ordinary myope or presbyope (who needs reading glasses in middle age) won't be cured by running a mile or giving the eyeballs a runaround. The whole things makes us take--dare we say it?--a dim view.

Pub Date: Nov. 28, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1979

Categories: NONFICTION