THERE PLANT EYES

How blindness has shaped global culture across centuries.

Playwright and columnist Godin approaches her subject from a unique perspective. Now blind, she gradually lost her sight from retinal dystrophy, a frightening process she poignantly recounts throughout the book. Her ambitious goal is to trace the “complexities of metaphorical and literal blindness and sight.” As she writes, “what I’m wrestling with…is the concept of blindness that our ocularcentric culture extols on the one hand and dismisses on the other.” The idea that poetic gifts are compensation for blindness began with Homer, who may or may not have been blind. Godin uncovers a rich literary history of blindness, including such signposts as the blind bard Demodocus, biblical Scripture, King Lear, Jorge Luis Borges, Mark Danielewski’s “haunting masterpiece,” House of Leaves, and Daisy Johnson’s Everything Under. John Milton, whose Paradise Lost provides the book’s title, went blind in his 40s, composing his later works in his head until an amanuensis wrote them down. Godin discusses Milton’s blindness and the “long tradition in Milton scholarship that falls victim to…ocularcentrism.” The author also introduces us to Valentin Haüy, who opened Paris’ groundbreaking Royal Institute for Blind Youth in 1785 and developed a way of reading via embossed letters on paper. A young Louis Braille attended the school and would go on to “invent a writing system that would eventually revolutionize blind education.” After World War II, a veteran-rehabilitation specialist “pioneered the technique” for using a long, sweeping white cane. After a sprightly look at Helen Keller in vaudeville and Godin’s play about it, she moves on to the topic of blindness and sex and the difficulties that face blind authors, artists, and musicians, including Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles. The author wraps up her erudite, capacious book with discussions of blind parents and superheroes, the portrayal of the blind in the media, and blind pride.

As Godin wonderfully shows, we’ve come a long way in our quest to understand what blindness means.