Haunted

Almost finished Blindness (see Saramago post below). It is one of those books that are hard to read, harrowing is the word for it.

I've read bleak fiction before, I've even become known for liking the bleak stuff (Cormac M. comes to mind). Yet there is something deeply haunting in Saramago's book. Maybe it is the news lately of gunman opening up fire, on anyone, anywhere (or so it seems). Blindness is an allegorical look of a society gone over the deep end. You can read it and go, "Yeah, right. Like that would ever happen. A mass disease of blindness."

But it is not the disease that is chilling, though it is too - it is what happens when the government exiles the sick to an asylum where the very base of society emerges. On my darker days I hear the news and feel like we are much closer to this anarchy and violence that we might think. Just recall the Southern U.S. during Katrina and the people in the Superdome.

When I was a kid, after a particular scary movie I needed to get my mind off things before I went to bed. I often gravitated to Archie comics - reading the exploits of Jug and Arch always got my mind off things. After finishing Blindness I feel a trip to Riverdale will be in order. A long trip.