Planet of the Blind [antikvár]

PLANET OF THE BLIND A haunting memoir about coming to terms with nearblindness, this is the story of a "lost man with a speck of something like seeing". Born prematurely, Stephen Kuusisto has been fractionally sighted since a post-natal operation severely damaged his retinas. Yet he grew up pretending he could see. Planet of the Blind telis his story-the years of a lonely childhood spent behind bottle-lens glasses, the consuming fear of ridicule and derision, the struggle through college that brings him from obesity to anorexia. With his nose pressed into the spiné of a book in furious attempts to read, riding a bicycle at insane speeds, never truly knowing the face of his first lover, he stumbles through half a lifetime enraged and mortified. This is the record of a handicapped life; but it is alsó an extraordinary literary achievement. Kuusisto has managed to translate his opaque, kaleidoscopic world of shape and colour into poetic and luminous prose. Planet of the Blind conveys life as it is lived by one whose visual impressions are "at once beautiful and largely useless", and for whom normality is continuously transformed by his blindness into an intense aesthetic experience. Stephen Kuusisto is currently director of student services at Guiding Eyes for the Blind, one of America's preeminent guide dog schools, in Yorktown Heights, NY. His work has appeared in the Antioch Review, the Paris Review, and Harper's magaziné among others.