[stylist] FW: Blind or Visually Impaired Authors
Cheryl Orgas & William Meeker
meekerorgas at ameritech.net
Tue Feb 18 18:37:27 UTC 2014
Not sure if this got through the first time.
Bill Meeker
-----Original Message-----
From: Cheryl Orgas & William Meeker [mailto:meekerorgas at ameritech.net]
Sent: Monday, February 17, 2014 1:34 PM
To: 'Applebutter Hill'
Subject: RE: [stylist] Blind or Visually Impaired Authors;RE: New Book,
blindness on TV
Donna,
Thank you so much for your work unearthing these illuminating articles about
the authors I mentioned. I am enjoying them a lot.
Thurber was one of my favorite writers since I was a teenager. When I read
print I read and reread the "Thurber Carnival." In addition to "The Secret
Life of Walter Mitty," "The Night the Bed Fell" makes me laugh every time I
read it.
James Joyce is one of my favorite authors too. I agree with the article
statement that he is best read out loud. I highly recommend Alexander
Scourby's superb reading of Ulysses, DB19994. I don't know an other man who
can read a female part as convincingly as Scourby reads Molly Bloom. And
Leopold Bloom's encounter with The Blind Stripling captures perfectly a
sighted man's interior dialogue around meeting a blind person at a street
corner. The description of The Blind Stripling responding to the encounter
I think captures the dignity in the blind man's demeanor and hints at what
he may be feeling. Every year I look forward to attending an annual Bloom's
Day event in Madison, Wisconsin and hearing different people read excerpts
from Ulysses.
While I can't yet get my brain around Finnegan's Wake, Patrick Horgan reads
it, DB21424, adeptly.
And I haven't read Milton, but Paradise Lost is downloaded and waiting to be
read.
Thanks again for increasing my understanding of these authors and giving me
enjoyment at the same time.
Bill Meeker
-----Original Message-----
From: Applebutter Hill [mailto:applebutterhill at gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2014 3:21 PM
To: meekerorgas at ameritech.net; 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
Subject: RE: [stylist] Blind or Visually Impaired Authors;RE: New Book,
blindness on TV
Bill,
Donna Hill here. I don't know about Homer, and neither does anyone else. His
blindness and even his existence as the one writer of the works attributed
to him is a matter of some controversy in the academic world. For proof of
his blindness, lines from his poetry are used, which isn't quite enough for
me. Homer as a blind poet is more important to me as a cultural myth.
Milton, though he wrote his best work without sight, was well-educated and
well-known prior to blindness. The most remembered line he wrote about
blindness doesn't say much for adapting -- approx "those serve too who only
stand and wait." I found a great bio of him on poets.org, which I will place
at the end of this message.
Thurber lost sight in one eye in an accident in childhood which apparently
led to losing sight in the other later in life. He had enough sight to
enlist in the military and function as a cartoonist for the NewYorker. Here
is something from an article from Slate.com about him (after a collection of
his letters was released) that discusses the effect of his blindness on his
work.
Block quote
The tragedy of James Thurber.
James Thurber's tragedy.
By
Wilfrid Sheed
SEPT. 18 2003 3:33 PM
At the age of 15 or so, I picked up The Thurber Carnival and realized that
I'd found my Pied Piper; I wanted to be James Thurber. I would follow those
sentences anywhere. But Thurber, The New Yorker writer and cartoonist
(author, famously, of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"), had just passed
his peak and was already descending into the total blindness that would
embitter him and impair his writing. So, The Thurber Carnival was the
perfect place to start, and it still is: It contains Thurber's essence and
the best work he did in his pre-blind years—his cartoons and fables and
those deadly little "casuals"
from
The New Yorker in which husbands and wives drove each other absolutely,
unconditionally crazy, while huge silent dogs looked on like Buddhas,
patiently waiting for the human race to come to its senses, or not, as the
case may be.
Now we have The Thurber Letters, collected by Harrison Kinney and Rosemary
Thurber, to give us a fuller picture of the man. Most people would, I
suppose, if faced with the grim choice, prefer to take their chances as
blind writers rather than as deaf composers. Homer, the Cyclops of
literature, did OK. And Milton got a great poem out of blindness. But
Thurber's letters seem to me inexpressibly sad, perhaps because one can
perceive the blindness setting in slowly—and, having seen the back of his
biography, one also knows that there will be no great poems, so to speak,
deriving from it.
...
Thurber, like many enlisted men, had seen "Paree," and it had given all his
pieces a lick of sophistication new to American humor. In effect, he and his
whole generation had used Paris as a species of finishing school where
country boys like Cole Porter and Ernest Hemingway could major in
sophistication before bringing some home with them. There was never any
question of anyone going back to the farm, of course, and so in the mid-'20s
a bunch of these boys decided to start a magazine right there—and not just
any old magazine, but the most sophisticated damn magazine in the whole
world: "Not for the old lady in Dubuque," as its first issue trumpeted
sophomorically. The New Yorker did turn out to be the most sophisticated
magazine in the world, and the British in particular went nuts trying to
imitate it.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2003/09/blind_wit.html
Block quote end
Joyce had problems with his vision (iritis & glaucoma) starting in childhood
when he needed thick glasses to read. He had numerous operations for it; he
died during an operation, but I'm not sure if it was another one on his
eyes. In one letter he describes himself as having been "incapacitated" for
a week from the iritis, but I don't know if he meant by the pain of the
condition or because he wasn't adapted to living nonvisually. I haven't
found any references to his using any adaptations such as Milton did when he
dictated his later poetry.
Here are some snippits from an old Atlantic Monthly article on Joyce's
literary contribution in which his vision is mentioned and appropriately
enough the influence it had on his writing. I included the first quote to
show how much he was passing as sighted, or how little his visual problems
were holding him back in his early years. The URL's at the end.
Block quote
The Atlantic Monthly
James Joyce
By Harry Levin
December, 1946
... At University College he had specialized in Romance Languages, and had
shown such proficiency that there had been talk of a professorship. During
his hardest years on the Continent, before a benefactor endowed his literary
work, he worked as a commercial translator and as a teacher in a Berlitz
school.
...
It is a striking fact about English literature in the twentieth century that
its most notable practitioners have seldom been Englishmen. The fact that
they have so often been Irishmen supports, Synge's belief in the
reinvigorating suggestiveness of Irish popular speech. That English was not
Joyce's native language, in the strictest sense, he was keenly aware; and it
helps to explain his unparalleled virtuosity. But a more concrete
explanation is to be discerned among his physical traits, one of which we
normally classify as a serious handicap. Joyce lived much of his life in
varying states of semi-blindness.
To
preserve what eyesight he had, he underwent repeated operations and
countermeasures. A schoolboy humiliation, when he broke his glasses and
failed to do his lessons, is painfully recollected in the Portrait and again
in Ulysses.
His writing tends more and more toward low visibility; his imagination is
auditory rather than visual. If the artist is a man for whom the visible
world exists, remarked George Moore, then Joyce is essentially a
metaphysician; for he is less concerned with the seeing eye than with the
thinking mind.
We may add that he is most directly concerned with the hearing ear.
Doubtless the sonorities of Homer and Milton are intimately connected with
their blindness.
It is scarcely coincidental that Joyce, almost unique among modern prose
writers in this respect, must be read aloud to be fully appreciated. In
addition to his linguistic aptitude, and in compensation for his defective
vision, he was gifted with an especially fine tenor voice. Professional
singing was one of the possible careers he had contemplated. His singer's
taste inclined toward Opera and bel canto, romantic ballads and Elizabethan
airs: not music but song, he liked to say. His poems except for a few
excursions into Swiftian satire, are songs; lyrics which, without their
musical settings look strangely fragile. Yeats, upon first reading them,
praised Joyce's delicate talent, and shrewdly wondered whether his ultimate
form would be verse or prose.
Operating
within the broader area of fiction, he was to retain the cadenced precision
of the poet. Above all he remained an accomplished listener, whose pages are
continually animated by the accurate recording of overheard conversation.
...
His pangs of composition have recently been described by Philippe Soupault
as "a sort of daily damnation: the creation of the Joycean world. The
perverse ingenuity of these later experiments has been deplored more
frequently than deciphered. A long series of misunderstandings with the
public inevitably reinforced those early vows of silence, exile, and
cunning. Inhibited from writing naturally of natural instincts, Joyce ended
by inventing an artificial language of innuendo and mockery. In Finnegans
Wake he drew upon his linguistic skills and learned hobbies to contrive an
Optophone--an instrument which, for the benefit of the blind, converts
images into sounds. Out of it come, not merely echoes of the past, but
warnings of the future. Mr. Earwicker's worldly misfortunes are climaxed by
a lethal explosion: "the abnihilisation of the etym."
Pessimists may interpret this enigma as the annihilation of all meaning, a
chain reaction set off by the destruction of the atom. Optimists will stress
the creation of matter ex nihilo--and trust in the Word to create another
world.
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/95sep/links/levi.htm
Block quote end
Now for the Milton bio
Block quote
John Milton
John Milton was born in London on December 9, 1608, into a middle-class
family. He was educated at St. Paul's School, then at Christ's College,
Cambridge, where he began to write poetry in Latin, Italian, and English,
and prepared to enter the clergy.
After university, however, he abandoned his plans to join the priesthood and
spent the next six years in his father's country home in Buckinghamshire
following a rigorous course of independent study to prepare for a career as
a poet. His extensive reading included both classical and modern works of
religion, science, philosophy, history, politics, and literature. In
addition, Milton was proficient in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish,
and Italian, and obtained a familiarity with Old English and Dutch as well.
During his period of private study, Milton composed a number of poems,
including "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," "On Shakespeare,"
"L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," and the pastoral elegy "Lycidas." In May of
1638, Milton began a 13-month tour of France and Italy, during which he met
many important intellectuals and influential people, including the
astronomer Galileo, who appears in Milton's tract against censorship,
"Areopagitica."
In 1642, Milton returned from a trip into the countryside with a 16-year-old
bride, Mary Powell. Even though they were estranged for most of their
marriage, she bore him three daughters and a son before her death in 1652.
Milton later married twice more: Katherine Woodcock in 1656, who died giving
birth in 1658, and Elizabeth Minshull in 1662.
During the English Civil War, Milton championed the cause of the Puritans
and Oliver Cromwell, and wrote a series of pamphlets advocating radical
political topics including the morality of divorce, the freedom of the
press, populism, and sanctioned regicide. Milton served as secretary for
foreign languages in Cromwell's government, composing official statements
defending the Commonwealth. During this time, Milton steadily lost his
eyesight, and was completely blind by 1651. He continued his duties,
however, with the aid of Andrew Marvell and other assistants.
After the Restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660, Milton was
arrested as a defender of the Commonwealth, fined, and soon released. He
lived the rest of his life in seclusion in the country, completing the
blank-verse epic poem Paradise Lost in 1667, as well as its sequel Paradise
Regained and the tragedy Samson Agonistes both in 1671. Milton oversaw the
printing of a second edition of Paradise Lost in 1674, which included an
explanation of "why the poem rhymes not," clarifying his use of blank verse,
along with introductory notes by Marvell. He died shortly afterwards, on
November 8, 1674, in Buckinghamshire, England.
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/707
Block quote end
-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Cheryl Orgas
& William Meeker
Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2014 9:59 AM
To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [stylist] Blind or Visually Impaired Authors;RE: New Book,
blindness on TV
Linda,
Blind or visually impaired authors Homer, John Milton, James Joyce, and
James Thurber come to mind first. That they were known for their works
rather than their blindness is to me a measure of their success.
Several authors have written novels without using common vowels, such as the
letter "E." So how about a novel or short story depicting a blind character
without using the word "blind?" That is, describing them and their actions
including alternative techniques and letting the reader figure out that they
are blind.
Or how about a novel or short story written without visual descriptions.
That is, using only descriptions of sounds, textures, tastes, and feelings?
I can think up these ideas, but I lack the skill, drive, and
self-disclipline to execute them. So have fun.
Bill Meeker
-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda Lambert
Sent: Saturday, February 15, 2014 6:59 AM
To: newmanrl at cox.net; Writer's Division Mailing List
Subject: Re: [stylist] Low expectations of the blind; RE: New Book,
blindness on TV
This conversation is making me begin to think about some authors I taught in
the past in Humanities and English courses. Now that I am "aware" of
blindness, which I was NOT at all in the past, I am wondering how I would
interpret the literature of a blind author. I taught Bourges and I never
knew he was blind! I am thinking that now, if I go back to read his work,
I will interpret many things in a different way. I taught the "Book of
Sand" every semester! Hmmmm. Now it makes even more sense as an exampe lof
of Postmodernism which was the focus it had for me at the time. WOW, this
is beginning to be a revelation to me. I know that many of the artists I
taught were blind or visually impaired, but their work was not generally
explored through that lens.
I am going to begin looking much deeper into this for my own research - if
anyone has any more information on artists and writers who are/were blind I
would love to hear from you as I begin my own little research project on
this matter.
I am re-learning how to do Power Point presentations now. Normally, this is
how I lectured but until now, I could not have done it again. I know now,
that I can do it, it's just going to take awhile for me to teach myself
again. I am scheduled to do two presentation at Slippery Rock University of
PA in March - I'll use my milestone to give me verbal "cues" as I am
speaking, for these presentations. But, I want to begin to develop some
presentations using power point and I am sure I can do it again - I just
need to have the time and put in the work to accomplish it. I have always
loved doing lectures and presentations and I want to do them again - so I am
gonna work on it!
Lynda
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Leslie Newman" <newmanrl at cox.net>
To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 11:22 PM
Subject: [stylist] Low expectations of the blind;RE: New Book, blindness on
TV
> Hi you all, this has been an interesting conversation:
>
> Here is another generalization that many around the world have
> developed over the eons: Blindness is the most God awful, feared
> physical condition that mankind can experience.
>
> I had read and heard this forever, from the mouths of people on the
> street, to what I've learned in a variety of college classes..though,
> over the past couple of decades blindness has been pushed down to
> third place. Guess what has eclipsed being blind as the most feared?
> Aids and cancer. And hey, I can believe that these two physical
> conditions are far worse...after all, either one of these two monster
> conditions can kill you!!! (Though, there are some who feel that
> blindness is a living death. And yeah, if you allow it to rule! And
> this is where the NFB has done the world a great service...as in we
> have developed a philosophy, built a framework of alternative
> techniques, and influenced the making of a wide variety of tools that
> in combination...will allow most of us to reduce the effects of
> blindness, down to a level whereby most of us can say with an honesty
> level of 100%, 100%, that the loss of sight is not a major impediment
> to living a successful and happy life. No...the true problem we face
> is more the ignorance and the lack of information about the human
> potential to successfully live with blindness is the toughest
> impediment to being blind. MMM, go figure? [Being blind isn't the
> problem, living in a world of ignorance is.]
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
> Applebutter Hill
> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 9:10 PM
> To: 'Writer's Division Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>
> Lynda,
> At 70, I should certainly hope you (or anyone) would have developed a
> healthy level of skepticism. *grin*
>
> I know that black people face prejudice and low expectations, but I
> think the fact that white people enslaved them to actually do
> something, makes that low level quite a bit higher than for blind
> people. We aren't deemed capable of planting a field, keeping up a
> household or even caring for children -- as the incident in the
> Midwest a few years ago shoed, when a child was removed shortly after
birth from its blind parents.
>
> Our traditional purpose is to give the average person something they
> can look at and say, "Well, I may have problems, but at least I'm not
blind."
> We
> also have traditionally provided them with opportunities to do good deeds.
> Expecting us to no longer be helpless fundamentally changes how they
> see themselves.
>
> Your post reminds me of a story I heard from a blind woman who was
> accepted to grad school. Her aunt was furious that she had stolen the
> position from someone who could really benefit from it. The belief was
> that anything that a blind person accomplished was just another
> example of the kindness of strangers in elevating a pitiful person and
> helping them feel better about themselves. BTW, she has a doctorate in
> law. I heard many similar stories when I was writing about Braille
> literacy -- they weren't on topic at the time, and I had hoped to
> gather some of the things people told me into articles about some of
> these more subtle things that are going on to this day, but it never
> happened.
> Donna
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda
> Lambert
> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 6:31 PM
> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>
> Donna, yes, the expectations for blind people are very low. I believe
> that is why blind people as a group are the highest educated of all
> people with disabilities, yet, they are the lowest employed people of
> all the groups.
> This says it all - we are not expected to be smart, able, or willing
> to succeed at anything more than very low levels.
> This is my own thoughts on it and I recognize I am quite skeptical
> about it
> - but heck, I am 70 years old now, so I guess I can blame it on my age.
> I think we have to work so far beyond what other people have to do to
> find success at so many things. And, this is also true of black
> people. I do not know this from a distance, or from reading books on
> the subject which of course I do all the time. I know it personally,
> because my son is black and his family is black - they are very highly
> educated professionals - she a physician, he a psychologist. At every
> level, black people still face very low expectations and racism - and
> I think blind people are very close to the same in the general view of
> the ST"STUPID public. I agree with you. They are ver STUPID, but we
> won't tell them that, just yet. lol
>
> Lynda
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Applebutter Hill" <applebutterhill at gmail.com>
> To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 3:34 PM
> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>
>
>> Lynda,
>> Like you've noticed with your sister and the key, sighted people will
>> not accept anything we do as anything other than a fluke or a miracle.
>> Even faced with a clear description of the usefulness of other
>> senses, they somehow still have to brush anything aside that
>> conflicts with what they kno ... Blindness is essentially
>> insurmountable. I think of it as being similar to the days when a few
>> nutheads were trying to explain to the human race that the world is
>> not
flat.
>>
>> Coincidentally, I just got an e-mail from a rehab counsellor in PA,
>> who I reached out to on Linked In -- I offer them a free e-book
>> version of my novel and explain why I think it has value for them and
>> their clients. I mention the issue of dealing with low expectations.
>> This man said that, as
>
>> a
>> person who used to work with BVI and now works with other
>> disabilities, he believes that the issue of low expectations is much
>> worse for those with vision loss. I have always felt that way, but I
>> don't have the credentials to say so. It meant a lot to me to hear
>> that
> from someone.
>>
>> You hit on the reason behind my removing all references to blindness
>> from my online book descriptions; it's a taboo. Just imagine someone
>> getting my book and not knowing that the heroine is blind and has a
>> guide dog. They will have to read through at least a page before it
>> becomes clear to them. Some will be angry with me, because I didn't
>> warn them. Some, I hope, will have gotten hooked by something else in
>> the story and read it anyway. It's fiction, so they don't have to
>> change their stupid belief systems, but I hope they will have a bit
>> of an adjustment in spite of themselves.
>> Donna
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Lynda
>> Lambert
>> Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 9:18 AM
>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>
>> It's a Friday morning snow storm here - a beautiful day outside. Time
>> to get some coffee and begin my day, but first I wanted to drop a not
>> on your discussion which is so interesting to me.
>>
>> I think Bridgit really hit it - unless a sighted person has had a lot
>> of time together with a blind person, they are really clueless and
>> they could care less about knowing positive things. They still live
>> with the mentality of the question they have asked themselves and
>> each other for years, "Would you rather lose your sight, or your
hearing?".
>> To sighted people losing sight or hearing is the worst case scenario
>> they can think of and they are not about to look any closer into
>> either of the two life-challenges. And, as Henrietta, experienced,
>> even close family members really don't understand how we do things.
>> Not really. They watch us, but we are a mystery to them even though
>> they have been around us many times over the years.
>> Occasionally there is some little revelation that they grasp, but I
>> think it is very rare.
>>
>> A couple years ago I went on a short 5 hour trip with my sister.
>> When we arrived at our cousin's home, we had instructions to locate
>> her house key and let ourselves in because they were away on vacation
>> and we would have their home to stay in. My sister retrieved the
>> key, as instructed. She began to try to open the door. She fiddled
>> around for quite awhile with the key and the lock in the door - yet,
>> she could not get it open. She tried turning the key around, tried
>> going faster, slower, but no luck. Finally,
>
>> I
>> quietly said to her, "Give me the key and let me see what I can do."
>> She snickered and said "Oh, sure, you are going to open the door that
>> you can't even see!" I took the key from her, felt the key, and
>> inserted it into the door's lock slowly. Then, I put my left had on
>> the door, just above the lock, so I could FEEL any movement the lock
>> would make. And, I leaned very close to the lock, and I listened.
>> Very quickly, as I slowly turned the key, I felt the vibration of it
>> moving, and I heard the click as it was disengaged. I smiled, and
>> handed over the key to her, and said, "The door is open." She loudly
>> proclaimed, "I cannot believe it! A blind person could open the door
>> and I couldn't."
>>
>> I smiled at her and said, "You could not open the door because you
>> were using only your eyes. I opened it because I could feel it and
>> hear it moving." To her it was something very weird that I had
>> actually opened up the door that she had struggled with and could not
>> get the job done. I think in her mind it was a lucky accident even
>> though I explained why it happened. Most sighted people do not think
>> we can do much of anything, no matter what we achieve - honestly,
>> that is what I think. So, for most sighted people to read about a
>> blind hero in a fictional account, I say, "Dream on!" I think the
>> interest level for a sighted person to even read a book through is
>> really a stretch unless that person is really on a mission to learn
>> more about blindness and diversity and inclusion. Maybe in a
>> literature course, where it would be included in the required
>> reading, but on their own, I think the chances are quite slim. But,
>> then, as I write this I am optimistic enough to think I see a "movie"
>> that could be made that would be exciting to them. Who knows? I sure
>> don't. Why is it that we are constantly told we are "amazing" when
>> we do things that are high level achievements for anyone at all? Why
>> is it that some people droll all over us about how inspiring we are
>> and how tragic it is that we
> lost our sight?
>> I just smile at them and say, "NO, not really! It is just who I am
>> and who
>
>> I
>> have always been." That usually leaves them speechless and the
>> conversation ends. Write on! Lynda
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Applebutter Hill" <applebutterhill at gmail.com>
>> To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
>> Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 9:07 PM
>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>
>>
>>> Great story!
>>> Donna
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
>>> Henrietta Brewer
>>> Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2014 7:32 PM
>>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>
>>> You guys make me laugh. You're right, Sighted people can't imagine
>>> the blind being the hero. At Christmas, when the power was out in
>>> our town, I had twenty five or thirty people here most days. We had
>>> a generator so we had a few lights but not in more then half the house.
>>>
>>> I didn't think much of it while everyone was here. Though I was
>>> tired of doing all the fetching because no one could find anything
>>> in the dark.
>>> When
>>> everyone left and I was cleaning house, I saw how difficult it was
>>> for our guests. They had only a flashlight in the bathroom and their
>>> bedroom and nothing was where it should be.
>>>
>>> they all mention now, that they will call me in any black out. But
>>> it took reality to get even family to realize that a blind person
>>> can be helpful in a black out. lol Henrietta On Feb 13, 2014, at
>>> 12:10 AM, Bridgit Pollpeter
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> When I wrote a short mystery story for a detective fiction class I
>>>> took at university, I made my main character blind, which is the
>>>> first time I did this. Anyway, at one point, the house the two main
>>>> characters are sleeping in goes up in flames, and the blind
>>>> character navigates them out of the house. Using his other senses,
>>>> he makes it out the front door. I did do some research before
>>>> writing the scene, but mostly based it off my own knowledge of what
>>>> a blind person might do in that particular situation. When
>>>> critiqueing our stories, a classmate said, to my face, it wasn't
>>>> believeable that a blind person could do that and I should change
>>>> that scene. Another classmate, to my surprise, said who better than
>>>> a blind person to navigate through a situation where sight wouldn't
>>>> be much help because of the smoke, and that by smell and feeling
>>>> heat, surely a blind person would be able to navigate just as well,
>>>> if not better, than a sighted person. After considering this point,
>>>> the first person half-heartedly agreed. My point being that I agree
>>>> with Chris that even though these stories are being written by
>>>> blind people, most of the sighted world can't, or won't, buy a
>>>> blind person doing the things we make them do, living as
>>>> independent, active,
> vital people.
>>>>
>>>> Bridgit
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
>>>> Chris Kuell
>>>> Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2014 7:47 AM
>>>> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>>>> Subject: Re: [stylist] New Book, blindness on TV
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Donna,
>>>>
>>>> I'm generally skeptical by nature, but I really hope they do a good
>>>> job with this show. It's exactly what we've been talking about
>>>> here--an opportunity to crush the stupid stereotypes and let the
>>>> public see a guy who is interesting, and just happens to be blind.
>>>> If it does a good job, and if the public enjoys it, it could open
>>>> the door to more blind characters in the
>>>>
>>>> arts. Personally, I feel certain that the reason books like yours
>>>> and mine aren't getting read by agents and traditional publishers
>>>> is because we have blind protagonists. An agent, or more likely, an
>>>> agent's assistant reads my query and thinks--a blind protagonist?
>>>> Nobody is going to buy that. It's too outside mainstream experience.
>>>>
>>>> Hopefully, the times, they are a changing.
>>>>
>>>> chris
>>>>
>>>>
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