TOUCHING THE ROCK: An Experience of Blindness

by John M. Hull ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1991

Compelling first-person account, told for the most part in journal entries spoken into a cassette recorder, by a professor of religious education who went totally blind in his mid-40s. Born in Australia, Hull had a sickly childhood, during which he lost one eye from a cataract. This did nothing, however, to prepare him for total blindness--a result of the steady intrusion in his other eye of a ""dark, disc-shaped area, edged with a flicker of light"" that indicated detached retina. In time, the light disappeared forever. Blindness for Hull is a series of revelations: even now, he struggles to understand just what his malady is--perhaps even a gift from God. Such religious speculations fill the book, as well as more mundane discoveries. Hull finds people divide into two groups: those with faces (i.e., those he knew while sighted) and those without. He is bored by food and sex (and proves insightful on the relationship of each to sight), enjoys his new ability to sense nearby objects by their ""pressure,"" revels in a rainstorm, confesses that he sometimes thinks himself invisible now that he cannot see others. Relations take on new twists: how to play with sighted children? How to mingle at a cocktail party? Fundamentals change: time becomes ""simply the medium of my activities""; the world is ""not a world of being; it is a world of becoming""--for as soon as anything is still and silent, it ceases to exist. Chock-full of surprising information (blind people love stairs and fear snow), but most memorable for its deep ruminations on time, space, and memory, and for the benevolence of Hull's Christian outlook. Despite some creakiness in the structure, this belongs on the same shelf as Jacques Lusseyran's classic And There Was Light.

Pub Date: March 1, 1991

ISBN: 067973547X

Page Count: -

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1991

Categories: NONFICTION