[bksvol-discuss] Fw: Blind author's story shines like light in darkness

"Shelley L. Rhodes" <juddysbuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx> · Sat, 7 Aug 2004 22:41:59 -0400

If anyone can get this book for Bookshare, I knoe I would love to read it,
this one is excellent.
Shelley L. Rhodes and Judson, guiding golden
juddysbuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Guide Dogs For the Blind Inc.
Graduate Advisory Council
www.guidedogs.com

The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to
stare up the steps - we must step up the stairs.

      -- Vance Havner
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Leon Gilbert" <lwg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Blind News Mailing List" <BlindNews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, August 01, 2004 7:12 PM
Subject: Blind author's story shines like light in darkness

Posted on Sun, Aug. 01, 2004
Blind author's story shines like light in darkness

The Hartford Courant

Scattered Shadows: A Memoir of Blindness and Vision

by John Howard Griffin

Orbis Books, $18.95

GRADE: A

John Howard Griffin is best known for Black Like Me, an engrossing account
of racial hatred directed at him as he traveled
through the South in 1959 disguised as a black man. Still in print, the book
has sold more than 10 million copies.

What many readers may not realize is that Griffin was totally blind for a
decade beginning in 1947 because of a war injury.
He drafted a memoir of his blindness, but it was never published. Finally,
24 years after Griffin's death, Orbis Books is
releasing Scattered Shadows: A Memoir of Blindness and Vision.

The book is a treasure on many levels: poignant reflections on coming to
terms with blindness, a patient search for spiritual
meaning in life, a lifelong enchantment with classical music and, finally,
his contagious joy at regaining his lost sight.

During a remarkable life, Texas native (he lived in Tarrant County) Griffin
helped the French Underground resistance smuggle
Jewish children to safety, was wounded while serving in the Pacific, lived
in a monastery in France, worked as a successful
livestock farmer while blind and became an acclaimed writer.

He rebelled against the notion that blindness should limit his goals: "I
felt that I was simply living in a new and different
way that fascinated me." He describes in heartbreaking detail the many
adjustments, such as learning to use a fork and to
walk without crashing into walls.

In one unforgettable chapter, Griffin encounters a taxi driver who takes a
special interest in his blindness. Griffin is
puzzled until he learns that the driver has an ugly facial scar that causes
people to turn away. In Griffin, the taxi driver
had for the first time met someone who did not judge or reject him because
of his scar.

Griffin savored his time living in monastic solitude in France. Although he
was an agnostic, he felt drawn to Catholicism and
became a convert in 1951. After returning to Texas, he decided to raise
livestock "to become independent and to earn income."

While blind, Griffin also suffered for a time with near-total paralysis from
spinal malaria, as well as diabetes, which
eventually killed him at age 60.

Griffin's elegant descriptions of the sounds, feelings and smells of nature
and his evident happiness and acceptance of all
of life sing from the pages. During a period of increasing pain from
paralysis, he remained "dumb before the joy that flows
into my heart with ceaseless richness."

Griffin became acutely aware of his other senses. Late one night, he sat at
his typewriter, observing "the ruffling silence
of natural sounds, the scraping of my feet against the floor, the occasional
rustle of a breeze in the woods."

Scattered Shadows consists of the draft manuscript Griffin left, plus
selections from 1,200 pages of typed journal entries.

One finishes this book in awe of Griffin's immense talent as a writer, his
passion for life, his sensitivity to others'
suffering and the depth of his moral convictions. Fans of Black Like Me
should not miss this long-neglected and inspiring
memoir.

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/living/9289742.htm?1c

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