Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening

by Stephen Kuusisto

Book Overview

Blind people are not casual listeners. Blind since birth, Stephen Kuusisto recounts with a poet's sense of detail the surprise that comes when we are actively listening to our surroundings. There is an art to eavesdropping. Like Annie Dillard's An American Childhood or Dorothy Allison's One or Two Things I Know for Sure, Kuusisto's memoir highlights periods of childhood when a writer first becomes aware of his curiosity and imagination...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393058921
• ISBN13: 9780393058925
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

senses

We are a very visually oriented society. This book helps you hear, smell and taste the world around us. It is beautifully written and a delightfully different perspective.

Poetry of Blindness

Kuusisto writes his life like a painting. He is blind and yet his descriptive writing sees more than most sighted people. He brings us to the point of wonder at his ability to"see." His descriptive hearing elevates the reader to the level of music and poetic irony. I can't wait to read more.

Invaluable.

EAVESDROPPING: A MEMOIR OF BLINDNESS AND LISTENING tells of a blind poet who had to cope with a life without sight - but it's much more than just another memoir of coping. EAVESDROPPING asks - and answers - the essential questions of why and how go on with life without sight, providing an emphasis on the author's travels and what he could experience on these journeys sans sight. Chapters tell not how to cope with being blind, but how to get the most out of life under conditions of affliction and change. Invaluable. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

Eavesdropping

With an excellent style of writing, the blind author and English professor gives insight into the world as experienced without clear vision. It is a delightful read, informative and inspiring.

Walking the Ear Labyrinth

"Eavesdropping" invited me to enter the sacred labyrinth of the inner and outer ear. Through a series of searingly honest self-reflective essays that read like tone poems, I found myself led on a deep listening journey to a center where blindness sparks illumination. In one of my favorite tales, "The Twa Corbies," the author says that "according to Aaron Copeland, informed music listeners listen on three planes." The power and beauty of this book is that it achingly and joyfully evokes multi-level listening through life's soundscapes. "The first level is sensual." Kuusisto introduced me to Caruso's soaring arias on an ancient victrola; the inhalations of Finnish speech and the exhalations of baseball enthusiasts filling the gaps between field action; gaggling crows; the pathos of Bach and the angst of Heiskanen,an old Finnish singer, self-exiled to Sweden. The author's gift for Haiku-like lyrical descriptions surprised my eardrums into listening in delightful expanded ways to sounds for the outer ear. The second plane is expressive,"giving meaning behind the composer's score." Underneath the author's sensual eavesdropping is: the loneliness in grandmother's attic while high C's sing; the lostness that comes with exploring crow's chaotic cawing; the family dysfunction of all night footsteps in the kitchen; friendship that companions Cuban music in counterpoint to the hiss of volcanic steam fissures in Iceland; and the love that allows independent listening and shared visions with his wife in Venice. I found that this voyage on interior ear currents of honest self-listening and sharing opened passageways to deep eavesdropping. "Finally there is the 'musical'plane,the speciality of trained musicians," which rests on concentration that is knowledge based on an understanding of instruments in conversation. Stephen Kuuisto has honed his eavesdropping skills to that of a self-taught expert listener. His book guided me to want to listen to my own, others and the world's conversations about blindness; the globalization of culture; the effect of technology on communications;and everything else that makes up our soundscapes of understanding each other. In the Epilogue of "Eavesdropping." Steve describes a place where bells in steeples rang out from many directions, singing songs of trust and possibility despite his lack of total clarity of where he was or what comes next. It is a sacred journey that he invites us to take which leads one into the center and out with new appreciations and perspectives. If you choose to read his book and walk the labyrinth of the inner and outer ear with him, I feel that you will hear the guiding ring of the bells too.