I’m out four nights of the next five, so I’m slightly nervous about how I’m going to fit the week’s reading in… but today I didn’t have much on after church, so I could take my time over Touching the Rock (1990) by John M. Hull. I was aware of the book, because Oliver Sacks writes about it in The Mind’s Eye and elsewhere, but it was a recommendation from my friend Sanjay that made me actually go and get a copy.
The subtitle of this memoir is ‘An experience of blindness’, and that’s exactly what it was. Hull had various issues with his eyesight for his whole life, but it was in his early forties – with two children and a third shortly to be born – that he lost his sight completely. By the time he was writing the book, he could no longer even tell light from dark.
A day on which it was merely warm would, I suppose, be quite a nice day but thunder makes it more exciting, because it suddenly gives a sense of space and distance. Thunder puts a roof over my head, a very high, vaulted ceiling of rumbling sound. I realise that I am in a big place, whereas before there was nothing there at all. The sighted person always has a roof overhead, in the form of the blue sky or the clouds, or the stars at night. The same is true for the blind person of the sound of the wind in the trees. It creates trees; one is surrounded by trees wheres before there was nothing.
Each section is dated, and it’s sort of a diary – but it’s really a collection of descriptions, reactions, and philosophy about being blind. And it’s done in such a fascinating way. He writes about how other people react, and how they get it right or wrong – from treating him like a child to guiding him incorrectly. He writes about his young children gradually growing to understand why daddy can’t see. And he describes his understanding of the world so patiently and ably – about how concepts of space and time completely change; how small talk and friendships become different entities. He also talks about his faith and God, though less than I had expected.
The title is about ‘touching the rock on the other side of despair’. If there is despair, and I’m sure there was, he somehow manages to keep the book almost absent of it. He has the accuracy of the scientist with the slow, unfolding narrative of the storyteller, and the stark honesty of the memoirist. It’s an extraordinary book.