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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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Deaf
Sentence by David Lodge |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Aging Readers
will laugh, wince, and maybe cry on different pages of David Lodge’s new
novel, Deaf
Sentence. Protagonist Desmond Bates has retired early as a linguistics
professor because his hearing continues to deteriorate. While his career has
waned, his wife has become energized by her work as co-owner of a trendy
shop. Desmond’s father, Harry, continues to live at home at age 89, but needs
to get assistance, which he rejects. If that weren’t enough, Desmond becomes
entrapped by Alex Loom, a graduate student trying to take advantage of him.
Lodge excels throughout in presenting the misunderstandings that being deaf
can create, and his selection of words allows him to display his skills
broadly. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning
of Chapter 2, pp. 12-14: 1St
November, 2006.
I rather
enjoyed writing that piece last night, and re-reading it this morning. As
aural-oral communication becomes more and more difficult, the total control
one has over written discourse becomes more and more appealing, especially
when the subject is deafness. So I'll go on for a bit. I first discovered I was going
deaf about twenty years ago. For some time before that I'd been aware that I
was finding it increasingly difficult to hear what my students were saying,
especially in seminars, with anything from twelve to twenty of them sitting
round a long table. I thought it was because they mumbled — which indeed many
of them do, being shy, or nervous, or unwilling to seem assertive in front of
their peers — but it hadn't been a problem when I was younger. I wondered if
perhaps my ears were blocked with wax, so went to my GP. He peered into my
ears with a chilly steel optical instrument and said there was no build-up of
wax, so I'd better have my hearing checked at the Ear, Nose and Throat department
of the University Hospital. They
did an audiogram: you wear a pair of headphones and hold a press-button
thingy which you squeeze when you hear a sound. The -audiologist
is using his apparatus out of your sight, so you can't cheat, not that there
would be any point in cheating. The sounds are not words, or even phonemes,
just little beeps, which get fainter and fainter, or higher and higher, until
you can't hear them, like the cries of a bird spiralling up into the sky.
Philip Larkin first discovered he was going deaf when he was walking in the
Shetlands with Monica Jones and she remarked how beautiful the larks sounded
singing overhead, and he stopped and listened but he couldn't hear them.
Rather poignant, a poet finding out he's deaf in that way, especially when
you think of Shelley's `Ode to a Skylark', `Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!' one of the poems everybody
learns by heart at school, or did before educational theory turned against
memorising verse. A poet called Larkin, too — it's almost funny in a
black way, deafness and comedy going hand in hand, as always. Deafness is comic, as blindness
is tragic. Take Oedipus, for instance: suppose, instead of putting out his
eyes, he had punctured his eardrums. It would have been more logical
actually, since it was through his ears that he learned the dreadful truth
about his past, but it wouldn't have the same cathartic effect. It might
arouse pity, perhaps, but not terror. Or Milton's Samson: '0 dark, dark,
dark, amid the blaze of noon, / Irrecoverably dark, without all hope of day.'
What a heartbreaking cry of despair! '0 deaf, deaf, deaf . . ! doesn't
have the same pathos somehow. How would it go on? '0 deaf, deaf, deaf,
amid the noise of noon, / Irrecoverably deaf, without all hope of sound.' No. Of course, you could argue that
blindness is a greater affliction than deafness. If I had to choose between
them, I'd go for deafness, I admit. But they don't differ only in degrees of
sensory deprivation. 'Culturally, symbolically, they're antithetical. Tragic
versus comic. Poetic versus prosaic. Sublime versus ridiculous. One of the
strongest curses in the English language is 'Damn your eyes!' (much stronger
than 'Fuck you!' and infinitely more satisfying — try it next time some lout
in a white van nearly runs you over). 'Damn your ears!' doesn't cut it. Or
imagine if the poet had written 'Drink to me only with thine ears . . .' It's
actually no more illogical than saying drink with thine eyes. Both metaphors
are equally impossible concepts, in fact an ear is more like a cup than an
eye, and you could conceivably drink, or at least slurp, out of an ear,
though not your own of course . . . But poetical it isn't. Nor would 'Smoke
gets in your ears' be a very catchy refrain for a song. If smoke gets in
your eyes when a lovely flame dies it must get in your ears too, but you
don't notice and it doesn't make you cry. 'There's more in this than meets
the ear' is something Inspector Clouseau might say, not Poirot. The
blind have pathos. Sighted people regard them with compassion, go out of
their way to help them, guide them across busy roads, warn them of obstacles,
stroke their guide dogs. The dogs, the white sticks, the dark glasses, are
visible signs of their affliction, calling forth an instant rush of sympathy.
We deafies have no such compassion-inducing warning signs. Our hearing aids
are almost invisible and we have no loveable animals dedicated to looking
after us. (What would be the equivalent of a guide dog for the deaf? A parrot
on your shoulder squawking into your ear?) Strangers don't realise you're
deaf until they've been trying and failing to communicate with you for some
time, and then it's with irritation rather than compassion. `Thou shalt not
curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling-block before the blind,' says the Bible
(Leviticus, 19.14). Well, only a sadist would deliberately trip up a blind
person, but even Fred lets out the occasional `Bloody hell!' when she can't
get through to me. Prophets and seers are sometimes blind — Tiresias for
instance — but never deaf. Imagine putting your question to the Sybil and
getting an irritable `What? What?' in reply. It's
a very unequal contest between the two organs. Eyes are the windows of the
soul, they express feelings, they come in subtle, alluring colours and
shades, they brim with tears, they shine and gleam and twinkle. Ears, well
they're funny-looking things really, especially when they stick out, all skin
and gristle, secreting wax, sprouting hair, no wonder women hang earrings on
the lobes, men too of course in certain societies and periods, to distract
the eye from the furry hole that leads to your brain. In fact what other
function does the ear lobe have? Perhaps that's how it evolved, this
otherwise useless flap of boneless tissue: prehistoric people with enough
flesh on the lower rim of the ear to accommodate earrings had an advantage
in the mating process, so got selected. But it would have been no advantage
if the ears hadn't served their primary purpose. Aging
is never for the faint of heart, and in Deaf
Sentence, Lodge riffs on all the ways in which we can be challenged in our
dotage. Steve
Hopkins, November 20, 2008 |
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Go to Executive Times Archives |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the December 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Deaf Sentence.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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