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A review by horrorbutch
The Blind Man Game: A Memoir of Art, Activism and Adaptation by Paul Boskind
2.0
Disclaimer: I received an e-ARC from netgalley in exchange for a review.
When I picked this book up, I have to say I did not know anything about Paul Boskind as I am not familiar with him as a person. I think this memoir might have worked better for me if I did. I picked it up expecting a memoir about Art, Activism and Adaption. And while these things do play a role in the story, a lot of it is about Paul Boskind’s life, his family, his relationships and the many, many entrepreneurial things he did in his life. To tell his story the author often switches around through different times, moving us from his childhood to a trip in Macchu Piccu that turned out to be a lot more dangerous than assumed due to his vision loss to his political engagement or the time he remodeled a house by himself.
Despite the fact that I expected a bit of a different focus, I still found myself enjoying parts of this memoir a lot and one of my favorite scenes is the one where he describes his reaction after his diagnosis, which he decided to use a wake-up call to turn his life around. It was heartbreaking to read about the lack of empathy and kindness the doctors that diagnosed him with Stargardt’s disease showed him and the terror he experienced afterward, never sure when his life would change due to the unpredictable progressive nature of the disease. I also really enjoyed the scenes where he mentions various ways of adjusting to his decreasing ability, in particular the joy he was able to find in theater again thanks to accessibility tools interesting. It highlighted how important accessible art is.
His writing style took some getting used to (he is very judgmental towards others at times) and I feel that that as well as the sometimes unfocused narration of this memoir (with time switches and lacking a real narrative focus) made this memoir less interesting to me than it could have been. I think if he had decided to either tell this in a more chronological fashion or write short chapters that focus on one topic and then move on to the next this could have been a more enjoyable read. Finally, I expected some disability activism in here as well, which was mostly lacking. He does do activism for LGBT+ rights (which I liked) and was quite heavily involved with the Democratic Party (which I, as a non-American don’t really care that much about), so obviously that is probably just a mix-up with what I expected and what the author brought to the table, but I thought I’d mentioned it for other readers.
My biggest problem with this memoir was the language surrounding Deafness, which is not something I expect from a memoir about disability. While it is common to say something “fell on dead ears” I found it a bit distasteful in here and highlighting the fact that it feels bad for a mother to talk with her child about his cane in front of him by saying “he’s not hard of hearing” weirded me out a bit.
All in all this is a memoir that I personally couldn’t take too much away from and that I think you might get a lot more out of if you know the writer and the things he did.
TW: suicide, drug addiction, ableism, ableist language, loss of ability, grief
When I picked this book up, I have to say I did not know anything about Paul Boskind as I am not familiar with him as a person. I think this memoir might have worked better for me if I did. I picked it up expecting a memoir about Art, Activism and Adaption. And while these things do play a role in the story, a lot of it is about Paul Boskind’s life, his family, his relationships and the many, many entrepreneurial things he did in his life. To tell his story the author often switches around through different times, moving us from his childhood to a trip in Macchu Piccu that turned out to be a lot more dangerous than assumed due to his vision loss to his political engagement or the time he remodeled a house by himself.
Despite the fact that I expected a bit of a different focus, I still found myself enjoying parts of this memoir a lot and one of my favorite scenes is the one where he describes his reaction after his diagnosis, which he decided to use a wake-up call to turn his life around. It was heartbreaking to read about the lack of empathy and kindness the doctors that diagnosed him with Stargardt’s disease showed him and the terror he experienced afterward, never sure when his life would change due to the unpredictable progressive nature of the disease. I also really enjoyed the scenes where he mentions various ways of adjusting to his decreasing ability, in particular the joy he was able to find in theater again thanks to accessibility tools interesting. It highlighted how important accessible art is.
His writing style took some getting used to (he is very judgmental towards others at times) and I feel that that as well as the sometimes unfocused narration of this memoir (with time switches and lacking a real narrative focus) made this memoir less interesting to me than it could have been. I think if he had decided to either tell this in a more chronological fashion or write short chapters that focus on one topic and then move on to the next this could have been a more enjoyable read. Finally, I expected some disability activism in here as well, which was mostly lacking. He does do activism for LGBT+ rights (which I liked) and was quite heavily involved with the Democratic Party (which I, as a non-American don’t really care that much about), so obviously that is probably just a mix-up with what I expected and what the author brought to the table, but I thought I’d mentioned it for other readers.
My biggest problem with this memoir was the language surrounding Deafness, which is not something I expect from a memoir about disability. While it is common to say something “fell on dead ears” I found it a bit distasteful in here and highlighting the fact that it feels bad for a mother to talk with her child about his cane in front of him by saying “he’s not hard of hearing” weirded me out a bit.
All in all this is a memoir that I personally couldn’t take too much away from and that I think you might get a lot more out of if you know the writer and the things he did.
TW: suicide, drug addiction, ableism, ableist language, loss of ability, grief