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Night Vision: Blind Characters in John Gardner's Fiction.

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Title: Night Vision: Blind Characters in John Gardner's Fiction.
Authors: Sayers, Edna Edith1 Edna.Sayers@hotmail.com
Source: Disability Studies Quarterly. Winter/Spring2007, Vol. 27 Issue 1/2, p18-18. 1p.
Subject Terms: Blind people in literature
Geographic Terms: Batavia (N.Y.), New York (State)
Reviews & Products: Sunlight Dialogues, The (Book : Gardner)
People: Gardner, John
Abstract: American novelist and teacher John Gardner (1933-1982) grew up near the New York State School for the Blind in Batavia, a town that boasted a large and vibrant blind community up into the 1970s. This experience is surely why his novels include blind characters with fully imagined histories and inner lives, an extreme rarity in literary history. Esther Clumly in The Sunlight Dialogues, for example, is not only the presiding spirit of the novel but also a rounded and dynamic major character with a realistic blind-school background and a web of friends and community. What's remarkable is how Gardner controls the distance between his own views -- that blind people are numerous, competent, interesting, and yet essentially ordinary -- and those of his characters, some of whom find blind people frightening, pitiable, freakish, or stupid. This controlled distance creates tension, depth, and, sometimes, irony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Copyright of Disability Studies Quarterly is the property of Society for Disability Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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  Data: American novelist and teacher John Gardner (1933-1982) grew up near the New York State School for the Blind in Batavia, a town that boasted a large and vibrant blind community up into the 1970s. This experience is surely why his novels include blind characters with fully imagined histories and inner lives, an extreme rarity in literary history. Esther Clumly in The Sunlight Dialogues, for example, is not only the presiding spirit of the novel but also a rounded and dynamic major character with a realistic blind-school background and a web of friends and community. What's remarkable is how Gardner controls the distance between his own views -- that blind people are numerous, competent, interesting, and yet essentially ordinary -- and those of his characters, some of whom find blind people frightening, pitiable, freakish, or stupid. This controlled distance creates tension, depth, and, sometimes, irony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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  Data: <i>Copyright of Disability Studies Quarterly is the property of Society for Disability Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.</i> (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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        Value: 10.18061/dsq.v27i1/2.12
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      – Code: eng
        Text: English
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      – SubjectFull: Batavia (N.Y.)
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      – SubjectFull: Sunlight Dialogues, The (Book : Gardner)
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