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Title details for Blind Man's Bluff by James Tate Hill - Available

Blind Man's Bluff

by James Tate Hill
Curtis Armstrong
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
At age sixteen, James Tate Hill was diagnosed with Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy, a condition that left him legally blind. After high-school friends stopped calling and a disability counselor advised him to aim for Cs in his classes, he used his remaining blurry peripheral vision to pretend he could still see. Feigning eye contact, memorizing common routes, filling shelves with paperbacks he read via tape cassettes, he organized his life around passing for sighted. A wealth of pop-culture knowledge allowed him to steer conversations from what he couldn't see. For fifteen years, Hill hid his blindness from friends, colleagues, and lovers, even convincing himself that if he stared long enough, things would come into focus. At thirty, faced with a stalled writing career, a crumbling marriage, and a growing fear of leaving his apartment, he began to wonder if there was a better way.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 17, 2021

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781666531800
      • File size: 214496 KB
      • Duration: 07:26:51

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrating this touching memoir about a visually impaired writer who hid his disability from others, Curtis Armstrong demonstrates impressive dramatic skills and vocal range that capture the pathos in the story. His engagement with Hill's authentic writing makes listening absorbing. Hill has only peripheral vision and offers gripping accounts of his early struggles to do normal things without making his impairment obvious. But hiding his disability distorted who he was, separated him from others, and, in many ways, kept him from fully knowing and accepting himself. This is inspiring blow-by-blow reportage on how one artist did the internal work necessary to connect with people more honestly and learned to trust what he was offering the world as a writer. Armstrong's equally inspiring performance makes the author's journey a captivating listening experience. T.W. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 10, 2021
      Essayist Hill (Academy Gothic) shares a stirring if meandering story about losing his sight. At age 16, he was diagnosed with Leber’s hereditary optic neuropathy and deemed legally blind. When asked about what he can and can’t see, Hill writes, “The short answer is this: I don’t see what I directly look at.” While his narrative sometimes digresses into tangents about unrelated childhood crushes and his mom’s Weight Watchers meetings, humor buoys his account as he lays bare his attempts hide his legal blindness in a sighted world. He’d arrive early for dates so he could be found first; memorized buttons on the microwave and the route to the convenience store; and even entered a creative writing program where classmates, unaware of his blindness, attributed his unapproachability to him being “an asshole.” Eventually he met and married a fellow MFA student, but their relationship buckled under his denial about his disability (“I will not help you hide your blindness from the world,” his wife wrote to him before their divorce). In the wake of their split, Hill struggled to write about his condition—“the thought of readers... knowing I was blind, disabled, felt like the opposite of why I chose to be a writer”—but after finding love again, his reluctance gave way to self-acceptance. This moving account doesn’t disappoint.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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