Would I lose the friends with whom I have nothing in common but who remain in my phone book because they get the blindness thing?
Even when the true villain of the piece is the father, as in Edward St Aubyn's brilliant, distressing Patrick Melrose series, there tends to be a mother whose wilful blindness makes things that much worse.
In the 18 selections here – on Oscar Wilde and GK Chesterton, Alfred Hitchcock, the Arabian Nights, the joy he felt when Paris was liberated from the Nazis and his tranquil acceptance of his blindness, among other things – Borges demonstrates that profundity and wit need not be at odds.
"Failure to see that crimes are linked — linkage blindness — is a thing that will allow the killer to strike again," she advises a colleague.
It is his rash haste, his violent impetuosity, his blindness to every thing but the dictates of his passions or affection, that produces all his misfortunes, that aggravates his impatience of them, that enforces our pity for him".
Several years ago, he finally read "Great Expectations". He said that Dickens's "self-absorption, childishness and blindness, none of these things go against him as a great writer". At one point, he had thought about calling the character Dee, or perhaps, an anagram of Dickens, but decided that would be too heavy a handle for him to carry.
Stated eloquently by Helen Keller, "blindness separates people from things; deafness separates people from people".
At that point, he's in business: Beethoven's deafness, Goya's deafness, Milton's blindness, that kind of thing".
"He was very out there with his blindness as a major thing for him but he didn't want anyone to soft-shoe around it.
