- Hardcover: 438 pages
- Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) (June 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0618418865
- ISBN-13: 978-0618418862
- Product Dimensions: 24 x 16.5 x 4.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 798 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,335,993 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Theroux's antihero, Slade Steadman, chronicled his renegade days of globetrotting without the aid of a passport in the bestselling Trespassing—20 years ago. Living luxuriously off royalties on Martha's Vineyard, he has been struggling to finish a second book ever since. Things change when he flies to Ecuador in quest of a potent performance-enhancing drug. He smuggles back to the U.S. a year's supply of the rare datura, which when ingested produces temporary blindness and a paradoxical "blinding light" that exposes truths about the world, truths he uses to complete his pompous, solipsistic Book of Revelation. The substance also luckily boosts his libido, for his relationship with tenacious obstetrician Ava has been on the rocks lately. Prolific Theroux (Dark Star Safari; Hotel Honolulu; etc.) oversaturates this novel with smutty, purplish passages describing cartoonish erotic encounters. The cheap sexual transgressions of a thinly veiled Bill Clinton character also take center stage as Theroux overworks a mirroring link between the fallible president and Steadman, who after the publication of his book continues to deceive his friends and the clamoring public by claiming to be truly blind. Theroux's language is typically vivid and lush when describing the Ecuadorian jungle. On the whole, however, his prose is repetitive, and Steadman is uncongenial, his fate after a year of substance abuse all too predictable. Agent, Andrew Wylie. Author tour. (June 1)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Unlike Slade Steadman, the one-book wonder portrayed in this suspenseful Faustian tale of toxic inspiration, Theroux has 40 books to his credit, including a number of edgy best-selling travel chronicles. A masterful and mesmerizing storyteller who has seen it all, Theroux is drawn to transgression and the darker zones of eroticism, and there is much irony in Steadman's claim to fame, Trespassing, a book about his travels around the world without a passport. Trespassing has made Steadman, now 50, rich, but he hasn't been able to write in years. Enter Ava, a beautiful doctor, who convinces him to go on a drug tour in Ecuador. There an overbearing German journalist becomes Steadman's savior and nemesis by introducing him to a psychotropic plant known as the tiger's blindfold. Although the hallucinogen does, indeed, temporarily blind Steadman, it also heightens his extrasensory powers of perception and dispels his writer's block. By day he dictates an explicit novel to Ava, then, at night, they reenact the lascivious encounters he describes (is this a variation on every writer's secret fantasy?). But as in all the indelible old myths about hubris and forbidden powers, Steadman goes too far. And he is not alone, as Theroux slyly links Steadman's harrowing downfall to that of another powerful man who can't help but tempt fate, President Bill Clinton. Theroux's greatest powers reside in his detailed and sensuous descriptions, and he is positively dazzling here as he calls forth a vivid world not of sights but of scents, sounds, and touch. So all-consuming does this sexy, gothic fable and searing social critique become, it itself serves as a mind-altering substance. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.2 out of 5 stars (23 customer reviews)
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
One of Theroux's best, May 23 2005
By Gregory R. Luck - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Blinding Light (Hardcover)
I have been a Theroux reader for a couple of years. When I saw the book I grabbed it. The plot sounded a little odd. I was not sure that I would like it, but I took the chance. I was not disappointed.A couple of pages in I was hooked. The book starts off with a journey taken incognito by Steadman, a famous but
"has-been" author. The descriptions of his fellow travellers are spot on, particularly the boastful Californians and Janey, the Brit.
Steadman, the narrator and central character, voluntarily descends into darkness, first geographically, then literally and erotically. One wonders, as with some of Theroux's other work, how close it is to real experience.
At times Steadman, who oftens listens and observes, but rarely speaks, is accused of being voyreuristic. As the reader it almost feels like you are in the bedroom with Steadman and Ava. You feel like Steadman - the voyeur.
I read the book in two days. It was difficult to put down.
The only disappointing part of the book was that Part 6, which has to cover a fair bit of ground, was only 6 pages long and Part 5 dragged a little.
A highly original and wonderful story.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
An interesting antihero, July 28 2005
By Eileen Rieback - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Blinding Light (Hardcover)
In "Blinding Light," Slade Steadman has lived the life of a wealthy recluse on Martha's Vineyard from the income generated from his phenomenally successful book "Trespassing." In the twenty years since the publication of this travelogue about traveling without benefit of a passport, he has not been able to write another book. He decides to take a drug tour to the Ecuadorian jungle in the hopes that this will inspire him to create the novel he is meant to write. The drug he takes there, known as datura, or the tiger's blindfold, simultaneously provides blindness and extraordinary clarity of inner vision. He smuggles the drug back into the States and uses it for controlled blindness in order to gain heightened awareness and insight into his past so that he can write a semiautobiographical novel. He becomes addicted to it as he dictates his novel to his lover Ava.Steadman then comes out of seclusion to attend social functions and to go on a book tour, while pretending that his blindness is permanent rather than temporarily drug-induced. Eventually, however, the drug no longer works in a predictable way. His visionary blindness begins to give way to a much darker blindness while the secret of his success is in danger of disclosure. The character of Steadman is an interesting one. Acting the clairvoyant blind man, he swaggers, mind reads, brags of his omniscience, and impresses everyone up to and including President Clinton. He is an antihero as egotistical and colorful as Paul Theroux's Allie Fox, and is destined for as hard a fall.
This story is full of metaphor and symbolism. There are sleep masks, blindfolds, festival masks, and blind people. There are constant references to light and darkness, awareness and ignorance, sight and blindness. The best scenes are those in the Ecuadorian jungle, and they are reminiscent of Theroux's "The Mosquito Coast." The most tedious are those in Steadman's house as he dictates the erotic scenes for his novel and acts them out with Ava. These sexual narratives and flashbacks are overwrought and add little to the story. If they had been trimmed back considerably, I would have rated the book five stars instead of four.
Eileen Rieback
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Blinding Visions, Jun 17 2005
By The JuRK - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Blinding Light (Hardcover)
I've been a Paul Theroux fan for almost 20 years now (the first book of his I read was HALF MOON STREET in 1986, and what few I haven't read, I just haven't got to yet but will), and I believe that BLINDING LIGHT is one of his best.Everything I love about his writing is here: exotic (but at times painfully uncomfortable) travel, garish and obnoxious characters, graphic but intimate sexual episodes and power plays (against the backdrop of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, no less!). And, since this is fiction, Theroux can weave a mysterious drug into the plot that is fantastic and fascinating.
The novel has such an authentic feel that, from reading Theroux's other works, I wondered how much of it actually happened. The opening travel chapters felt like his nonfiction travel books. I can easily see Theroux, who grew up and (as far as I know) maintained a residence in New England, appearing at high-powered celebrity parties at Martha's Vineyard. He even makes a brief mention of growing up at a swimming pool. The added interest in his works, for me, has always been to wonder whether "this really happened" or not.
BLINDING LIGHT is one of his best.
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