Eyes, etc: A memoir

by Eleanor Clark

Suffering from drastic and permanent vision impairment, Eleanor Clark chronicles her experience; partly a dialogue with herself, and partly a self-portrait addressed to the public. 1977. An acclaimed author herself, she was also the wife of author Robert Penn Warren.

175 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Eleanor Clark (July 6, 1913–February 16, 1996) was born in Los Angeles and attended Vassar College in the 1930s. She was the author of the National Book Award winner The Oysters of Locmariaquer, Rome and a Villa, Eyes, Etc., and the novels The Bitter Box, Baldur's Gate, and Camping Out. She was married to Robert Penn Warren.

Reviews

[Caitlin Conlon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve had this book for about 10 years, and remember picking it up at a used bookstore because I was intrigued by its claim that the whole book was told through stream of consciousness.

I wasn’t disappointed on that front. What I was disappointed by was that it felt unedited. When I pick up a book to read stream of consciousness, I’m expecting it to be somewhat edited to insert a thread linking the thoughts together. (I’m thinking of Sheila Heti who does this very well.) I suppose in “Eyes, Etc.” it’s the author’s experience of being read Homer, as his works & characters are brought up a lot, but it wasn’t done in a way that felt very meaningful to me.

Perhaps part of the issue is that this came out in the 70s and I found Clark to be, well, pretty boring. I appreciate the effort it took to write this book on large drawing pads with magic markers due to her deteriorating vision, but don’t think it lended itself to an enjoyable read.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never heard of Eleanor Clark until I read an excerpt from her book Rome and a Villa and was impressed. She was happily married to Robert Penn Warren, famous for his All The King's Men about the rise of Huey Long, and like most literary women of her time was somewhat overshadowed by his fame. But you feel no resentment at that fact. When she partially lost the sight of her second eye, due to "massive retinal hemorrhages beyond laser treatment, leaving permanent scar tissue and known by the bleary name of macular degeneration," he kept her sane by reading Homer to her (Robert Fitzgerald's translation).

This book is an extraordinary stream of consciousness recounting of 1976, the year in which she lost most of the second eye's sight. No self-pity here. She wrote it on big drawing pads in Magic Marker to be able to see it.

We just don't have anyone any more whose "lifelong pals" are Achilles and Ajax. Much less anyone who can write about them as if their lives were as immediate to her (or more so) than those of her own friends and relatives. This is not easy reading and it took me a while to get on her wave length because her mind is active and brilliant and skips from allusion to allusion like a mildly inebriated butterfly. But wow. I feel moved to honor her and also moved to read Homer.

She's no snob, in spite of her brains. She's profoundly disgusted by the state of America (specifically the countryside and suburbs of Vermont and NYC) in the late 70s but this does not keep her from enjoying it with gusto where she can. She cherishes her friends and shares their griefs without overly focusing on her own (which were considerable - a writer who cannot read and who faces not being able to do that which has given her life meaning). This was before audiobooks. Her husband was her audiobook.

She has a mordant wit and don't read this unless you want to be bit. Sentimentalists beware. She is not a believer (though raised Protestant) and found Lourdes repulsive.

What saves her?
"Music mainly, and friends, keep us from gibbering on the sidewalk or slipping off one side or another, where the tide runs so fast. Lovely mystery -- that such profusion of youthful gifts in performance, and the will to work that hard to develop them, keep coming along. Parlous times or not, there they are, another blessing to count...A young duo, flute and viola, worth the voyage and more. Higher than moon-flights, heavenly time-killer -- ah, there it is at last!"...Meanwhile the immediate givers of the strange geometry, the players, ask for practically nothing in return, really only the chance to stay alive and keep at it. Like the nightingale in the desolate garden in Geneva."

So in the end she finds it "impossible to hang on to, or recreate or sympathize with, the rage and grief of months ago, I think February or March. It was to go something like this.
But goddammit Doctor, can't you understand, I can't read! I can't read! Why should I want to live like that?"

But the brown remains of the leaves and the pine needles are thick on the lawn and she has to get out and rake. And renew the attack on the rampant strangling non-indigenous vines that threaten the trees. And work "by hook, crook or Trojan horse."

She's worth remembering.