Planet of the Blind: A Memoir, and: Under a Wing: A Memoir (review)

218Fourth Genre of Herring Cove, the wüdUfe in and around the ponds, the activity of an owl. Some are pieces on other poets and nature writers: Whitman, MiUay Audubon, Beston, and Muir. Some, Uke "StayingAUve," artfuUy connect art and nature. In "Pen and Paper and a Breath ofAir," she excerpts the notebooks she always carries with her, rich in observations and bursts of language . Here, and throughout the book, she brings readers into the generative process, at once sharing her experience and modeling the poet/essayist's methods. Penelope Scambly Schott Planet ofthe Blind:A Memoir, by Stephen Kuusisto. Bantam Doubleday DeU, 1998. 208 pages, cloth $22.95; paper $11.95; large print $26.95. Memoirs are about seeing—what you saw then and how you see it now. I'd Uke to recommend two beautifuUy written books with clear and very unusual visions. The first, Planet of the Blind, by Steven Kuusisto, is UteraUy about seeing—and not seeing. It was recommended to me by my aunt Sylvia, who has always been a great reader. Now at ninety, living alone in New York City and going bUnd, she recently listened to a tape of Steven Kuusisto's Planet ofthe Blind and urged me to read it.Yes, my initial impetus was to be a good niece, but Sylvia did me a huge favor, and now I am urging you to read this astonishing memoir. Steven Kuusisto was legaUy blind from birth, but his highly educated parents didn't want to admit it because they thought that labeling him handicapped would ruin his Ufe. Therefore he was sent to regular schools—where he couldn't see the books or the blackboard—and he tried valiantly to be a regular guy by playing baU or riding a bicycle. Did you know that sometimes you reaUy can catch a baU by sound? When Steven rode his bicycle, he didn 't know whether the dark spot ahead of him was a shadow or a tree or a buüding. In order to survive, he had to combine blurry Ught-dark images with a detaüed mental map of his surroundings, indoors and out. He vacülated between sticking to the territory he could handle and confronting himself with unreaUstic visual challenges: he went jogging, he even went bird watching, but didn't have the heart to teU his companion that he couldn't see the birds so enthusiasticaUy pointed out to him. EventuaUy, of course, the basic dishonesty of his brave and demanding pretense caught up with him, and years after he should have—partly due to an accident that further damaged his very minimal vision—he learned to Book Reviews219 use the white cane he had resisted so long. Hint: the happy ending involves a dog. Under a Wing:A Memoir, by Reeve Lindbergh. DeU, 1998. 224 pages, paper $12.95. The other memoir I am recommending is Under a Wing by Reeve Lindbergh, the youngest chüd of Charles Lindbergh. We aU know about the baby who was kidnapped, but what about the five subsequent children whose privacy and safety were so carefuUy guarded? This is a strictly personal account of what it was Uke to grow up in the Lindbergh family, and this book, too, I read for famüy reasons: My father worked for the airlines and actuaUy knew Lindbergh. A charming combination of immediacy, humor, and forgiveness characterizes the memoir as a whole. It is neither a hatchet job nor a whitewash; we can trust this writer to be fair. For example, Reeve Lindbergh does not ignore controversy such as her father's notorious anti-interventionist stance in 1941, but she presents it as part of the famüy consteUation, another instance when he should have listened to his wife and didn't. He was too sure he was right. And yet Charles Lindbergh was also tender. When a confused young man came to the door claiming to be the kidnapped chüd—and more than one did—the aviator would put an arm around the young man's shoulder and lead him offthe property. Later we hear how that baby becomes real to Reeve only when...