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3.5 AVERAGE
3.5 AVERAGE
My friend Sammy in Cornwall, UK knows how much I love to read, and she sent several books to me for Christmas. The very first one I grabbed hold of was Deaf Sentence, by David Lodge. Friends that know me well enough will remember that my parents were Deaf. I was intrigued by the title.
I started howling with laughter before I’d read a few pages. This is a very funny novel about what it’s like to lose your hearing as you get older. What set me off was the conversation Desmond had with his wife Winifred (Fred). She’s talking to him and he’s missing important clue words and misunderstanding her. She must repeat herself, sometimes to the point of “Oh, never mind!” It reminded me of conversations my husband and I have had!
Intertwined with Desmond’s difficulties navigating the hearing world now that he’s nearly totally deaf is a comedic side story involving a young graduate student pursuing Desmond to help her with her Ph.D. thesis. Think of Alex as a female George Santos and you can only imagine some of the complications, she causes not only for Desmond but another professor she’s roped in.
Loss of hearing and the isolation it can cause is a thread throughout the book and that’s what I wanted to turn to. It’s scary to lose a sense you’ve had since babyhood. I think it would be a loss people fear. Some people do fear losing their hearing, believing then they won’t hear loved ones’ voices or music or birdsong anymore. I’m not as afraid of that because I grew up with Deaf parents. I am terrified of losing my sight.
I recommend this book to anyone. You’ll gain some insight into later age hearing loss and have a few good laughs as well.
I remember when I began learning American Sign Language at a Methodist Church for the Deaf. One of my classmates was an elderly woman named Myrtle. Myrtle was like the Desmond character in the book. She’d begun to lose her hearing gradually early and was nearly stone deaf in her 60s. She had fine, clear speech but was isolated because she could no longer follow the conversations of family or friends in group settings. She was desperate to be able to communicate and had decided to take sign language. Sadly, I also learned this was Myrtle’s 3rd or 4th attempt. Her fingers were also twisted with rheumatoid arthritis, and it was difficult for her to form letters. Remembering the signs were beyond her. I felt sorry for her. Everyone in the class and the teacher were helpful, but she just couldn’t seem to get it.
Becoming deaf at a later age reminds me of the Big D, Little d designations. When you see big D Deaf, it means a person who was born deaf or became prelingually deaf. Before the advent of legislation for people with disabilities to have equal access to jobs and educations, Deaf children went to special schools. There they learned sign language from teachers and classmates. Deaf culture began in Deaf residential schools. Deaf people do not miss hearing. They are proud of themselves, their language, and their culture. American Sign Language is now recognized as a foreign language with its own rules and syntax. It isn’t English.
Small d deaf refers to those with hearing loss but don’t identify with the Deaf community. Maybe they lost their hearing later in life, like Desmond. All their lives, they’ve only used spoken language and interacted with the hearing community. Learning to sign isn’t easy at an older age. Some deaf people were raised by hearing parents that wanted their children to assimilate easily into the speaking community. As children, they used lipreading to communicate. In the 1980s, parents willingly tried the use of cued speech, which uses a set of handshapes to help distinguish sound-alike words. In the 1990s, there was the miraculous cochlear implant and parents jumped on that technology almost with a sense of desperation.
Some deaf children become Deaf in their teens or later years. How does that happen? I worked in a school district that mainstreamed deaf and Deaf students into the hearing population once they got to middle school. A whole new world opened for deaf children and many quickly picked up ASL. At the age of 16, some of the deaf students demanded to have their individualized education plans (IEPs) changed so that they might have ASL interpreters. They began to learn about the Deaf culture from their classmates. As adults, they moved into the Deaf community, meaning they’d go to Deaf clubs and churches.
I. King Jordan was the first Deaf President of Gallaudet University. He wasn’t born Deaf. He was involved in a motorcycle accident at the age of 21 which severed the nerves in one ear and damaged them in the other. As traumatic as his loss was, he didn’t give up. He went to Gallaudet, having never met a Deaf person before and not knowing any sign language at all. Deaf people are generally very willing to help someone struggling to learn their language and he was able to move up to the point where he was considered a candidate to become President of Gallaudet University. Read his story here.
This was much more involved than your usual book review but sometimes I just must travel where my thoughts take me.
I started howling with laughter before I’d read a few pages. This is a very funny novel about what it’s like to lose your hearing as you get older. What set me off was the conversation Desmond had with his wife Winifred (Fred). She’s talking to him and he’s missing important clue words and misunderstanding her. She must repeat herself, sometimes to the point of “Oh, never mind!” It reminded me of conversations my husband and I have had!
Intertwined with Desmond’s difficulties navigating the hearing world now that he’s nearly totally deaf is a comedic side story involving a young graduate student pursuing Desmond to help her with her Ph.D. thesis. Think of Alex as a female George Santos and you can only imagine some of the complications, she causes not only for Desmond but another professor she’s roped in.
Loss of hearing and the isolation it can cause is a thread throughout the book and that’s what I wanted to turn to. It’s scary to lose a sense you’ve had since babyhood. I think it would be a loss people fear. Some people do fear losing their hearing, believing then they won’t hear loved ones’ voices or music or birdsong anymore. I’m not as afraid of that because I grew up with Deaf parents. I am terrified of losing my sight.
I recommend this book to anyone. You’ll gain some insight into later age hearing loss and have a few good laughs as well.
I remember when I began learning American Sign Language at a Methodist Church for the Deaf. One of my classmates was an elderly woman named Myrtle. Myrtle was like the Desmond character in the book. She’d begun to lose her hearing gradually early and was nearly stone deaf in her 60s. She had fine, clear speech but was isolated because she could no longer follow the conversations of family or friends in group settings. She was desperate to be able to communicate and had decided to take sign language. Sadly, I also learned this was Myrtle’s 3rd or 4th attempt. Her fingers were also twisted with rheumatoid arthritis, and it was difficult for her to form letters. Remembering the signs were beyond her. I felt sorry for her. Everyone in the class and the teacher were helpful, but she just couldn’t seem to get it.
Becoming deaf at a later age reminds me of the Big D, Little d designations. When you see big D Deaf, it means a person who was born deaf or became prelingually deaf. Before the advent of legislation for people with disabilities to have equal access to jobs and educations, Deaf children went to special schools. There they learned sign language from teachers and classmates. Deaf culture began in Deaf residential schools. Deaf people do not miss hearing. They are proud of themselves, their language, and their culture. American Sign Language is now recognized as a foreign language with its own rules and syntax. It isn’t English.
Small d deaf refers to those with hearing loss but don’t identify with the Deaf community. Maybe they lost their hearing later in life, like Desmond. All their lives, they’ve only used spoken language and interacted with the hearing community. Learning to sign isn’t easy at an older age. Some deaf people were raised by hearing parents that wanted their children to assimilate easily into the speaking community. As children, they used lipreading to communicate. In the 1980s, parents willingly tried the use of cued speech, which uses a set of handshapes to help distinguish sound-alike words. In the 1990s, there was the miraculous cochlear implant and parents jumped on that technology almost with a sense of desperation.
Some deaf children become Deaf in their teens or later years. How does that happen? I worked in a school district that mainstreamed deaf and Deaf students into the hearing population once they got to middle school. A whole new world opened for deaf children and many quickly picked up ASL. At the age of 16, some of the deaf students demanded to have their individualized education plans (IEPs) changed so that they might have ASL interpreters. They began to learn about the Deaf culture from their classmates. As adults, they moved into the Deaf community, meaning they’d go to Deaf clubs and churches.
I. King Jordan was the first Deaf President of Gallaudet University. He wasn’t born Deaf. He was involved in a motorcycle accident at the age of 21 which severed the nerves in one ear and damaged them in the other. As traumatic as his loss was, he didn’t give up. He went to Gallaudet, having never met a Deaf person before and not knowing any sign language at all. Deaf people are generally very willing to help someone struggling to learn their language and he was able to move up to the point where he was considered a candidate to become President of Gallaudet University. Read his story here.
This was much more involved than your usual book review but sometimes I just must travel where my thoughts take me.
I really liked some aspects of this book. The narrator's mishaps in dealing with hearing loss and retirement from academia and his relationship with his family (cantankerous dad, wife who is more sociable and conventional than he is, adult children). However, I was turned off by the subplot involving the (female, American) grad student who is trying to get him to mentor her, but apparently can't make any progress on her thesis without plagiarizing some man or other, and turns into a bit of a stalker, making a series of bizarre sexual advances... it just seemed really tone-deaf and sexist, a throwback to a time when women weren't welcome in academia. I've been wanting to read other books by Lodge but based on this one I'm reconsidering.
I would have enjoyed this book more if I'd been better prepared for its story. I was initially drawn to the novel because the blurb on the back of the jacket talked about the "intrigue" of the graduate student who was researching suicide notes. I thought a mystery would develop. Instead, that is one minor subplot.
A painful, yet funny examination of getting old and how our physical bodies inevitably begin to betray us. It's a topic nobody thinks about before they hit their 30s, and even then, the thought process is more along the lines of "ow, I guess I'm not young and invincible anymore. Oh well!"
Lodge's descriptions of disability-induced shame and the ensuing coping methods are great; they're helpful in understanding why anyone would knowingly make their lives a little bit harder sometimes.
This story has everything, but I can also see how it might be a total turnoff for someone who has zero interest in linguistics: the protagonist is a retired linguistics professor, and Lodge doesn't shy away from launching into linguistics at any opportunity. Then again, there's also a great scene where the protagonist is trying to compensate his hearing loss at a party by talking without pause about any subject at all until his listeners get annoyed and turn away from the seemingly pompous git. There's a lot of meta here: what is how we truly feel and what we truly fear, and what is us trying to obfuscate those feelings by focusing our energies on relaying the knowledge we have.
A fun read all in all, even with the Manic Dream Pixie Girl at Uni side plot.
Lodge's descriptions of disability-induced shame and the ensuing coping methods are great; they're helpful in understanding why anyone would knowingly make their lives a little bit harder sometimes.
This story has everything, but I can also see how it might be a total turnoff for someone who has zero interest in linguistics: the protagonist is a retired linguistics professor, and Lodge doesn't shy away from launching into linguistics at any opportunity. Then again, there's also a great scene where the protagonist is trying to compensate his hearing loss at a party by talking without pause about any subject at all until his listeners get annoyed and turn away from the seemingly pompous git. There's a lot of meta here: what is how we truly feel and what we truly fear, and what is us trying to obfuscate those feelings by focusing our energies on relaying the knowledge we have.
A fun read all in all, even with the Manic Dream Pixie Girl at Uni side plot.
This was supposed to be a story of a man coping with going deaf gradually, according to the blurb. However, it's about a man who is already deaf (though it only appears to get worse when his hearing aids are not working or forgotten), and his interactions with various people.
I don't mind a character piece, but I couldn't see the point of having Alex, the student, involved, as ultimately, that part of the story didn't go anywhere. There were some entertaining moments, but overall it wasn't "gloriously funny", more mildly amusing in places.
I don't mind a character piece, but I couldn't see the point of having Alex, the student, involved, as ultimately, that part of the story didn't go anywhere. There were some entertaining moments, but overall it wasn't "gloriously funny", more mildly amusing in places.
Expected far more for this. It does have some comical bits relating to the hard-of-hearing, but the story made me tired. I almost didn't finish it, but the weird character of Alex (she of the potential thesis based on the writing styles of suicide notes) made me stick around.
Typically sensitive Lodge novel proves once again that he does his best work when dealing with subject matter that he cares about that isn't masquerading as literary biography. Some elements are mercifully ignored in favour of more important aspects of the main character, emphasising his priorities and strengthening the sense of a man and the frustrating yet beloved world he inhabits.
This book begins with a promising premise: Desmond Bates is a retired linguistics professor who is gradually losing his hearing. He has some frustrating experiences with his deafness and an intriguing encounter with a rather intense young woman. His wife is a women somewhat his junior, though not outrageously so. Nonetheless, just as her life seems to be going through a revitalization, Desmond appears to be headed toward senescence. Desmond's father is a crusty, old blighter who is also rather deaf. In the right hands, this could be a fruitful exploration of these themes and situations.
Unfortunately, David Lodge does not seem to be the right author in this case. For one thing, in the acknowledgments at the end of the book, he makes clear that he shares Desmond's loss of hearing, though to what extent we cannot be sure. While one might think this would give him a certain empathy and insider's perspective, instead it seems to have limited his vision to the shame and self-pity one might feel when losing one of the more essential of the body's faculties.
One of the most telling scenes in the book is one in which Desmond has run out of batteries for his hearing aid and is at a party his wife is hosting. His solutions? Either nod and pretend to understand what is being said or talk nonstop so you never have to worry about hearing what the other person is saying. He chooses the latter, bolstered by a considerable amount of wine, with predictably disastrous results. Yet it takes very little effort for the reader to come up with several more palatable answers to his quandary, primary among them simply letting the persons with whom he comes into contact know that he cannot hear them. The implication is that there is something so essentially shameful about this condition that he would rather make a fool of himself than admit to his deafness. This is not only absurd, but rather offensive to those who have lost all or part of their hearing, and consider this condition to be neither shameful nor stigmatizing.
This book seems to be one of lost opportunities to say something meaningful about deafness or life or aging, or even to develop characters or story lines about which we can actually care. The subplot with the rather insane young woman he meets at the beginning of the book is never fully developed and ends up feeling gratuitous, as if the rest of the book was lacking in spice (it is) and her character would do the trick (it doesn't). None of the rest of the plot elements are particularly compelling, and we feel so little sympathy for Desmond and his rather crude father that the death of the latter doesn't even invoke much of a reaction in us.
All in all, a rather large disappointment. Skip it.
Unfortunately, David Lodge does not seem to be the right author in this case. For one thing, in the acknowledgments at the end of the book, he makes clear that he shares Desmond's loss of hearing, though to what extent we cannot be sure. While one might think this would give him a certain empathy and insider's perspective, instead it seems to have limited his vision to the shame and self-pity one might feel when losing one of the more essential of the body's faculties.
One of the most telling scenes in the book is one in which Desmond has run out of batteries for his hearing aid and is at a party his wife is hosting. His solutions? Either nod and pretend to understand what is being said or talk nonstop so you never have to worry about hearing what the other person is saying. He chooses the latter, bolstered by a considerable amount of wine, with predictably disastrous results. Yet it takes very little effort for the reader to come up with several more palatable answers to his quandary, primary among them simply letting the persons with whom he comes into contact know that he cannot hear them. The implication is that there is something so essentially shameful about this condition that he would rather make a fool of himself than admit to his deafness. This is not only absurd, but rather offensive to those who have lost all or part of their hearing, and consider this condition to be neither shameful nor stigmatizing.
This book seems to be one of lost opportunities to say something meaningful about deafness or life or aging, or even to develop characters or story lines about which we can actually care. The subplot with the rather insane young woman he meets at the beginning of the book is never fully developed and ends up feeling gratuitous, as if the rest of the book was lacking in spice (it is) and her character would do the trick (it doesn't). None of the rest of the plot elements are particularly compelling, and we feel so little sympathy for Desmond and his rather crude father that the death of the latter doesn't even invoke much of a reaction in us.
All in all, a rather large disappointment. Skip it.
Deaf Sentence is an interesting book, the story of a retired linguistics professor who has developed high frequency deafness, which allows him to hear and comprehend most consonants but very few vowel sounds. The story follows him through several everyday seasons of life: the birth of a grandchild, the death of a parent, the challenges of marriage, all seen through the lens of his increasing deafness. The plot line itself is not extraordinary. What would prod me to recommend this book is the voice of the protagonist, Desmond. It is intelligent, gentle, vulnerable and real.
Although there are aspects of the plot that I could have done without (is it just me or is there a surfeit of novels out there in which ruefully ageing men are pursued by obscurely vindictive, sexually aggressive young women?), I always enjoy Lodge's novels and this one displays not only his characteristic cleverness (the riffs on deaf/death, as in "o deaf, where is thy sting?" are beautifully Lodge-ian), but a poignance and tenderness well beyond what I'm used to in his work.