[Interview] Andrew Leland's The Country of the Blind

An extension of our interview about Leland's new memoir

Earlier this month, I interviewed the writer Andrew Leland about his new book, The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight (Penguin Press). I knew Leland’s work from McSweeney’s, mostly. Amongst other writerly things he is an editor at McSweeney’s and the former host and producer of The Organist, an arts podcast that has been described as, “This American Life, but for art.” 

When I caught word that Leland was writing a memoir-meets-cultural-exploration about his experience going blind, I assumed he would approach the topic with the same level of humor and curiosity as he does with his other work. And per usual, I was not wrong.* 

Our feature interview for the SF Chronicle focuses mostly on Leland’s process for writing the book, highlighting some of the why’s behind writing it. And, because I can’t help but fixate on dog-related things, we mention his puppy. Since there wasn’t space for more of that moment in the Chronicle piece, I wanted to expand upon it here. 

In a chapter called “Camera Obscura,” Leland describes touring an art exhibit by the blind artist Emilie L. Gossiaux. When Leland enters the gallery with his cane, the gallerist offers to describe the images to him. He quickly brushes off the offer of assistance, certain he can see the paintings just fine – until he realizes he’s nearly tripping over the sculptures on the floor and missing some of the smaller drawings. Oh. This is just one of the many anecdotal moments where the reader can contextualize Leland’s personal experience of going blind. 

But briefly, back to dogs. 

After learning that the puppy at Leland’s feet is far from a guide dog (read that moment in our Chronicle interview), we spoke about Gossiaux, whose guide dog London is often featured in her work.

“That guide dog gives her independence and opens up her world,” Leland says. “But she opens up the dog's world as well. And there's like, you know, the doggirl thing.”

He’s referring to Gossiaux’s 2022 exhibit Significant Otherness, and writes, “She borrowed the title from the Donna Haraway essay, “The Companion Species Manifesto,” about the complex, intertwined species history of humans and dogs.” The exhibit includes sculptures and drawings of what Gossiaux calls “doggirl,” a hybrid creature that’s exactly what it sounds like: part dog, part girl. It’s got long legs and three sets of nipples. It’s striking. 

There is an emotional part in that scene where Leland views Gossiaux’s piece “London, Midsumer No 1.” The ink-and-crayon drawing features several Londons dancing around a maypole, which is actually Gossiaux’s white cane. As she describes the painting to the folks viewing it, Leland takes in the image in becomes overwhelmed. 

“I regard people who cry at paintings a bit like I regard people who cry at the symphony: I don’t doubt their emotion, but it seems wild to me that something so formal could create such a feeling,” Leland writes. But he goes on to write, “...I wept at this image, struck by the joy the artist had discovered among the trappings of blindness.”

This is one of the parts I cried, as well. The way Leland writes about navigating his experience of becoming blind are beautifully rendered and personal. For example, a part in the book where he brings out his cane for the first time in front of his wife, Lily. The moment startles her – Lily didn’t know that her husband had started secretly using his cane. 

“I hadn't been open with her about (the cane use) because I wasn't really open with myself about it,” he says. “I was carrying this cane around, folded up, never using it. She had never seen it, and I wasn't talking to her about how I should start using it more…so when I just busted it out, it was like, shocking. And you know, even though it was a vulnerable moment for me, it was also unfair to her.”

Leland explains how in some ways, writing the book – and fact checking some of those moments with Lily, who is also a writer and a professor – served as a way to open up a new dialogue. “That was definitely helpful, in my own life as well as for the book, to have her collaborating like that,” Leland says. He describes doing a search for “Lily” in the manuscript and together, going through every sentence that mentioned her in some capacity. 

“I think for her, engaging with that on a textual level was almost easier than if I had been like, ‘Sweetheart, have a seat. I'd really like to have a chat tonight about blindness.’ You know? And that's important too! And we have had conversations like that. But I feel like she's just such a reader and writer at heart, that I feel like that was really helpful to let her speak to her for herself; I think it was really powerful for her to do it that way,” Leland says.

At the same time, it was challenging. He describes sitting down with Lily to go over every sentence in which she is a character. She pointed out moments where he was leaving out her perspective. “And it’s true,” Leland says. “The first draft was 100% in my head.” He says that in writing about moments like at the restaurant, he was just writing about a very vulnerable moment from his own perspective. He shares how helpful it was to be sure and get Lily’s perspective, too, in order to write the most honest telling of that moment.

The book touches on so many other moments than I have space for here (so you’ll just have to go read it yourself!), but I wanted to be sure and include a part where we talked about some key themes that came up in the book: consent, vulnerability, humanity. I mention a blood-boiling moment in the book in which a person in line at a coffee shop sees someone walking by, notes Leland’s cane, and places their hands on Leland’s shoulders to physically move them out of the way. 

Ugh.

He says that a lot of times, people’s perception of blind people is that they are helpless. “Like, they’re de facto just sort of automatically in need of assistance – and not just assistance but of guidance. And (sometimes) it's physical in that way, like grabbing somebody, but it also is about a sort of sense of entitlement like, ‘Oh, what's wrong with you? What happened to you? How'd you lose your vision?” Leland says. 

“And that happens all the time. People will say to blind people, ‘Oh, what's the deal with you?’ And it's like, you would never go up to somebody in a different position, and – well, some people do – but (most) people would never dream of just asking a stranger personal questions like that. But when it comes to somebody with a visible disability, they're just like, ‘Yeah, what happened to you?”

Leland chronicles all sorts of these experiences. Country has already gotten Leland much praise from sighted and blind communities alike. He wanted the book to be an “everybody book,” and from the beginning, knew he wanted to use the experience he was going through to be what he calls “a sort of Virgil through the travel log.” 

In order to do that, he knew he could never stay in his own backyard. “It was always like: how far can this thing take me, you know? And that's why when the title came together, that felt really exciting to me too, cause I did like the idea of it being like a travel log. Like, okay, let's go explore this world – and this world is so far beyond me. If it just stuck in my own house and my own backyard and my own day-to-day orbit, then we don't really understand blindness, I don't think. I really had to go out into the world and find out what it meant.”

Andrew Leland’s The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight is now out. Order it through Powell’s or another independent bookstore if you can! 

* A funny, funny joke.