'Scattered Shadows' sheds light on life

The memoir's release comes 24 years after the author's death.
By BILL WILLIAMS
HARTFORD COURANT
"Scattered Shadows: A Memoir of Blindness and Vision," by John Howard Griffin (Orbis Books, $18.95)
John Howard Griffin is best known for "Black Like Me," an engrossing account of racial hatred directed at him as he traveled through the South in 1959 disguised as a black man.
What many readers may not realize is that Griffin was totally blind for a decade beginning in 1947 because of a war injury. He drafted a memoir of his blindness, but it was never published. Finally, 24 years after Griffin's death, Orbis Books is releasing "Scattered Shadows: A Memoir of Blindness and Vision."
The book is a treasure on many levels: poignant reflections on coming to terms with blindness, a patient search for spiritual meaning in life, a lifelong enchantment with classical music and, finally, his contagious joy at regaining his lost sight.
Life's journey
During a remarkable life, Texas native Griffin helped the French Underground resistance smuggle Jewish children to safety, was wounded while serving in the Pacific, lived in a monastery in France, worked as a successful livestock farmer while blind and became an acclaimed writer.
He rebelled against the notion that blindness should limit his goals: "I felt that I was simply living in a new and different way that fascinated me." He describes in heartbreaking detail the many adjustments, such as learning to use a fork and to walk without crashing into walls.
In one unforgettable chapter, Griffin encounters a taxi driver who takes a special interest in his blindness. Griffin is puzzled until he learns that the driver has an ugly facial scar that causes people to turn away. In Griffin, the taxi driver had for the first time met someone who did not judge or reject him because of his scar.
Griffin savored his time living in monastic solitude in France. Although he was an agnostic, he felt drawn to Catholicism and became a convert in 1951. After returning to Texas, he decided to raise livestock "to become independent and to earn income."
While blind, Griffin also suffered for a time with near-total paralysis from spinal malaria, as well as diabetes, which eventually killed him at age 60.
Griffin's elegant descriptions of the sounds, feelings and smells of nature and his evident happiness and acceptance of life sing from the pages. During a period of increasing pain from paralysis, he remained "dumb before the joy that flows into my heart with ceaseless richness."
"Scattered Shadows" consists of the draft manuscript Griffin left, plus selections from 1,200 pages of typed journal entries.