Pit of Babel

About the book

About Pit of Babel

Daniel Bran, an Irish-American street musician in New York, blind since birth and no longer young, learns that a corneal transplant operation might make him a sighted man. While he waits impatiently, month after month, for a donated eye, a dying friend offers to sell his eyes to Daniel, to ease the burden of funeral expenses on his family. Daniel, anxious to see the world, eagerly accepts the proposition, and withdraws from the bank his life's savings to pay for the eyes and get on with the transplant. But on the subway, his pocket is picked and his money is stolen. And the blind street musician begins to search for his money in the jungle of New York.... The novel--taking place in the early 1970s--depicts Daniel's adventures, from morning till night, in pursuit of his money. Finding it means that he would no longer be an outcast; not finding it would make life not worth living. During his bizarre day-long quest in the "pit of Babel," a fantastic kaleidoscope of characters, locales, events from the "lower depths" to life in high society comes fascinatingly alive. His hope alternately waxing and waning, Daniel follows, loses, rediscovers clues, his pursuit of the money involving him in memorable scenes--some tragic, others comic, brutal, erotic, mystical, the chain of events charged with mounting suspense, culminating in an unexpected denouement. This grotesque yet poetic urban ballad, written with refined simplicity, yet pulsing with the exciting and terrifying life of the metropolis, is the story of an "outsider," a man with "soul." Searching for "vision," the blind street musician becomes the symbol of the lonely individual excluded from wider society, struggling to attain the goal that would give meaning to his life. Thus this moving novel of hope and despair, dream and nightmare, reality and illusion transcends the narrative itself, its exoteric meaning enhanced by an esoteric dimension. The author possesses the rare ability of opening up a new world for the reader, a world both weird and familiar. In this novel he accomplishes the bravura of making the adventures of a sightless man a visionary experience for us.

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