“Rose leaves her husband to get another one,” says Mike Moore disapprovingly, calling her a “poster child” for the me generation. “What a shallow person.”
“She was like a person who’s committed a crime and doesn’t want to be discovered.”
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Rose’s life might make a good subject for a soap opera, but she’s actually a character from Ann Patchett’s novel The Patron Saint of Liars. Yet the people dissecting her character haven’t even read that book. They listened to it on tape before participating in this discussion group for the blind. The group meets at noon the fourth Thursday of every month in the Talking Books Center on the fifth floor of the Harold Washington Library. The center has more than 11,000 fiction and nonfiction titles and about 100 popular magazines on tape. It serves approximately 4,400 patrons. The group started in 1997, when the center opened as part of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, a program operated through the Library of Congress offering free braille and recorded materials. Members of this group order their selections through the center and receive tapes by mail at no charge.
“We only discuss books by topics or themes, never by what’s on a certain page,” says Marcia Trawinski, who works as a counselor for people with disabilities. “That’s because for us there are no pages.”
“I don’t know,” erupts Dumas, a retired CTA bus driver. “That wouldn’t happen with me. She’s gone a month–shucks! I’m on the prowl. After a month, that’s it.”
“For people who have lost their sight, this is a way to get back to an important part of the experiences they enjoyed, a way to discuss a book and be connected to an intellectual experience.”
