This is fresh air, I'm Terry Gross. My guest Andrew Leland is a writer whose recent subject

has been the world of the blind. He's slowly been going blind for the past 20 years,

as the result of a progressive eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa, or RP.

In the state of Massachusetts where he lives, he is now considered legally blind. His new memoir,

The Country of the Blind, is about the experience of slowly losing his vision and preparing for

blindness, and how it's affected his identity, how the world sees him, his marriage, his

relationship with his young son, and his ability to continue writing and reading. He also reports

on the experience of attending the largest convention of blind people, and about spending two weeks

at a radical training center for people preparing to go blind. He also speaks to blind people who

have created cutting edge digital technologies to assist the blind that have been adapted for use

by the general population. More philosophical questions are posed in the book too, like,

does vision deserve the privileged place that holds at the top of the hierarchy of the senses?

How much of perception happens in the eyes, and how much takes place in the mind? And what happens

to the male gaze if you're blind? Leland has been an editor at the Literary magazine The Believer

since its start in 2003. He's been published in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine,

and hosted an arts and culture podcast for the Los Angeles Public Radio Station KCRW.

Andrew Leland, welcome to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you here.

Oh, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

If we could see through your eyes, what would we see?

If you could see through my eyes, you wouldn't necessarily notice anything that

strange if you were just sitting still, because I have about 6% of what a normal, fully-sighted

person sees. And so, you know, I'm sitting right here, and I can see a phone in this radio booth

...