James Tate Hill on ‘Blind Man’s Bluff’ and How Tom Cruise Got Him Through the Hardest Times in His Life

Pop Literacy

James Tate Hill gradually began losing his sight while still in high school—and worked hard to hide this fact from the world well into adulthood. While he employed more practical tactics like filling his bookshelves with the selections he’d first read on tape or arriving to dates early so whoever he was meeting would have to find him, he also discovered the great conversational—and distracting—possibilities of pop culture. Throw a Tom Cruise, Prince, Golden Girls, or Breakfast Club reference into a conversation, and often your acquaintances will stop asking probing questions that might lead to uncomfortable revelations. In this conversation, we talk to Hill about the wisdom of Michael Chabon, why Bea Arthur is the ideal Golden Girl to be your optic nerve specialist, and how books on tape and Rain Man changed his life. Read more about it:

• James Tate Hill online
• James Tate Hill on Twitter (@jamestatehill)
• James Tate Hill’s LitHub column
• The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
• Brat by Andrew McCarthy
• Wild and Crazy Guys by Nick de Semlyen