David King Dunaway is the author of the new book A Four-Eyed World: How Glasses Changed the Way We See. His other books include How Can I Keep from Singing?. He is a professor of English at the Universities of New Mexico and São Paulo, Brazil, and he lives in Los Ranchos, New Mexico.
Q: What inspired you to write A Four-Eyed World?
A: I’m extremely near-sighted, someone who couldn’t cross the street without glasses. So after writing biographies of Pete Seeger and Aldous Huxley, and Southwestern writers including Barbara Kingsolver, I decided it was time to see if I could apply those techniques to a device, the one many of us keep closest, either on our nose or in our pocket, the first thing touched in the morning and the last at night, eye glasses.
This meant looking into everything a biographer would: the history of eyeglasses and how they developed; experiences with that device, good and bad; its reception, positive and negative; its past and its future.
Q: How have people’s perceptions of glasses changed over the centuries?
A: People’s perceptions of glasses have evolved since they were invented nearly 750 years ago.
In the beginning, glasses were viewed by the medieval church as the work of the Devil. We should accept whatever eyes God gave us, the Church said. Trying to correct them was defying God’s will. So pretty much as soon as someone invented a way to hang lenses on a face, someone else denounced the idea.
Later, eye doctors themselves resisted prescribing them: “It’s obviously better to have two eyes than four.” So, it was peddlers who sold glasses, depending on the age of the buyer.
But most relevant today is the resistance to wearing glasses among women and girls.
They were told it made them unattractive and might drive away suitors. That it revealed their aging. That it marred their facial looks, especially if the lenses were thick. As humorist Dorothy Parker wrote, “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.”
Earlier, a newspaper commented that for women, wearing glasses was “a bit like brandishing your wooden leg in public.” Even today, women (and men) are likely to tear them off for selfies.
Is this over? Until three years ago in Japan, women would be fired for wearing glasses to work: “they don’t go well with a Kimono,” one executive said. Most importantly, the slights wearers have born could ultimately be internalized and change the way people view themselves.
Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: I researched from the general to the specific, from encyclopedia articles and overviews to detailed historical documents. I have a foot-thick file on the history and development of eyeglasses; and another, of similar length, on what research shows about how people rate those wearing glasses, and how wearers view their own pairs.
What surprised me was the seriousness and persistence of glasses-shaming. Teenagers have killed themselves after too much teasing and bullying—including as recently as 2024 in Indiana.
Q: What impact did it have on you to write the book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
A: The major impact of writing this book was the experience I undertook alongside it—putting aside my glasses for a week to understand a bit of how people managed before glasses, and to test what wearing glasses means by seeing on my own, without them.
I had the expected results: accidents small and large, injuries, and isolation (both visual and personal). This was a major challenge leading to injuries and embarrassments but ultimately worthwhile, as I discovered how important lenses were to me and to the world.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: With a colleague at the University of New Mexico, I have just finished the first oral history of arguably the world’s most famous road, Route 66. This is bouncing around from my agent, Peter Rubie at Fineprint Literary in NYC.
I have also just finished the longest radio documentary on Route 66, to be released this summer on public radio nationally: Across the Tracks: A Route 66 Story (Route66.unm.edu).
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I hope to persuade people to take a second look at their glasses and consider how wearing them may have shaped their world, giving them opportunities but also challenges. I want to share with people how the best pairs are made, why glasses cost so much, and what to look for.
Glasses are a much bigger part of our lives than many of us realize, for we tend to overlook them.
I also see wearers as part of a community which goes beyond not losing them and keeping them clean. To me, we are “glassers,” a name much better than “Four-Eyes.” Tell us your own stories of wearing them at https://www.facebook.com/weareglassers/ and find the book at afoureyedworld.com.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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