Proust and the Squid

Now this was something altogether different, both enjoyable and immensely interesting. Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf is a scientific, yet accessible description of how the human brain works (and sometimes does not work properly) when it reads. Several interesting thoughts come to mind as I think about what I learned...

Socrates, whom you would imagine as a great supporter of the written word, actually expressed grave concern over written language. He worried that reading would usurp listening as an educational tool, and that the written word, in the wrong hands, could do great harm. He emphasized that once words were put into writing, they could never change, creating room for misinterpretation.

Wolf points out that the human brain is not actually set up to read instinctively, as it is to hear or see. All humans have to learn to read literally from scratch. And how well we learn to read determines to a great extent our life arc. Even in modern day Western schools, children seated right next to one another might develop vastly different reading skills.

One of the great determinants as to how well we learn to read is the sheer number of words used within the home. "By five years of age, some children from impoverished-language environments have heard 32 million fewer words spoken to them than the average middle-class child," which has led to the term "word poverty" by the experts. The fewer words you hear or see effects your life dramatically. "The sheer unavailability of books will have a crushing effect on the word knowledge and world knowledge that should be learned in these early years."

As someone who reads a lot, I was fascinated to learn about the different levels of reading skill. I always assumed all adults basically read at the same level. Not true in the least. The more one reads the more automatic it becomes, and the less "brain power" one actually has to devote to the process of reading. For advanced readers this enables one to do other work while reading, allowing you to react to the writing, form opinions, compare the ideas to past experiences, hypothesize and build upon the content, simultaneously with the act of reading. This is why, for example, reading the same book multiple times during the course of your lifetime can produce vastly different responses. Books are not interpreted in a vacuum, they are a reflection (for advanced readers) of your perspective and your ability to process thoughts and ideas while reading. Cool stuff.

These are just a few snapshots of the book itself. Some of the material went far over my head, but it was a fascinating read all the same.