WHAT'S THAT YOU SAY? WOULD YOU WRITE IT DOWN?

A new book, “Proust and the Squid”, pulls together ideas from two main sources: brain research and cultural history. The author, Maryanne Wolf, is a reading expert. She says, “We were never born to read. Human beings invented reading only a few thousand years ago. And with this invention, we rearranged the very organization of our brain, which in turn expanded the ways we were able to think, which altered the intellectual evolution of our species.”

In other words, brain research shows that our brains are not just computers made of something like Jello in which little sparks of knowledge wander around, but rather more like a car engine in which different duties are assigned to different tiny structures: carburetor, spark plug, distributor, and so on. It takes a collaboration and a certain amount of “muscle training” through pressure, repetition and challenge to achieve the particular skill of handling print. By contrast, speech is genetically programed by millenia of selection (those who were mute didn’t make it) and will develop naturally in any child unless the program, esp. timing, is somehow disrupted.

BUT different cultures developed different ways of going at “print” which was separately developed only a few thousand years ago, mostly as a matter of accounting (how many bushels of wheat, how many rice paddies). In China the idea of word=picture was developed into the graceful columns of brush strokes we admire. In the Mediterranean the word was analyzed into sounds and a letter assigned to each sound, which turned out to be more flexible. However, the Hebrews only recorded consonants and let the reader invent the vowels. They also wrote their sentences right to left, rather than left to right.

It is wisely applied pressure and guidance that seems to keep our children learning to read. “This plasticity at the heart of the brain's design forms the basis for much of who we are, and who we might become.” But who knows how to develop that? Look/say? Phonetics? Motivation? Reading out loud? There is a third set of thought in this book: What about the children who don’t have all the little structures they need or never discover how to find them? The dyslexics-- they can talk, they just can't read.

The point of the squid reference is that the creatures have big long nerve cells that can be studied easily to see exactly what goes on. This has been much fortified by fMRI (functional magnetic resonance image) studies that light up whatever little human brain structure is in use when people read or pray or sing or imagine chopping wood. Some suggest this method can actually distinguish between memories of things that really happened and memories that come from the individually remembered stories we invent or dream or read. Why WANT to enter the magical kingdoms of the literary world if you don’t know how to read and thus can’t get through the gate? Why not just settle for video?

The difference between a print-based world and a sound-based world is stark to me when I deal with my former student, L., who is only ten years younger. When he wants to make contact, he uses the phone. He has a cell phone; is always on it; calls family, friends and business associates constantly. But when he wants to make contact with me, he gets frustrated, because the best way to relate to me is in print: email, letters, blogs, listservs. That’s my social world. My single line is always busy (I’m on dial-up all the time.) I don’t have either voice-messaging or call-waiting. Whether I’m just out in the yard or have driven to the grocery store, I just don’t answer. I don’t tell people where I’m going. He feels he should KNOW. I want the control in my own hands. It’s MY business.

I am NOT fond of the telephone, esp. as my hearing fades a bit, and I really HATE being on the long leash of a cell phone. I hated having to answer five lines when I worked at the City of Portland. I hated the long queue of voice mail that awaited me every morning. It was bad enough being at the mercy of the dispatcher on the radio when I was an officer.

It’s not just the media that make the difference. We inhabit quite different worlds composed of different kinds of information. We are both enthusiasts for movies, but I like the long, reflective, complex ones and don’t object to subtitles. I don’t mind when there is a shot held so long that one wonders whether it is a still. He likes funny movies with lots of word play and word jokes, lots of sight gags, lots of action and moving fast.

He’s Blackfeet. I’m largely Scots. That’s meaningful in terms of family customs. Not that his family is illiterate -- they can and do read -- but it isn’t the custom at their house. At my house we all trekked off to the library, we subscribed to magazines, and when it was time for a gift, we gave books. Our parents sat and read us books in the evening and the newspaper in the morning. (Many comic strips still speak in my head with my father’s voice.) I have the same problem as with L. when I interact with my niece-by-marriage who has very similar genetics to mine, but quite a different culture -- one like L.’s because she grew up in the same place. It’s not a case of different values (though that’s the result): it’s a case of different environmentally shaped brains. To those two, computers are for, well, COMPUTING! Book-keeping, databases, business, numbers. For me, computers are writing and reading. I hate numbers.

There is considerable discussion about the difference between a mind shaped by reading on computers and the mind shaped by books and whether reading off a Kindle is different from reading off paper. I don’t see a BIG difference, though the content on a screen is more likely to be like a magazine than like a novel. Posture, location (reading in bed as opposed to reading in an easy chair or in the bathtub), stuff like scribbling in the margin (which I like), duplicative potential, being able to add comments and send to a friend -- that sort of thing counts, I suppose.

I suspect that most of the academics who theorize about this stuff only know their own kind of person or if they know truly oral people, don’t relate to them very deeply. Not a lot of thought is given to “learning to speak Blackfeet” which is totally different from learning to speak French specifically because you can READ French. There’s very little to read in Blackfeet. Even what exists must have been sounded out into English letters with some ambiguity introduced by accents and so on.

I’m hugely interested in all this, so I appreciate “Proust and the Squid.” I was supposed to read “In Search of Lost Times,” you know, when I was in Richard Stern’s class. I never got past the middle. But I think I am TRULY searching for lost times in some ways, mostly by reading.