What do a late nineteenth century French novelist and a large marine cephalopod have in common? As it turns out, not much - except to provide Maryanne Wolf a metaphor with which to describe her exploration into the intellectual and biological evolution of the reading brain.
In Proust and the Squid, Wolf, Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University, recounts the history of how humans learned to read from the time of the Sumerians to Socrates, and how we each individually acquire our ability to read from birth to age five. She then applies current knowledge about the reading brain to dyslexia, a roadblock to reading which still puzzles neurologists after more than a century of study.
In tracing the development of the reading brain throughout early human history, Wolf tracks the evolution of the written word itself. Humans, it turns out, weren't originally wired to read, and the notion that objects in the real world or even abstract concepts could be represented symbolically was a fantastic notion, the first signs of which we see around 3300 BCE when both the Sumerians and the Egyptians developed systems of such symbols - the Sumerian cuneiform script and Egyptian hieroglyphics.
In Proust and the Squid, Wolf, Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University, recounts the history of how humans learned to read from the time of the Sumerians to Socrates, and how we each individually acquire our ability to read from birth to age five. She then applies current knowledge about the reading brain to dyslexia, a roadblock to reading which still puzzles neurologists after more than a century of study.
In tracing the development of the reading brain throughout early human history, Wolf tracks the evolution of the written word itself. Humans, it turns out, weren't originally wired to read, and the notion that objects in the real world or even abstract concepts could be represented symbolically was a fantastic notion, the first signs of which we see around 3300 BCE when both the Sumerians and the Egyptians developed systems of such symbols - the Sumerian cuneiform script and Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Over time cuneiform evolved into a logosyllabary, different from the original pictographic script in that the symbols actually represented sounds in the oral language, rather than objects or concepts. Around 600 BCE, cuneiform was replaced by Akkadian as the most widely used written language in Mesopotamia right up until the time of the early Greeks.
With their highly prized oral tradition, the Greeks were legendary in their memory abilities. It is ironic then that the Greeks, who wished above all to use the written word to preserve the oral works of Homer, developed the alphabet that would eventually proliferate throughout the Western world and thus undermine the primacy of the oral language.
With their highly prized oral tradition, the Greeks were legendary in their memory abilities. It is ironic then that the Greeks, who wished above all to use the written word to preserve the oral works of Homer, developed the alphabet that would eventually proliferate throughout the Western world and thus undermine the primacy of the oral language.
In the second part of the book, Wolf examines the developoment of language in children from birth to age five, stepping the reader through the varied aspects of language development - phonological, semantic, syntactic, morphological, pragmatic - that follow the startling realization at eighteen months that everything has a name. Wolf calls our attention to the crippling language deficiencies of children from impoverished language environments as evidence that during these critical years the simple acts of speaking and reading to our children are the greatest tools we can give them on their paths to literacy.
In the book's third and final section, Wolf tackles the subject at the heart of her study, dyslexia, a matter that concerns her not only as a researcher but as a parent of a dyslexic child. A dissection of four hypotheses that have dominated dyslexia research during the past hundred years segues into a list of famous dyslexic luminaries (Thomas Edison, Leonardo daVinci, Albert Einstein), leading finally to the author's personal and professional experiences with dyslexia.
In the book's third and final section, Wolf tackles the subject at the heart of her study, dyslexia, a matter that concerns her not only as a researcher but as a parent of a dyslexic child. A dissection of four hypotheses that have dominated dyslexia research during the past hundred years segues into a list of famous dyslexic luminaries (Thomas Edison, Leonardo daVinci, Albert Einstein), leading finally to the author's personal and professional experiences with dyslexia.
Though fascinating in places, the book is too heavily laden with neurological details for the average reader to wade through. The appeal of Proust and the Squid will ultimately elude a popular audience and be limited largely to readers with a personal or professional interests akin to the author's own.
