Book review: Proust and the Squid

This book, “Proust and the Squid,” was published in 2007 by Maryanne Wolf. She is a professor of child development at Tufts University where she is also director of the Center for Reading and Language Research.

The title is rather misleading in the respect that although the author provided an interesting analysis of Proust’s writing, she said very little about squids. But it does provide a wonderful history of the invention of writing and of the teaching of both reading and writing. It explains that the human brain has no natural structures that are explicitly designed for reading and that therefore the brain must employ more generic structures to accomplish the amazing feats of both writing and reading.

The history of writing is one of the most fascinating developments in history. The two locales where writing was first invented are ancient Sumer and ancient Egypt. Sumerian writing began as a pictographic system in which written signs represented physical objects such as a house, the sun, or a sheep. But it quickly morphed into what is known as a logographic system in which characters can also represent abstract concepts such as love, anger, or hope.

The Sumerian writing system at first did not represent sounds– but later it evolved to include the sounds of some syllables. In this form it was what is known as a logosyllabary– a writing system that incorporates both logographic images and syllabic sounds. It must have been a very difficult system to master.

The Sumerians also developed a process for teaching the young how to learn this very important tool. We have clear evidence that shows that the Sumerians taught reading with lists of words that were memorized. This was a significant advance in the respect that the Sumerians realized that only the young can carry the knowledge of how to read and write into the future.

This book was written in 2007, and at that time a debate was raging as to whether the Sumerians or the Egyptians were the first to develop a complete writing system. Ms. Wolf presents evidence for the priority of Egypt as follows:

New linguistic evidence, however, suggests that an entirely independent invention of writing in Egypt took place either around 3100 BCE; or, on the basis of still controversial evidence from German Egyptologists in Abydos, as early as 3400 BCE– earlier than the Sumerian script. If this finding proves correct, hieroglyphs would be the first major adaptation in the evolution of the reading brain.
Proust and the Squid, pg. 43

Ms. Wolf devotes an entire chapter to the objections Socrates raised about the propagation of writing. His chief concern was that a written body of text, however erudite, cannot engage in a conversation with its reader. His entire style of teaching– the eponymous technique known as the Socratic method– involved engaging the student in a dialogue, an exchange of ideas, a debate. Written words, Socrates objected, cannot engage the reader in debate and that reading allows citizens to arrive at the wrong conclusions from what they read:

Underneath his ever-present humor and seasoned irony lies a profound fear that literacy without the guidance of a teacher or of a society permits dangerous access to knowledge. Reading presented Socrates with a new version of Pandora’s box: once written language was released there could be no accounting for what would be written, who would read it, or how readers might interpret it.
Proust and the Squid, pg. 77

That observation rings especially true today. The entire QAnon movement was launched by people who found evidence of dark conspiracies lurking behind otherwise ordinary events: a cabal of pedophiles who secretly control the entire world economy from the basement of a pizza parlor in Washington D.C.; space satellites operated by Jews who use them to start forest fires in California; a vast conspiracy of Chinese spies who have infiltrated the deep state and are working tirelessly to turn the entire United States into a Communist gulag. So yes, we have seen and experienced the ill effects of the mass availability of raw data unencumbered by interpretive guidance.

The core of the book is about the actual process of reading. How does the brain actually read anything? Again, the brain doesn’t have any structures that are specifically dedicated to reading. There is no evolutionary reason why humans in hunter-gathering societies would have benefited from reading– and so our genes don’t encode for either reading or writing. Rather, the brain has more abstract pattern matching capabilities– and these have been adapted to the purposes of writing and reading. Ms. Wolf does a wonderful job of relating the latest scientific research (as of 2007) on the subject of the neurobiology of reading. And the astounding fact is that a typical expert reader is able to identify and properly interpret a word in half a second or less. The entire process is one that requires several separate components of the brain– components that work in coordination, some working in parallel– to arrive at an understanding of the thought or story being conveyed by the symbols on the page.

Ms. Wolf also explores cases in which the skill of reading is never fully mastered. What is it that goes wrong? Her answer is that because the process of reading is so complex, and because it involves so many separate brain structures, there are in fact many ways it can go wrong. She provides many interesting examples, along with the wise and compassionate observation that persons with reading disabilities generally have differences in the structures of their brains. They’re not lazy or bored– they’re just different.

I’ll relate an experience of my own. Many years ago I taught high school mathematics classes from pre-algebra through second year calculus. For my geometry classes, I required my students to write a paper– the kind of paper one would write for an English class– but on a topic of mathematics. One year I had a student who was a 9th grader in my Geometry class, putting her roughly one year ahead of where she “should” have been. She was a very good student and was earning an “A” in my class. But when I saw her written paper I was shocked. I couldn’t believe the number and the kinds of spelling errors in her paper! She was the first example of a student with true dyslexia that I had ever encountered. She was decidedly NOT lazy– she just couldn’t spell. I found out that she was working with a special dyslexia tutor. I talked to the tutor and learned that she used a spelling test to determine which students were most likely to benefit from her tutelage.

Ms. Wolf presents a completely different method for diagnosing dyslexia– a speed test. Dyslexic readers are much slower at identifying characters and/or words. I’ll let Ms. Wolf describe her encounter with one such child:

Typically, children who qualify for our study are struggling readers who have been recommended by their teachers, and who have then passed a battery of strenuous tests. Not Luke. He basically recommended himself for our reading intervention. When asked why, he solemnly responded, “I have to read my arias. I can’t memorize them anymore!” Luke, it turned out, sang in the Boston Children’s Opera. He was a gifted singer, but he could no longer keep up with children who could read their lyrics.
Proust and the Squid, pg. 134-135

The book presents a provocative and wonderfully documented analysis of how reading can go wrong– and what can be done about it. And the heartwarming message of this analysis is that the majority of readers with dyslexia can be helped– if they are given the right training.

This is a terrific book. If you don’t believe in dyslexia, if you have dyslexic friends or family members, if you want to understand how the marvelously complex process of reading actually works, or if you want to know something about the history of writing and reading– this book is for you. It is beautifully written and it is chock full of scientific findings– and with hope for the future of treating reading failures.

Is fiction superior to history?

Should the education of the young rely on the lessons of history, or should it instead employ fiction to convey the core observations we wish future generations to understand about human behavior?

One could argue that the lessons of history are more real and more true than anything that could be represented in fiction, and that therefore history is clearly superior as a tool for educating the young. On the other hand, a well written novel can convey a story in a manner that is far more immediate and personal, and therefore fiction can appear more directly relevant. Histories, by contrast, are generally long, nuanced, and encumbered by innumerable details that can readily distract the reader. Fiction, therefore, is better than history in the respect that it can tell a story in a clear and direct manner that is readily appreciated by both young and old.

Before we attempt to resolve this dispute we should ask if there are indeed lessons of history, and if so, how does one discover them?

Absolutely history has important lessons to teach us. The moment when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River was the point from which the Roman Republic would inevitably slide into autocracy. World War I should inform us all about the horrors of modern weapons. The Iraq War of 2003 should serve as a warning not to go to war on the basis of falsified evidence.

How does one discover such lessons? By hard, detailed research. Much of history has been buried in dust and deceit. The job of the historian is essentially that of a journalist– to discover the truths that some people are doing everything they can to hide. The difficulty for the historian is that there are generally no living witnesses to interview. So much of the historian’s task is to piece together a picture of the past from those bits of data that still survive.

Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar tells the story of the assassination of one of the most influential individuals in human history. The speeches by Brutus and Mark Antony of Act III Scene 2 are absolute masterpieces of elocution, regardless of how historically accurate they may be, though they do sound rather stilted to modern ears. Regardless, the play certainly conveys the revulsion that the Roman public must have felt toward Caesar’s murderers, and it realistically portrays the anger that erupted from the aftermath of his death into civil war.

But there is so much more that the play does not relate about the background of Caesar’s rise to power, and about the impact of his assassination on the broader sweep of Roman history. The play begins with Caesar being offered a crown by Mark Antony, which Caesar refuses three times. But Brutus and the other assassins had already made up their minds to kill Caesar. Here is Brutus considering his options in Act II Scene 1:

But ’tis a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round.
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend. So Caesar may.
Then, lest he may, prevent. And, since the quarrel
Will bear no colour for the thing he is,
Fashion it thus; that what he is, augmented,
Would run to these and these extremities:
And therefore think him as a serpent’s egg
Which, hatch’d, would, as his kind, grow mischievous,
And kill him in the shell.
Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene 1, William Shakespeare

There is little mention in Brutus’s ruminations of the long sequence of events that preceded his decision. When Caesar crossed the River Rubicon with his one legion of troops, he didn’t simply violate a time honored tradition– he started a civil war. That war created such bitterness that there was from that moment forward little chance of reconciliation. He pursued his primary adversary, Pompey, to Greece where, in 48 BCE, Pompey’s forces were defeated at Pharsalus. In 46 BCE Caesar defeated Pompey’s supporters, under the leadership of Scipio, at Thapsus in what is now Tunisia. And finally Caesar defeated Pompey’s eldest son Gnaeus Pompeius in 45 BCE at the Battle of Munda in what is now southern Spain. In honor of his victory at Munda he was appointed dictator for 10 years.

On return to Rome he worked tirelessly to diminish the power of the other institutions of Roman authority. He packed the Senate with his own supporters, effectively making that body a submissive advocate for his own objectives. He increased his own powers. When tribunes attempted to obstruct his agenda, they were brought before the Senate and were stripped of their offices. And he pushed through legislation that imposed term limits on governors, to insure that none of them would be able to ascend through the ranks as he had done.

And yet the other elements of Roman society and government were willing participants in Caesar’s ascent. In 49 BCE, Caesar was appointed dictator. (He resigned after 11 days.) In 48 BCE he was reappointed dictator for an unspecified period. After his victory at Munda he was again appointed dictator for a term of 10 years. Also in 48 BCE he was given the powers of a tribune permanently. And in February 44 BCE he was named dictator for life.

Caesar’s assassins intended to put an end to Caesar’s ambitions and thereby to preserve the Roman Republic. But in fact the longer term outcome of their plot was literally the opposite of what they had intended. After yet another lengthy civil war Gaius Octavius emerged as the sole victor and authority, and Rome was transformed into an empire that bore little resemblance to the Republic it replaced.

None of this nuance is mentioned in Shakespeare’s play. So is the play something that the young should be encouraged to read? Well, first we should acknowledge that fiction is entertainment first and foremost. It may in addition provide some life lessons, but that is not a requirement. Readers are perfectly entitled to read works of fiction with little thought about what, if anything, might be learned from their reading.

In this specific case, Shakespeare’s play is clearly intended to inform the viewer about the events of March 15, 44 BCE, one of the most momentous days in history. And as it does an excellent job of portraying the emotions that raged through the Roman people it is certainly a worthy study for anyone hoping to understand those tumultuous times. But I don’t see how it is possible to fully appreciate the motivations of the conspirators or of Mark Antony without having a broader understanding of the events that led up to Caesar’s assassination. Those events are complex, nuanced, and not fully understood, even today.

The longer term consequences of his assassination encapsulate the most important lesson of Caesar’s life and times– that whenever the transfer of power is anything other than peaceful and ordered, society will likely veer toward authoritarianism in its attempt to avoid chaos. That is a lesson that people in any society, in any time, and under any system of government can benefit from learning.

So I would recommend that this play be included in the syllabus of a high school literature class only if it is accompanied by an extensive history of the broader context of the times in which Caesar rose to power. And it should be followed with a discussion of the longer term consequences to the Republic. The evolution from Republic to empire gave rise to the imbalance of Tiberius, Nero, Caligula, and Commodus. And that imbalance led inexorably to the death of the Empire and the centuries of chaos that ensued.

In this broader context the lines between fiction and history blur. History provides the hard evidence, the factual basis for our visions of the past; and fiction can turn those hard facts into raw emotion that makes history come alive. These are dual elements that can work together to provide a broader understanding of the past, and which together can convey the lessons of human behavior that we wish future generations to learn.

Plot, Milieu, Poetry, and Character

Fiction writing spans a vast range of styles and structures. Some fiction concentrates on the plot. Just tell the story. Don’t distract me with useless details about scudding clouds, or a woman’s updo, or the sonorous music playing in an elevator. Just tell me what happened. That’s all I want to know.

Certainly there is an audience for such writing. The purpose of such a narrative style is to relate a sequence of events– that is, action. BANG– the story opens with a heist. WHAM– one of the robbers shoots and kills a guard. POW– police arrive at the scene and get in a gunfight with the thieves, who manage to escape by… Why should we care about the color of a thief’s hair, or his thoughts about cosmology unless it somehow leads to his arrest?

But we should ask– is a plot absolutely essential to the telling of a story? Must a story be a rapid fire sequence of BANG / WHAM / POW? Or is it possible to write a novel in which plot is subordinate to something else?

An important counterexample would be James Joyce’s Ulysses. The plot of the book is supremely ordinary. It focuses on the events in the day of a life of one man (Leopold Bloom), a resident of Dublin, on June 16, 1904. And why should we care about the life of this one man on one inconsequential day? Well, there are certainly lots of readers who have no interest whatsoever in Mr. Leopold Bloom, or in his reading material (“Sweets Of Sin”), or his dietary habits. (He ate the inner organs of beasts and small fowls. With relish. Or was it enthusiasm?) We learn everything about Leopold Bloom– where he lives, what foods he likes, what he understands about metempsychosis, what he thinks about the Irish politician Charles Stuart Parnell. No detail is too small, no thought too fleeting.

Ulysses is as much about heroic literature as it is about the life of one rather ordinary man on an ordinary day. As Leopold Bloom travels through the city of 20th century Dublin, his experiences mimic those of Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey. It’s as if Homer’s narrative is a shadow following in the background throughout Mr. Bloom’s mundane day. This is not so much a plot element as it is an aspect of the story’s milieu. This is the author stretching the boundaries of storytelling and using the narrative itself to tell a story about storytelling. If you read Ulysses with that understanding I think you have to agree that Joyce achieved his objective, and that he did so in a very imaginative way. But if you’re looking for a story that could serve as the basis for the next Die Hard movie– forget it.

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov takes the elements of fiction in a different direction– that of poetry. The book has two halves. The first half is an extended poem, itself titled “Pale Fire.” The second half consists of commentary on the poem by someone who, we eventually realize, is a murderer. The plot is subtle and subdued. The victim’s corpse isn’t hauled off to the morgue for a coroner’s investigation. Detectives don’t examine the crime scene searching for clues. The clues are to be found in the commentator’s writings, and then only by inference.

This is a book, more than most, that centers on character. The poem– written by a man named John Shade– is about the struggles of the author to understand and sort through his own sense of failure, his notions of art, his mortality. That is, John Shade is a man of moral character. The commentator is a man of shallow character. Yes, there is a plot. But the elements of poetry and character are in the foreground, and the plot is in the background. I regard Pale Fire as a wonderfully imaginative piece of fiction writing, though there’s little chance Marvel Studios will pick it up for a new installment of the adventures of Dr. Strange.

Picture a four dimensional space, the axes being Plot, Milieu, Poetry, and Character. Any novel can be positioned somewhere in this space. Is there an ideal location in this space that is most true to the notion of what a novel is? No. I would argue that a novel could be successful regardless of its location in this space. The task of the author is to make the choices of plot, milieu, poetry, and character work for the intended audience. And we should acknowledge that not all audiences will appreciate these elements of narrative in equal measure. Some are more drawn to plot, others to character. There is no true and correct answer to the question of how best to write a novel.

I therefore caution against the idea that by following certain rules an author can learn the method that is most likely to result in a successful novel. Ulysses and Pale Fire both succeeded, in my view, because they broke all the rules. Rules are for drudges. Imagination is for artists.

Your mixing you’re semaphores

Most struggling writers need to survive in a corporate world of hard working folks who may have talents in marketing or accounting or engineering or construction or management– but who, as a rule, wouldn’t know a pronoun from a preposition. When I was working I often found that my inbox was cluttered with poorly written or grammatically meaningless e-mails, like this one:

I spoke to XXXX and is like you to present this document at the YYYY meeting.

Sentences lacking subjects or verbs are shockingly common, as are sentences in which the verb is of the wrong tense, like this one:

They are say the numbers are now at XXXX.

It’s generally not advisable to correct your boss’s grammar. In fact it’s generally not advisable to correct the grammar of any of your coworkers– unless you don’t mind working with people who wish you would just die in a fiery car crash. E-mails are often written in haste, so it’s understandable that some grammatical errors could slip by– even with spell-check and grammar highlighting. But when important business documents are written with preposterous word choices I often feel a teacher’s compulsion to make a polite suggestion. Consider this excerpt, from an HR-written annual review document:

Demonstrates the necessary testing skills and knowledge commiserate with their role and level.

Apparently the author meant to use the word “commensurate,” meaning “in accordance with,” rather than a word which describes a form of empathy. In my response I struck out “commiserate” and replaced it with “commensurate”, hoping that the author would realize the mistake and that the following year’s form would be corrected. But when the next review came along, the questionnaire had the same bad wording as before.

Once I reported to the head of the marketing department that a major promotion to be displayed at 20,000 locations was written with the word “your” where it should have had “you’re.” You just have to wonder if those who are very well paid to produce catchy advertising phrases ever took classes in which they were asked to write sentences commensurate with their roles.

So allow me to commiserate with the many thousands of struggling writers who have had to grit their teeth when reading e-mails or corporate missives that butcher our common tongue. It’s difficult to be polite in a world in which a command of one’s language is considered an impediment to the duties of commerce. People in the corporate world are busy and are often more concerned with selling than with the proper conjugation of the verbs they employ to that end. To those who have found themselves in this unwelcome position I would offer the simple observation that you are certainly not alone and that it really is OK– on occasion– to correct the grammar of those corporate documents that threaten to blemish your company’s public image.