Quick Review

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


What we now know about the brain is roughly what Ferdinand Magellan knew about geography. What this means for the average reader of science nonfiction on the subject is usually a great deal of what could kindly be called educated guessing but might just as easily be classified as science fiction. So when a writer like Maryanne Wolf admits what she doesn't know, and more importantly what nobody knows yet, if we ever will, that is a very good start indeed. That she then handles the whole history of reading as elegantly as this, in the process taking up subjects as disparate as dyslexia and Socrates without once sounding either stuffy or ridiculous marks this as a surprisingly good and entertaining read, and not bad science, which matters just as much.

What keeps this book, and every other book like it from being anything more than it is, frankly, is just the science. We live in a truly golden age of technology and research, for which we might all be appropriately grateful. If, however, my personal impatience tends to be exacerbated rather than assuaged by books like Wolf's, that is no fault of the author. What's she's done here is quite clever and even convincing, largely because of the limits of what she is willing to claim as fact. The history she writes here appeals to me as a reader, and frankly flatters me as someone who's life has been lived with books. How much of this is really science? I may not live to know, though I'm convinced enough.

Still, I long for the horizon...



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