Alexia sine agraphia: the name of the condition that Howard Engel, author of the popular Benny Cooperman mysteries, suddenly developed following his stroke. What it meant was that, while he could still write, he was unable to read. To him, a page of text - such as the daily newspaper - might look as if it were "printed in Cyrillic one moment, and Korean the next".
The Man Who Forgot How to Read, is a memoir of his challenging journey. Here's my favourite section- one which I immediately identified with, and you may too:
...I was still a reader. The blast to my brain could not make me otherwise. Reading was hard-wired in to me. I could no more stop reading than I could stop my heart. Reading was bone and marrow, lymph and blood to me.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment