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- Proust and the Squid, by Maryanne Wolf
Proust and the Squid, by Maryanne Wolf
Matt Karamazov
February 28, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 26 minutes
Read on The Reading Life.com | Read Time: ~8 Minutes
📚 Hey, let’s talk about readers and prisoners.
In the United States, the Federal Bureau of Prisons uses fourth-grade reading statistics to predict how many beds they’re likely to need in the future.
I know. I felt that sinking, wind-knocked-out-of-you feeling as well when I first learned that in one of Maryanne Wolf’s books (the author of today’s book).
Think about that:
If your child is below a certain reading threshold by grade four, the prison system predicts that they’ll be hosting them in the foreseeable future.
In one sense, that makes them seem like monsters. The Bureau, I mean.
But hey…
It works. So can you really blame them?
The reading abilities of children can almost literally predict their future, and the dangerous part about all of this is that the development of those abilities is NEVER guaranteed.
Human beings were NEVER meant to read.
Instead, the human brain has to rearrange itself to even be able to understand written symbols, and decode the meaning of all those squiggly lines and dashes.
So being able to read can literally keep a child out of prison. What else?
Well, being around the right people is how you avoid prison, for one thing, and it’s also how you reach the very heights of success for another.
It’s ALL about environment and who you surround yourself with. The behavioral gravity of the people around you. It’s always acting on you, influencing you, deciding your future.
As they say, if you spend time with five millionaires, you’ll be the sixth millionaire.
The corollary when it comes to reading could be:
If you spend time around five readers, you’ll be the sixth reader.
That’s one of the reasons why I launched The Competitive Advantage, my private Skool community for winners and high achievers.
I wanted to surround myself with the best of the best, and I wanted to help them rise with me, and have them help me do the same thing.
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Look, it really is ALL about who you surround yourself with.
Hang out with broke people and you’ll never get rich.
Hang out with unhealthy people and you’ll never get fit.
Hang out with lazy people and complainers and you’ll never get motivated and find fulfillment in your life and work.
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I look forward to welcoming you inside!
And now, let’s get right into one of the most fascinating books about reading and the brain that I’ve ever read…
This Book is For:
*People who are interested in learning about how the miracle of reading actually occurs in the human brain, and all the reasons why it might never have happened.
*Anyone who is the parent of a young child - or who is thinking of becoming one - and who wants to know exactly how to give their children the best possible start in life.
*Teachers and educators who want to give their students an advantage in the classroom, and/or who teach dyslexic children and want to know more about the condition, its causes, and some possible interventions.
*Lifelong learners who just love to read and want to learn more about the fascinating science behind their favorite activity.
Summary:
“I could not remember when the lines above Atticus's moving finger separated into words, but I had stared at them all the evenings in my memory - anything Atticus happened to be reading when I crawled into his lap every night.
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."
There is a "before" and "after" point of learning to read that is often the defining moment in a person's life - and especially a child's.
Every book is a door to an alternate future, and tragically, for anyone who never learns to read, those doors remain forever closed.
Magically, books are also windows into the hearts and minds of others, not to mention that the best books also represent paths back to ourselves.
Books are so many things to so many people, but how does the miracle of reading actually occur? What happens inside the brain of people just learning to read?
This exact process is the focus of Proust and the Squid, world-renowned cognitive neuroscientist and scholar of reading Maryanne Wolf's investigation into the development and functioning of the reading brain.
Stunningly, human beings were never meant to read.
There are no genes that code for the development of reading skills, and so each human brain has to rearrange itself in the process of learning how to read, moving beyond its original state to learn how to make sense of these strange, squiggly markings on the page.
As it turns out, squids only make two cameo appearances in the book (pages 5-6, and page 226 in my version) and are used to reference early neuroscience studies on squid brains, but Proust is invoked as a metaphor for the richness of the reading process, and Proust's essay, On Reading, provided the initial burst of inspiration for this book.
Ironically for a book about reading, parts of it are fairly difficult to read, but the extra effort is worth it as Dr. Wolf deep dives into the fascinating and fragile history of reading, which exact neural pathways and connections are involved in the reading process and why, as well as the challenges, difficulties, and even opportunities presented by dyslexia, where the normal development of reading skills is derailed.
Reading doesn't occur naturally in human beings, which is why all these new neural connections need to develop in the right order and at the right time if a child is going to grow up to become a reader.
For a variety of reasons that Wolf explores in the book, this doesn't always happen, many times with tragic results.
For example, in her other book, Reader, Come Home, she relates the fact that in the US, the Bureau of Prisons uses fourth-grade reading outcomes to predict how many prison beds they're likely to need in the future. As Wolf relates:
“The average young middle-class child hears 32 million more spoken words than the young underprivileged child by age 5.”
That number is just wild, and it speaks all the more strongly to the incredible importance of reading to your children when they're young, nurturing their love of reading, and doing everything possible to instill a genuine love of the printed word. It makes such a huge difference to the entire rest of their lives.
Sometimes I think that the most amazing thing about the whole process of reading is that we can learn to do it at all. Many people all over the world - even adults - still can't, and this is always and everywhere a tragedy; a failure of education, support, and love.
Another source of endless astonishment is that even though it took humans around 2,000 years to develop the kind of written language we have now, we expect children to learn it in about 2,000 days.
Considering the length of time the human species has existed, it's only in the most recent portion of our history that reading and writing actually came to be, and yet it's crucial to every single possible future we may end up creating for ourselves.
Proust and the Squid does a wonderful job of taking you through a tour of that history, analyzing what we're doing right - and wrong - right now, and even daring to express optimism for that future.
Key Ideas:
#1: The Human Brain Was Never Designed to Be Able to Read
“Reading can be learned only because of the brain's plastic design, and when reading takes place, that individual brain is forever changed, both physiologically and intellectually."
The only reason why human beings can read in the first place is that the development of writing demanded that the brain rearrange itself in order to understand and make use of it.
Put another way, when humans started writing, our brains rearranged themselves to take on the challenge of reading.
Our brains were able to do this because of a phenomenon called neuroplasticity, which basically means that the brain can change and adapt to the demands that we place upon it, and what we ask our brains to do.
The human brain isn't infinitely malleable - there are hard limits on an individual's intelligence, processing speed, etc. - but our brains do change shape according to the information, experiences, and demands that they are exposed to.
This is how reading developed. The brain is composed of around 100 billion neurons that are connected to each other and form pathways associated with certain tasks.
So, when the first humans invented writing (independently, at various times throughout history) as a way to record economic transactions and other things, the human brain had to go to work, reshaping itself to accommodate these new demands.
Eventually, as we become more advanced readers, these new neural pathways form in such a way that you and I are able to decode the meaning of these strange, visual symbols - often at rapid speed.
This is nothing less than a miracle, and it's one that was never guaranteed to take place, either now or in the past. There is no gene for reading, and so reading skills have to be intentionally learned by every new reader.
When you think about it, this is a pretty wildly magical process, yet we just carry on like it's normal! Truthfully, however, the ability to read is nothing less than an achievement.
From not knowing anything about what these weird lines are, or that they could actually point to something in the real world, we eventually get to the point where reading is automatic and where we can't not read the words in front of us (if they're in our native language).
Here's how Alberto Manguel, author of A History of Reading, describes it:
“And yet, all of a sudden, I knew what they were; I heard them in my head, they metamorphosed from black lines and white spaces into a solid, sonorous, meaningful reality.
I had done this all by myself. No one had performed the magic for me.
I and the shapes were alone together, revealing ourselves in a silently respectful dialogue. Since I could turn bare lines into living reality, I was all-powerful. I could read.”
Through this process of specialization and automaticity, what used to be impossible for us, literally outside the range of our possibilities, now happens in just milliseconds. If that's not a gorgeous miracle, I have no idea what is.
There's much more to this process than I've laid out here, of course, and in the book, Dr. Wolf describes how, when we see letters we know, our brain's activity nearly triples, especially in parts of the brain dedicated to language processing, hearing, visualization, and abstract concepts.
Proust and the Squid is often highly technical, but if you want a more in-depth look at this process, then you're likely to be Wolf's ideal reader, in which case you may want to move the book higher up on your reading list.
#2: The Most Powerful Advantage You Can Give to Your Children
“Learning to read begins the first time an infant is held and read a story. How often this happens, or fails to happen, in the first five years of childhood turns out to be one of the best predictors of later reading."
Helping your child to become a reader is probably one of the greatest gifts you could ever give to them.
It goes way beyond the obvious benefits like the (potentially) increased earning power that comes with gaining higher levels of education; becoming a reader is perhaps the greatest foundation for becoming a deeply thoughtful, intelligent, calm, kind, and courageous member of a society that desperately needs all of those things.
More to the point, this foundation is laid early in a child's life, and if it's not, there's no getting that time back. As Dr. Wolf states:
“In some environments, the average young middle-class child hears 32 million more spoken words than the young underprivileged child by age five."
As a parent, you are uniquely privileged to be able to offer this gift to your children, and the benefits will keep piling up long after they go off and read on their own.
Even the famous German playwright, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had The One Thousand and One Nights read to him by his parents in the same way as the king in the story, namely with cliffhangers each night.
However, he would try to finish the story and tell his parents his own ending the next morning, comparing it to the original. It took him his whole life after that to complete Faust.
Knowing this early history makes this later accomplishment seem, if not less impressive, then certainly more likely. The person who has The One Thousand and One Nights read to him as a child is far more likely to produce Faust when they get older.
So, reading to your children is undeniably important, and it will set them up for every kind of success, happiness, and fulfillment that they'll experience in the future.
However, before the age of five, hearing the spoken words and being exposed to more conversation and verbal speech in one's native language is more important than actual reading.
We're laying the proper foundation in the first few years of life, and there's wide-ranging and fascinating research being conducted all the time about when the best time is to start learning to read.
There is, of course, a range, and some children naturally learn to read faster than others. If you or your child doesn't learn until later, it doesn't mean you're "dumb" or that they "can't" learn to read. That's nonsense.
But in a world where the US Bureau of Prisons uses fourth-grade reading outcomes to predict how many prison beds they'll need in the future (which is true), it's both tragic and ironic that the parents who most need to read to their children probably won't.
The best thing you can do, however, if you don't come from a family of readers, is to make sure that a family of readers comes from you.
#3: We Never Stop Learning to Read
“The new circuits and pathways that the brain fashions in order to read become the foundation for being able to think in different, innovative ways."
Like almost every process of growth, the process of becoming a reader is never completely "finished."
At every age, we can still form new neural connections, and in doing so we are able to connect everything new that we read and experience with everything that's come before, establishing our own personhood in the process and shaping our brain at the same time.
In the same way, reading itself is a kind of "infinite game" that no one will ever reach the end of.
Not only are there just too many phenomenal books out there for any one person to ever have time to read them all, but we can also go back and re-read the books that shaped us in the past and find that it's almost like they're completely new.
They feel brand new because we have changed in the intervening years since our first reading. In a very real sense, it is not the same book and we are not the same person.
If you've been a voracious reader for a long time, you've probably noticed how returning to a book later in life can completely change how you feel about it and what it means to you.
But would you ever even want to get to the "end" of reading? Isn't it wonderful that you'll never read everything? That the world perpetually renews itself and that there is always going to be more to learn and explore and discover?
Book Notes:
“Reading changes our lives, and our lives change our reading.”
“Few more heartwarming or exhilarating moments exist than watching children learn that they can actually read, that they can decode the words on a page, and that the words tell a story."
“Reading never just happens. Not a word, a concept, or a social routine is wasted in the 2,000 days that prepare the very young brain to use all the developing parts that go into reading acquisition."
“Reading is a kind of intellectual sanctuary where human beings have access to thousands of different realities they might never encounter or understand otherwise.”
"Children who begin kindergarten having heard and used thousands of words, whose meanings are already understood, classified, and stored away in their young brains, have the advantage on the playing field of education.
Children who never have a story read to them, who never hear words that rhyme, who never imagine fighting with dragons or marrying a prince, have the odds overwhelmingly against them."
Action Steps:
So you've finished reading. What do you do now?
Reading for pleasure is great, and I wholeheartedly support it. However, I am intensely practical when I'm reading for a particular purpose. I want a result. I want to take what I've learned and apply it to my one and only life to make it better!
Because that's really what the Great Books all say. They all say: "You must change your life!" So here, below, are some suggestions for how you can apply the wisdom found in this breakdown to improve your actual life.
Please commit to taking massive action on this immediately! Acting on what you've learned here today will also help you solidify it in your long-term memory. So there's a double benefit! Let's begin...
#1: Read to Your Kids! Every! Single! Night!
“European children who were asked to begin to learn to read at age five did less well than those who began to learn at age seven.
What we conclude from this research is that the many efforts to teach a child to read before four or five years of age are biologically precipitate and potentially counterproductive for many children."
I always hate to give parenting advice, because I don't have any kids of my own. It's almost like taking financial advice from broke people - don't do it! BUT, I think I'm justified here in expressing how absolutely critical it is that you read to your kids as often and for as long as possible. And get them started early!
I know it's hard to find the time every night, but it's one of the single best things that you could ever do for your kids to give them the best possible start in life.
You don't have kids? Doesn't matter! Find some, borrow some, make some - and then READ to them!
#2: Lead by Example
There's a great cartoon I saw once, where two women and their kids are sitting on a bench. One woman is using her phone, while her kid is on their phone sitting next to her. The second woman, however, is reading a book, and her kid is also reading a book.
Maybe you can sense where I'm going with this.
Well, the woman who's on her phone turns to the one who's reading a book and asks, "How do you get your child to read books?"
It's funny because we know exactly what the woman reading a book is going to say! When kids see adults doing something, they usually want to imitate their behavior.
So if your kids see you reading - and if you have books all over the house - your kids are going to take after you! They're much more likely to become readers if you're a reader yourself.
Not only that, but some of my best memories are of me talking to my mom about the books we were reading! Her office is stacked floor-to-ceiling with books, my dad is a reader, and they've bent over backward to make sure that I always had access to any book I wanted.
They let me watch TV too, but they made books seem like a good idea, and they did this by showing me their example. Maybe the first woman on the bench was reading an ebook, but let's not get into that discussion!
"The path to success is to take massive, determined action."
-Tony Robbins
Maryanne Wolf completed her doctorate at Harvard University, in the Department of Human Development and Psychology in the Graduate School of Education, where she began her work in cognitive neuroscience and psycholinguistics on the reading brain, language, and dyslexia.
She has undergraduate and Master's degrees in English Literature from St. Mary's College/Notre Dame and Northwestern University. The author of more than 160 scientific articles, she designed the RAVE-O reading intervention for children with dyslexia, and with Martha Denckla, co-authored the RAN/RAS naming speed tests, a major predictor of dyslexia across all languages.
She was a Fellow (2014-2015) and Research Affiliate (2016-2017) at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
She is currently working with members of the Dyslexia Center in the UCSF School of Medicine and the faculty at Chapman University on issues related to dyslexia and is an External Advisor to the International Monetary Fund, a research advisor to the Canadian Children’s Literacy Foundation, and a frequent speaker at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
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OK, that’s it for now…
More excellent book recommendations coming your way soon!
Again, the rest of the above breakdown is absolutely free (for now!), and you can find it right here.
What you see in this email is less than half of what you get at the Stairway to Wisdom. I left out most of the Book Notes, all the Questions to Stimulate Your Thinking, several of the Key Ideas, etc.
So there’s a lot more for you left to read if you enjoyed what you read in this email!
With that said, I hope you enjoyed this edition of The Reading Life, and enjoy the rest of your week!
Until next time…happy reading!
All the best,
Matt Karamazov
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