[How About This Book] What Flavor, Shape, and Color Does Your Writing Have?

Reading is not a simple activity of recognizing letters
but a highly complex act of understanding humans

Some read colors from achromatic letters
Some read only the right page when reading a book
Readers are 'atypical'... there is no typical reader

The controversial novel 'Lolita' author Vladimir Nabokov (1899?1977) perceived himself as a synesthete. In his essay 'Speak, Memory,' he wrote that he saw colors in achromatic letters. "The letter a in the alphabet is the color of old wood, but the French a is a glossy ebony color." "The letter q is somewhat browner than k, and s is not a sky blue like c but a strange mix of blue and mother-of-pearl hues."

Synesthesia refers to a neuropsychological condition in which one sensory experience spontaneously and naturally triggers another. Some people, like Nabokov, see colors in black letters that others do not, while others perceive colors when listening to music.

Synesthesia is one of six neurological conditions related to reading mentioned in the book 'Reader’s Block: A History of Reading Differences' by Matthew Rubery, a professor of contemporary literature at Queen Mary University of London. The other five are dyslexia, hyperlexia, alexia, hallucinations, and dementia.

Dyslexia refers to difficulties in proficient reading due to problems with cognition and decoding. Hyperlexia can be understood as surface reading or unconscious reading. It describes cases where a person reads so much that they can memorize entire books but fail to understand the content. Alexia refers to acquired illiteracy caused by factors such as stroke, illness, or head injury. The book mentions a case of a Christian who, after a stroke, could recite the Lord’s Prayer but had forgotten how to read.

[How About This Book] What Flavor, Shape, and Color Does Your Writing Have?

At first glance, synesthesia, hallucinations, and dementia may seem unrelated to reading. However, the concept of reading discussed in the book is very broad.

Professor Rubery cites Marion Wolf’s definition that "reading is a diverse perceptual, cognitive, linguistic, emotional, and physiological process that occurs in the act of decoding and understanding written language," arguing that reading should be defined comprehensively and flexibly. Marion Wolf is a world-renowned American cognitive neuroscientist. In short, for Professor Rubery, reading is not a simple activity of recognizing letters but a highly complex act of understanding humans. He divides readers into neurodivergent and neurotypical readers. Neurodivergent individuals have differences in the development or connectivity of typical brain neural systems. One might think of the protagonist of the hugely popular 2022 drama 'Extraordinary Attorney Woo' as an example. Neurotypical readers are those who engage in ordinary reading activities.

However, even among neurotypical readers, reading methods are very diverse. For example, Marshall McLuhan (1911?1980), a Canadian media theorist famous for the phrase "the medium is the message," was known for reading only the right-hand pages of books. He believed that books originally contained a lot of redundant content. He even judged whether a book was worth continuing after reading page 69. McLuhan was not neurodivergent, as he had no neurological disorders, but his unique reading method makes it difficult to categorize him strictly as a neurotypical reader.

Therefore, Professor Rubery emphasizes that reading is an activity without a single common denominator. Ultimately, he argues that there is no typical reader and that all readers are atypical. Sigmund Freud (1856?1939) also wrote in his first book 'Studies on Aphasia' that "anyone who observes themselves realizes that there are various ways of reading, and even that one can read without understanding."

The book mentions numerous cases of unique reading. Jill Price is the first American woman diagnosed with hyperthymesia. She remembers everything that has happened since she was 14. If you mention a date, she can recall exactly what happened that day. This is because thoughts about the past continuously play like home videos in her mind. However, this is painful for Price because it is difficult to focus on non-personal issues. In 2008, Price published her story in a book titled 'The Woman Who Can’t Forget.'

Since humans generally speak and read, we tend to perceive reading and speaking as simple acts. However, Professor Rubery believes that reading is fundamentally very different from speaking. Unlike speaking, reading is not an innate ability our brains are born with.

As mentioned earlier, reading is a complex act that synchronizes numerous emotional, cognitive, linguistic, perceptual, and physiological processes. Therefore, the fact that some people cannot read is not surprising, Professor Rubery argues.

He points out that it is more surprising that anyone can read at all, meaning that because there are many diverse ways of reading, one should not assume that others read and understand in the same way as oneself.

Cases related to reading, such as those of Nabokov and Price, stimulate curiosity. In most cases, they relate to mysteries of the brain that humanity has yet to uncover. On the other hand, there are also many complex and difficult-to-understand explanations.