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One morning, prolific and bestselling crime novelist Howard Engel awoke to discover he had lost the ability to read. He had experienced a stroke that left him with the rare condition known as alexia sine agraphia--he could write, but as soon as he committed his thoughts to the page, he no longer knew what they were. Other effects of the stroke emerged over time, but none were as dramatic and devastating as this one for a man who made his living working with words. The Man Who Forgot How to Read is the warm, insightful and fascinating story of Engel's fight to overcome a condition that threatened to end his career. Engel's remarkable triumph over his affliction--he was finally able to write again and produced another bestselling Benny Cooperman detective novel, Memory Book--will inspire his fans and fascinate anyone interested in the mysteries of the human brain.… (more)
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In the hospital I was being told that while I couldn't read, I could still write. At the time, this was cold comfort. It was like being given permission to tap dance all the way to the scaffold. (p. 81)
But at least being a writer is a help in describing what it feels like to have this condition. Engel wrote to Oliver Sacks while still in hospital and his letter was actually quoted by Sacks in an article in the The New Yorker. Engel was "an assiduous and long-time reader" of the magazine and he was pleased to be quoted in an article there. However, what he really wanted to do was write a story himself that would be printed in the magazine. Maybe this, as well as his fertile imagination, led him back to the computer to do another Benny Cooperman mystery. That book is entitled Memory Book and in it Benny suffers a similar fate as Engel. I haven't read it but now I am even more anxious to find a copy.
If there is anything that could make me want to undergo this devastating condition it would be the chance to not only write to but actually meet Oliver Sacks. Engel called in on Sacks when he went to Manhattan and they subsequently met each other when one was in the home town of the other. I am a huge fan of Sacks and the icing on the cake to this very interesting book was the afterword by him.
There are countless medical conditions that may befall a
Engel, creator of the successful Benny Cooperman mystery series, woke one day to discover that the front page of The Globe and Mail looked to written in a foreign language, “Cyrillic one moment and Korean the next…what looked like an a one moment looked like an e the next and a w after that.”
Engel had suffered a type of stroke called alexia sine agraphia, or “word-blindness,” a rare condition in which the afflicted can still write, but can no longer read. Recognizing the overwhelming irony of the condition as it applied to his livelihood, Engel writes, “I felt like a plumber told to stay clear of drains and lead pipes, or a banker told to avoid dealings with money.”
The Man Who Forgot How to Read – the title is a direct nod to The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, a work by famed neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks – is Engel’s memoir of rehabilitation, a work notable for its complete absence of self-pity. Certainly, no one could ever blame Engel for spiraling into depression, but his refusal to give up what he loves is inspiring.
It is not the likelihood of never writing again which fuels Engel’s initial despair, but the possibility that he will never again enjoy the simple pleasure of reading a book. “Reading was hard-wired into me,” he pines, devastated that the main pleasure of his life has been cruelly snatched away. “I could no more stop reading than I could stop my heart.”
As he comes to grips with his new situation, attending therapy sessions to help him adapt to a world where apples and grapefruits appear strangely similar, Engel begins to try and write again, facing each letter as a hieroglyph to be memorized. This is far harder than he anticipated, vividly describing it as “trying to move a ton of raw liver uphill by hand.”
Like the Cooperman mysteries (that last of which, Memory Book, was written after his stroke), Engel writes with a disarming simplicity of voice that may keep his mysteries humming, but unfortunately robs the story at hand of any tension.
In his guise as mystery writer, Engel excels at keeping the reader guessing as to the outcome. Here, the ending is never in doubt, and while this should not dissuade a person from reading Engel’s remarkable story, the lightness of his voice never fully captures the anguish he says he feels.
As Dr. Sacks himself says in the afterword, Engel’s story “is not only as fascinating as one of his won detective novels but a testament to the resilience and creative adaptation of one man and his brain.” Engel’s spirit in the face of his affliction is indeed stunning, but his hand is far surer in the realm of fiction than memoir.
Originally published (heavily expurgated version) in The Winnipeg Free Press, September 23, 2007.
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