The Man Who Forgot How to Read: A Memoir (2007)

The author, a writer of the Benny Cooperman series of detective novels had a stroke and was stricken with alexia - the inability to read, although he could still write, slightly restricted vision and a really bad memory. This book is the story of his time from the stroke until he had his first post-trauma novel published.

Its a slight book, very simply written (which I enjoyed) and somewhat repetitive. He's a brave man, one of life's 'triers', but the book would have been better off as an essay in a suitable magazine.

Five stars for courage, four stars in admiration, but three stars for enjoyment. ( )

This is a very interesting first-hand perspective of the results of a stroke that left Mr. Engel, a successful author, unable to read. He could, however, still write. The book provides more food for thought on the workings of the human brain, a subject that I'm very interested in.

It is also a very personal story of someone with a profound love of reading who refuses to believe he must give it up. It is a story of personal courage and family support. ( )

Howard Engel, a Canadian writer of detective fiction tells the true story of his stroke and subsequent alexia which left him unable to read, but still able to write. I found the book dealt well with the overall experience, but I wanted to know more about how he was able to gain back some skill in reading, rather than just knowing that he underwent rehab, still had a faulty memory especially for names and relies heavily on others including his editors to read back what he writes. Amazingly, he has published another Barry Cooperman mystery in which he situates Barry in a hospital recovering from head injury. ( )

They hook you early, the pushers, even in pre-school. Maybe some of us have a greater weakness for it than others. It is a fierce addiction, reading, and from there it is a slippery slope to writing. Howard Engel was hooked young. Blame his parents; they read in the house. Soon he was picking his own library books and writing puppet shows. He could not be found without a two or more books on hand. As an adult, he wrote for radio then published a dozen detective novels. He was an addict of the printed word when he forgot how to read.

The Man Who Forgot How to Read is memoir by Engel of a stroke that robbed him of his ability to read. Alexia sine agraphia is a rare condition in which the victim maintains the ability to write, but not read. A frustrating condition, indeed. He could write, but not read what he had just written. Stroke cuts into memory, threatening one’s sense of self; but Engel’s identity was fixed in reading: “I was still a reader. The blast to my brain could not make me otherwise. Reading was hard-wired into me. I could no more stop reading than I could stop my heart. Reading was bone and marrow, lymph and blood to me.” (41)

Step by step, with the help of skilled therapists and dedicated family and friends, Engel learned to read from the beginning again. Once the reading skills were working again, the writing came naturally, first another detective novel in which his protagonist suffers a blow to the head, then this memoir. Engel’s refusal to accept the status of a “former reader”, and his victory over a stroke and brain damage to achieve it, should be a siren call to those who have not yet discovered a passion for reading. Unlike other addictions, the reading vice may take some effort to acquire, but then pays off in lifelong pleasure without regret. Want a fix?

http://johnmiedema.ca/2009/08/09/the-man-who-forgot-how-to-read-by-howard-engel-... ( )

“Like astigmatism on a drunken weekend.” “[A] film in which the soundtrack no longer matched the lip movements of the characters.” “Like being told that the right leg had to be amputated but that I could keep the shoe and sock.”

There are countless medical conditions that may befall a person, but it is unlikely there has been a more ironic misfortune than that which afflicts Canadian author Howard Engel.

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. ( )