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| Hearsay: |
Canadian mystery novelist Howard Engel interviewed at NPR about the stroke that left him able to write, but not read what he’d just written. My old friend Don Summerhayes helped him edit this book by meeting him regularly to read back aloud what Engel had written the night before. Just imagine.
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July 28th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Wow. Short of being dead, i think this is the worst affliction that i can imagine.
July 28th, 2008 at 11:56 am
On that point, every writer should read “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” and see the astonishing movie. A fantastic book written with only the blink of a single eye, from a paralyzed man. These sort of stories make you think the only way to write is just this way – desperately and urgently.
July 28th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
This reminds me of Paul West’s aphasia memoir (quick link: [see link above]) which I’m still getting around to reading. Can this be a trend in autobiography, accounting for the source and mechanism of the memories as much as the memories themselves? If it is, I hope it extends beyond stroke survivors, particularly to the autofiction misery memoir scribes.
July 28th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
In Howard Engel’s case it isn’t just autobiography. In addition to The Man Who Forgot How to Read, he wrote another Benny Cooperman novel, The Memory Book, in which Benny has the same problem.