Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Man Who Forgot How to Read: A Memoir
    Unavailable
    The Man Who Forgot How to Read: A Memoir
    Unavailable
    The Man Who Forgot How to Read: A Memoir
    Ebook133 pages2 hours

    The Man Who Forgot How to Read: A Memoir

    By Howard Engel and Oliver Sacks

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The remarkable journey of an award-winning writer struck with a rare and devastating affliction that prevented him from reading even his own writing
    One hot midsummer morning, novelist Howard Engel picked up his newspaper from his front step and discovered he could no longer read it. The letters had mysteriously jumbled themselves into something that looked like Cyrillic one moment and Korean the next. While he slept, Engel had experienced a stroke and now suffered from a rare condition called alexia sine agraphia, meaning that while he could still write, he could no longer read.
    Over the next several weeks in hospital and in rehabilitation, Engel discovered that much more was affected than his ability to read. His memory failed him, and even the names of old friends escaped his tongue. At first geography eluded him: he would know that two streets met somewhere in the city, but he couldn't imagine where. Apples and grapefruit now looked the same. When he returned home, he had trouble remembering where things went and would routinely ?nd cans of tuna in the dishwasher and jars of pencils in the freezer.
    Despite his disabilities, Engel prepared to face his dilemma. He contacted renowned neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks for advice and visited him in New York City, forging a lasting friendship. He bravely learned to read again. And in the face of tremendous obstacles, he triumphed in writing a new novel.
    An absorbing and uplifting story, filled with sly wit and candid insights, The Man Who Forgot How to Read will appeal to anyone fascinated by the mysteries of the mind, on and off the page.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJul 8, 2008
    ISBN9781429986724
    Unavailable
    The Man Who Forgot How to Read: A Memoir
    Author

    Howard Engel

    HOWARD ENGEL is the creator of the enduring and beloved detective Benny Cooperman, who, through his appearance in 12 bestselling novels, has become an internationally recognized fictional sleuth. Two of Engel’s novels have been adapted for TV movies, and his books have been translated into several languages. He is the winner of numerous awards, including the 2005 Writers’ Trust of Canada Matt Cohen Award, the 1990 Harbourfront Festival Prize for Canadian Literature and an Arthur Ellis Award for crime fiction. Howard Engel lives in Toronto.

    Read more from Howard Engel

    Related to The Man Who Forgot How to Read

    Related ebooks

    Medical Biographies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Art of Nonfiction No. 11

      Dec 7, 2021

      The Art of Nonfiction No. 11
      26 min read

    • Article

      Now Is the Time

      Nov 24, 2020

      Now Is the Time
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Reader

      May 1, 2020

      The Reader
      5 min read

    • Article

      One Word: Avuncular

      Mar 19, 2019

      In our column One Word, writers expound on their favorite words.  Man with beer, artist unknown, c. 1920 My uncle Henry has killed a lot of people. In spite of his dark past, and because of it, he’s my favorite American uncle. Since I cherish bilingu

      3 min read

    • Article

      Nora And The Jews

      Apr 20, 2023

      Nora Ephron was Jewish but glamorous. Jewish and glamorous. Glamorous, in part, because she was Jewish. The post Nora and the Jews appeared first on The Millions.

      18 min read

    • Article

      What We Loved This Week

      May 25, 2018

      What We Loved This Week
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Time My Grandma Was in ‘Playboy’

      Aug 10, 2020

      Playboy showcased many celebrated writers: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Bernard Malamud, Joyce Carol Oates, Ursula K. Le Guin, John Updike, and Vladimir Nabokov. Had it showcased Corrine Hutner Wittenberg, too? The post The Time My Grandma Was in ‘Playboy’ ap

      7 min read

    • Article

      Projections of Life

      Jun 1, 2023

      Projections of Life
      14 min read

    • Article

      Picks Of Our Literati

      Dec 9, 2019

      Sarah Lang: It’s a toss-up between the Anne of Green Gables series and the Little House on the Prairie series. I’ve read all the books in both series perhaps a hundred times, often right before bed. They remind me of hiding in a giant toy box so my f

      5 min read

    • Article

      Table Talk

      Sep 1, 2023

      Table Talk
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Fiction No. 252

      Mar 15, 2022

      The Art of Fiction No. 252
      31 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Fiction No. 241

      Sep 15, 2018

      The Art of Fiction No. 241
      26 min read

    • Article

      Shelf Life

      Sep 7, 2023

      As his memoir Sufferah is published, telling the story of his early life in care and in prison, the award-winning novelist picks the five books that shaped his thinking and changed his life As part of his Small Axe series, Sir Steve McQueen decided t

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Poetry No. 111

      Sep 6, 2022

      The Art of Poetry No. 111
      26 min read

    • Article

      The Bennington Girl

      May 11, 2021

      The Bennington Girl
      19 min read

    Reviews for The Man Who Forgot How to Read

    4/5

    6 ratings6 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      At long last I have gotten around to reading this. As a bibliophile I can't imagine anything worse than not being able to read. But for someone who writes for a living, as Howard Engel does, it must be even worse. Even being told your alexia is sine agraphia (in other words inability to read without the inability to write) is scant comfort because so much of what a writer does is to reread and revise one's works. One of the quotes that really drew this home to me: 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.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      Written not long after the stroke that afflicted Engel with the inability to read (while still having the ability to write, although without being able to read what he had written), this book is written (deliberately) with the flaws and memory slips you would expect as Engel tells his story. It works in an odd way even though it is an awkward read. I strongly recommend following up this book by reading Memory Book (A Benny Cooperman Detective Novel) by the same author where he more literately brings to life his affliction by passing it on to the detective he is know for writing about.
    • 4/5
      “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.
    • 4/5
      A very short book, written at a rather simple level. The astonishing thing, however, is that it is written at all. The author, a well-known mystery writer, suffered a stroke and lost the ability to read. This book is the story of his recovery, and his efforts to recover this ability, however limited. A fascinating tale told from a perspective that is rarely seen. I recommend this book, and the mystery book written by the author reflecting his experiences in the Rehab hospital (also written after his stroke).