Can one be a writer and not read?

“How can you become what you don’t know?” Asked Dani Shapiro in her essay On reading while writing. “I don’t understand when my students don’t read. I don’t understand when they want to be writers and they don’t read. It baffles me and it pisses me off. How can you not have the kind of passionate curiosity of what came before you?"

I heartily agreed with her until a 2017 conversation. How the topic of some writers and reading came up, I don’t remember, but at the Saturday Organic Market, my friend’s viewpoint on the issue, caused me to rethink my point of view.

“Perhaps,” said Christine, “these writers have a reading disability.” She went on to explain that she came to understand her own reading problems when her school-aged son received therapy for the same issue.

She explained how she successfully complete courses of study by perfecting memory techniques, paying close attention to what her lecturers and fellow students said. But can someone who takes writing seriously, can they possibly have debilitating problems with reading and still be a successful writer?  Surprisingly, yes and a Canadian author proved it.

A visit in Toronto with my sister, brought about a chat over tea with her neighbor,  author Howard Engle, A prolific mystery writer, he is best known for his Benny Cooperman series. In 2000 Howard suffered a stroke that left him with alexia sine agraphia, a condition which resulted in an inability to read, while retaining the ability to write.

 That afternoon he was happy to answer my questions on the subject. I asked if he was able to read a paragraph he had just written? He said early on in his recovery, not at all. The words were an utter mystery, however some years after the stroke, he could read such a paragraph with difficulty. Certainly without the facility in which he had written it.

Since the stroke he wrote Memory Book (2005), in which his character Benny Cooperman suffers a blow to the head and is similarly affected. Later he published The Man Who Forgot How To Read (2007), a memoir of the time he spent recovering from the stroke. The afterword  for this was written by neurologist Oliver Sacks, known for his case histories about brain disorders. He wrote about Engel's reading problems in his book The Mind’s eye.

The inventiveness and ingenious nature of our brains never ceases to amaze. Yes indeed you can be a writer if you don't read. Surprising, eh?