Stroke, Alexia, and the Rewiring of the Reading Brain
They hook you early, the pushers, even in preschool. Maybe some of us are more susceptible 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 choosing his own library books and writing puppet shows. He was rarely seen without two or more books on hand. As an adult, he wrote for radio before publishing 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 Engel’s memoir of the stroke that robbed him of his ability to read. Alexia without agraphia is a rare condition in which a person retains the ability to write but loses the ability to read. A frustrating condition indeed. Engel could write, but he could not read what he had just written. A stroke cuts into memory, threatening one’s sense of self, but Engel’s identity was rooted 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.” (p. 41)
Step by step, with the help of skilled therapists and devoted family and friends, Engel learned to read from the beginning again. Once his reading skills returned, the writing came naturally: first another detective novel, in which his protagonist suffers a blow to the head, and then this memoir. Engel’s refusal to accept the status of a “former reader,” and his triumph over stroke and brain injury, should be a siren call to those who have not yet discovered a passion for reading. Unlike other addictions, the reading habit may take some effort to acquire, but it rewards its devotees with a lifetime of pleasure and never a moment’s regret.
Want a fix?
Last Updated on July 30, 2026 | Published: August 9, 2009