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ReaderComeHome ch.1

In 'Reader, Come Home', Maryanne Wolf invites readers to explore the cognitive implications of reading and its significance for future generations. She emphasizes the importance of nurturing the contemplative aspect of reading to sustain human intelligence and compassion in a digital age. The letters aim to foster dialogue and self-examination among readers regarding their relationship with reading and its impact on society.

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267 views15 pages

ReaderComeHome ch.1

In 'Reader, Come Home', Maryanne Wolf invites readers to explore the cognitive implications of reading and its significance for future generations. She emphasizes the importance of nurturing the contemplative aspect of reading to sustain human intelligence and compassion in a digital age. The letters aim to foster dialogue and self-examination among readers regarding their relationship with reading and its impact on society.

Uploaded by

has25014
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 15

"If you call yourself a reader and want to keep on being one, this extraordinary book is

for you."- Alberto Manguel, author of A History of Reading

READER,
COME HOME

MARYANNE WOLF
AUTHOR OF PROUST AND THE SQUID
Letter One
READING, THE CANARY IN THE MIND

Fielding calls out to you every few paragraphs as if to


make sure you have not closed the book, and now I am
summoning you up again, attentive ghost, dark silent
figure standing in the doorway of these words.

-Billy Collins [my italics]

Dear Reader,

You stand at the doorway of my words; together we stand


at the threshold of galactic changes over the next few
generations. These letters are my invitation to consider an
improbable set of facts about reading and the reading brain,
whose implications will lead to significant cognitive changes
in you, the next generation, and possibly our species. My
letters are also an invitation to look at other changes, more

ht m I
There are no shortcuts for becoming a good reader, but
there are lives that propel and sustain it. Aristotle wrote that
the good society16 has three lives: the life of knowledge and
productivity; the life of entertainment and the Greeks' special
relationship to leisure; and finally, the life of contemplation.
So, too, the good reader. In the final letter I elaborate how
this reader-like the good society-embodies each of
Aristotle's three lives, even as the third life, the life of
contemplation, is daily threatened in our culture. From the
perspectives of neuroscience, literature, and human
development I will argue that it is this form of reading that is
our best chance at giving the next generation the foundation
for the unique and autonomous life of the mind they will
need in a world none of us can fully imagine. The expansive,
encompassing processes that underlie insight and reflection
in the present reading brain represent our best complement
and antidote to the cognitive and emotional changes that are
the sequelae of the multiple, life-enhancing achievements of
a digital age.
Thus, in my last and most personal letter, you and I will
face ourselves and ask whether we possess each of the three
lives of the good reader, or whether, barely noted by us, we
have lost the ability to enter our third life and, in so doing,
have lost our reading home. Within that act of examination, I
will suggest that the future of the human species can best
sustain and pass on the highest forms of our collective
intelligence, compassion, and wisdom by nurturing and
protecting the contemplative dimension of the reading brain.
Kurt Vonnegut compared the role of the artist in society to
that of the canary in the mines: both alert us to the presence
of danger. The reading brain is the canary in our minds. We
would be the worst of fools to ignore what it has to teach us.
You won't agree with me all the time, and that is as it
should be. Like St. Thomas Aquinas, I look at disagreement as
the place where "iron sharpens iron." 11 That is my first goal

ht m I
for theses letters: that they become a place where my best
thoughts and yours will meet, sometimes clash, and in the
process sharpen each other. My second goal is for you to
have the evidence and information necessary to understand
the choices you possess in building a future for your
progeny. My third goal is simply what Proust hoped for each
of his readers:

I seemed to me that they would not be "my readers" but


readers of their own selves, my book being merely a sort
of magnifying glass. . . . I would furnish them with the
means of reading what lay inside themselves.

Sincerely,
Your Author

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