Mangel points us toward the modern study of neurolinguisticsâthat intricate dance between the brain and languageâwhich really kicked off back in 1865 when French scientists Michel Dax and half Brock determined that most people are born with a left hemisphere specifically wired for encoding and decoding speech. Itâs a genetic byproduct that starts right at conception. This implies that by the time the very first scribe was carving out those initial letters, the human body was already biologically primed for the acts of reading and writing. Essentially, our physical makeup was ready to store, summon, and decipher every conceivable sign of written language long before we even bothered to invent it. The notion that we can "read" something before weâve even laid eyes on an open pageâwell, it brings us right back to Platonic theory, where knowledge exists within us prior to any actual observation of an object. Furthermore, according to Professor A. Roche Leker, simply being exposed to spoken language might not actually be enough to fully trigger the brain's linguistic development; to truly allow our brains to reach their full potential, we actually have to learn how to read.
According to Merlin S. Vitrok, understanding a text isn't some passive actâitâs not just about scanning words on a page like a piece of light-sensitive film capturing a snapshot. Thatâs far too simple. Instead, we actually build meaning from the ground up. Reading is this messy, labyrinthine, deeply universal yet intensely personal process of reconstruction. Itâs essentially a creative endeavorâa disciplined attempt by the reader to forge one or more layers of meaning while operating within the established constraints of language.
At the turn of the 21st Century, the American researcher E. B. Huey made a rather bold claimâthat if we could ever truly, fully analyze what actually happens while we sit there reading, it would represent the absolute pinnacle of psychological achievement. Itâs a massive undertaking, really, because you'd essentially be trying to map out some of the most convoluted, intricate processes the human brain is capable of. When you look at the history of reading, it really breaks down into two distinct spheres. The first part treats reading as an actâa process you can observe from the "outside," so to speak. You can approach it through anthropology, sociology, or historiography, and itâs always peppered with those fascinating little anecdotesâlike that story about St. Augustine, who was genuinely baffled by how St. Ambrose seemed to be reading within himself. Then, thereâs the second sphere, which is much more internal. This is where we deal with the actual powers of the reader and the various types of dialogue they strike up with their chosen text. It all boils down to two fundamental questions: what is this text saying to me, and what am I saying back to the text?
Even though this study focuses primarily on the act of reading textsâliterary works, mostlyâMangel doesn't just stop there. He actually turns his attention toward the reading of images, too. He dives deep into the symbolic status and the whole metaphor of the book, the reader, and the very concept of reading as it exists within the visual arts.
The German critic E. R. Curciusâwriting specifically about the symbolism inherent in the bookâasserted that metaphors regarding the book first surfaced in classical Greece. Since then, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic societies have cultivated this profound, symbolic relationship with sacred texts; they aren't merely symbols of the Divine word, but the Divine word itself. In this view, the world and nature function as books. Then you have the essay by Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas concerning the fate of the book within "White mythology," which treats the book as a sacred, religious, and relic-like object of reverence. Because, quite simply, the Book is Divineâand in the tradition cited by JabbĂšs and Derrida, it is written with a capital "B"âthe Book. Derrida asks a haunting question: at what exact moment does the Divine Book transition into being a mere human book? Heâs grasping at the idea that there had to be a rupture, a fundamental break in the history of how we treat the sacredness of the written word. But here is the thingâthat rupture, that incomplete memory of the sanctity of the "Book" once it became just a "book," remains etched into our very concept of literature. Even after the break from the Law, the book continues to harbor the ideal image of the Book within itselfâa sacred object that repeats like a mirror image in a fetishistic-narcissistic narrative. Even though it has been rejected, this idealized version of the Holy Book maintains that paradoxical status as a fetish within Western culture and civilization. We see the traces of this lingering awe today in our almost frantic, acute anxiety over the survival of the book itself.
For Derrida, if a book is truly to be a book, it has to embrace the uncertainty of its own formâits own future, evenâand that includes letting go of the privileged status itâs been granted for centuries. His response to the traditional, almost fetishistic role we assign to books is this concept of radical unreadability. Itâs essentially a way to prepare for the true reality of the book that is yet to come. Weâre talking about opening the book up to a different kind of reality entirelyâa reality we can only prepare for if we accept that we will always be caught off guard by what follows. We have to relearn how to read. We have to accept this radical unreadability as a safeguard against the mindless consumption of a text in one sittingâthat shallow, gluttonous "outing" where we hunt for instant catharsis and resolution. That kind of reading just destroys the book's future; it kills off all the questions the work is meant to provoke.
Text and books aren't synonymous anymore. The whole phenomenon of reading is really the core of Judeo-Christian civilizationâthe very heart of all those monotheistic religions that emerged from the Middle East. In a sense, the origins of reading are tied to religion, and perhaps thatâs exactly why we all find something sacred within the act of reading. Umberto Eco captured that ambivalent medieval European relationship with reading beautifully in his famous *The Name of the Rose*. ("I looked for peace in everything, but found it nowhere except in a corner with a book.") Weâve traded a multitude of books for one single (holy) book. We moved from a single volume meant to be a guide to the gates of heaven toward the libraryâand as Borges once noted, a library is itself one of the forms of heaven.
With *Don Quixote*, reading takes on a qualitatively different dimension. Through the story of a knight obsessed with chivalric romances, an entire genre was born that would drive many others mad. Richardson, Laclos, Goethe, Gogolâthey all followed in Cervantes' footsteps. During the era of Dickens and Dostoevsky, reading reached its absolute zenith, but those days were fleeting; by the time Flaubert arrived, reading was being pulled off the streets and back into the library, back into paradise.
The history of reading in the 20th Century partially overlaps with billions of individual, private histories of reading. The 20th Century often seems to vacillate in its attitude toward reading, echoing that ancient religious ambivalence: reading is "good" if it serves the purpose of learning, but "bad" if itâs done for mere entertainment. Even in schools, reading was never considered inherently good. The problem, of course, is enjoymentâhedonism. But without hedonism, reading doesn't have much point at all. There have always been people through the ages who want to frame reading as a penanceâliterary Pharisees who feel insulted by the fact that someone might actually *enjoy* what they perceive as a grueling struggle.
Albert Camus believed that too much reading leads away from life, while too little reading leads away from life. Because, essentially, reading *is* life. Mangel views reading as a labyrinthine, personal process of recreation. For him, reading possesses a fundamental ontological importance: encounters with specific texts define, shape, and reshape the being through the most profound, most sublime existential experiences. To say we readâthe world, a book, a bodyâisn't enough according to Mangel. The metaphor of reading demands another metaphor; it requires explanation through images found outside the reader's library, yet somehow within the reader's own body. It links the function of reading to our other bodily functions; just as writers talk about "spicing up" a scene or "fleshing out" a story's skeleton, we readers talk about devouring a book, finding nourishment within it, or indulging in poetry. Ultimately, the book and the reader become one. The reader, who is a letter within the text of the world, devours the book which is the world. Thus, a circular metaphor for the infinity of reading is created: we are what we read.
The process of closing that circle, as Walt Whitman suggests, isn't just a matter of the mind. We read with the mind only on a surface levelâgrasping certain meanings and becoming aware of certain factsâbut simultaneously, invisibly and unconsciously, the text and the reader intertwine to create new planes of meaning. Because of this, no reading can ever be final; every reading is, in itself, an allegory, a subject for further readings.
When we discuss books and reading, we usually take literary works of art as our paradigm. Many thinkers believed that the truth reached through art is much more direct and humanâthat works of art compensate for the limitations of our rational understanding of the world. Freud, for instance, viewed poets as vital allies whose testimonies should be highly valued, precisely because they often know much more about the things between heaven and earth than our academic wisdom or our dreams ever could.
In the book-essay *Real Presences*, George Steiner writes: âThe archaic torso in Rilke's famous poem says: change your life. Every poem, every musical composition, every worthy work of art speaks this way... The indiscretion of serious literature and art is total. It probes the most private parts of our being... When one meets a poet's act, when he enters the chambersâtemporal and spatial, mental and physicalâof our being, he brings with him a radical call to change. The awakening, the enrichment, the deepening, the darkening, the unsettling of sensibility and understanding that follows in our experience begins with that act... Meeting the aesthetic is, along with certain forms of religious and metaphysical experience, the most invasive way of altering human experience.â
When we dive into literature, we aren't just killing timeâwe are actually making sense of our own lives. We use these stories to find our bearings in this chaotic world, testing out different versions of who we might become. Essentially, through the act of reading, we build, solidify, question, or completely overhaul our very identity. Umberto Ecoâduring that final stroll through his six narrative forestsânoted that we simply won't ever stop consuming fiction because it provides us with the essential formulas needed to smooth out the rough edges of our own existence.
In this intricate dance with the written word, we momentarily lose ourselvesâwe drift away from our own egosâonly so that when we finally snap back to reality, we can reclaim who we are with a fresh perspective. This is precisely what Gadamer and Riker were getting at regarding the reception of art; they were describing the process of appropriation, where the reader actively seizes and internalizes the meaning of the fiction projected by the text.
