Reading Blind

source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2024/03/05/insights-in-the-eyes-of-mice--men/

The title refers to the fact that I don't have a visual mind. Thus, when I read descriptions of places, people, or intricate actions, I'm blind to them. I can't picture them in my mind. This condition is called aphantasia. I can sort of construct scenes that I am familiar with, piece by piece to get a vague impressions of things, but I don't really see an image of it. I just "know" what it looks like. 

I find this not to be a handicap. Though perhaps it is a case of not missing what you never knew. I've been reading for over 6o years and don't recall ever really noticing it - until recently. However, I don't have a good personal memory either, so it is impossible to say with any certainty that I never noticed this before, but I certainly don't recall bemoaning this lack of pictures in my mind as I read. I do know that there are books whose scenes I still remember - but not so much as pictures, but as moods, or as a sense of place that the authors created in the way they described the scene. I suspect, however, that most descriptions were treated like scenes that I "knew" rather than pictured.

This goes for characters as well. I don't really pay attention to how they are described, though I always get a little bored if the author spends too much time describing them and their clothes, since I can't picture or remember how they look them anyway. In real life, the closest I can get to picturing people is a vague recollection of a photograph of them. I can't picture my wife in my head. Weird, I know. And I do picture things in my dreams, which is even weirder.

However, back on topic.

In my recent reading I've been noticing my inability to picture things a lot more. Perhaps part of it is due to my more recent reading. And it isn't so much the scenery, but the action scenes. I just finished a book on the American Civil War - review coming in a month or so - and it included several scenes set in the midst of battles, in which there is a lot this-and-that going on all around the point of view character. Now, there is simply no way all those words were going to make a "movie" in my head to illustrate the scene. And while perhaps, if I read it carefully, I could understand what was happening - these days I find that I don't care. This is the second aspect of what I have noticed. I simply don't have the patience to read all these little details in order to understand what is going on, because, basically I don't care about the process, all I needed to know is the result. So these days, I just skip over action heavy scenes. I skipped over the entire ninja attack in Shogun and I can remember skipping a battle in the Black Tongued Thief.  I know that I'll find out who wins in the end, so I miss nothing important by skipping it. In fact I skim read and skipped probably the final 30 plus pages of The Book That Wouldn't Burn while the heroes were try fleeing a raging fire and an mob or something, because it was just action for action's sake and by that time in the story, I didn't care anymore.

I know that many authors take a great deal of trouble to choreograph their fight, battle, and action scenes, describing in great detail all the sights, sounds, the movements of the character(s), and everyone and everything around them. And in fantasy, there a whole books that are focused on epic battles. But when I read these passages all I read are a jumble of words and sentences. I just get confused, bored, and annoyed. Now this is, of course, on me. I don't think it's a case of my wits having gotten so dull that I couldn't understand what was going on, if I cared to. I just don't care to. Basically action for the sake of action bores me these days. 

What is interesting to me is that I have the impression that many of the books I read in the past did not make any attempt to script movie action-scenes into their books, like today's authors (and perhaps readers) seem to feel necessary these days. I've read the Captain Aubrey naval novels and the Flashman Victorian military novels, and others as well, all of which have battles in them, but I just have the feeling that they didn't choreographed them at such a movie scene granular level. Maybe back in the day they didn't feel the needed to. Maybe because they didn't feel like they were competing against movies and video games. Or maybe that's now what readers expect these days. Do you?

So, in the end, how does aphantasia affect my enjoyment of books? Thinking about it, I don't think it affects my enjoyment at all. I don't miss anything that I decide to skip, and most of the books I have read, and are reading today, don't have these elaborate movie-inspired action sequences, anyway, so I'm not really skipping all that much in the course of my reading. As for scenery, well, I know a lot about the world these days - one way or another I've seen it- so I don't need a lot of hand-holding to get the idea of the setting, which is all I need. But if they toss it in, fine. Maybe it will create a sense of place that I can feel, if not see.

And maybe in the end, all this is why I value clever writing and witty dialog.