Book SummaryProust and the Squid, by Maryanne Wolf

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Proust and the Squid

What happens in our brains when we read? How did humans develop the ability to transform marks on a page into meaning, emotion, and understanding? These questions animate Maryanne Wolf’s Proust and the Squid. She argues that today, both reading and readers are changing as technology transforms what and how we read—for better and for worse.

From the ancient past to today, Wolf explains, reading and writing evolved from niche skills reserved for highly trained experts to widespread tools we all learn as children in school. They allow us to engage deeply with texts and ideas, developing our minds. But these abilities are at risk in the digital age, as the fast-paced and distracted...

Proust and the Squid Summary Part 1: The Invention of Reading

Wolf opens by explaining that humans weren’t born to read—unlike with speech, we have no “reading genes.” Rather, reading and writing are human inventions, and they’re relatively new ones at that. In this section, we’ll explain the origins and development of these inventions, as well as how the brain changed to make them possible.

How We Invented Reading and Writing

According to Wolf, the first “writing” appeared in Mesopotamia around 8,000 BCE in the form of small clay tokens used for counting and recording goods. This was a major breakthrough: Ancient humans had begun using objects to visually symbolize real things.

(Shortform note: While these tokens were early symbols, they weren’t strictly writing. Invented by early farmers to account for goods like barley and sheep, the tokens were clay shaped into discs, spheres, cones, and the like. Each represented a different good. And they may not have been the earliest use of symbols, either: New evidence suggests that [symbolic cave art found across...

Proust and the Squid Summary Part 2: Children and Reading

Now that we’ve covered the origins and evolution of reading, we’ll explain how children learn to read—how their brains develop to acquire this invented system. This development further supports Wolf’s idea that reading skills aren’t innate. Studying how children learn to read also reveals the diversity of how different brains work. Recognizing this diversity, we can understand how best to support children who struggle to learn reading and writing.

We’ll detail the stages children go through as they learn reading and writing, and we’ll discuss how children with dyslexia face unique reading challenges—but also have unique strengths.

How Neurotypical Children Learn to Read

Today, each child undertakes a years-long journey to literacy. *Neurotypical* children, or those with the thinking and learning skills that society expects, go through several stages of development, which we’ll explore below.

First comes infancy. Before a child encounters any written material, they hear words spoken aloud and read to them. During these early experiences, children develop essential foundations: understanding that pictures represent real things, learning that marks on a page carry...

Proust and the Squid Summary Part 3: Reading and the Digital Age

The brain evolved over millennia to read and write, and each of us becomes literate over many years. But literacy is at risk, Wolf says—in the digital age, the nature of reading has changed and it’s changing our brains, too. In this section, we’ll cover what these changes are and how Wolf recommends we handle the shift from traditional to digital reading and writing.

From Speech to Page to Screen

To illustrate the nature of this shift from written to digital literacy, Wolf calls back to ancient Greece. When the Greek alphabet began to spread, Socrates argued that reading and writing would weaken the distinct cognitive skills that oral culture encouraged. He thought that dead words on a page couldn’t support proper thinking and the pursuit of knowledge as well as live oral communication did.

In other words, Socrates felt that literacy would change the way people thought. Though he focused on the potential negatives, he had the right idea: What we do changes the brain (neuroplasticity), so different ways of using language develop different abilities in us.

(Shortform note: In Understanding Media,...

Shortform Exercise: Redesign Your Reading Habits

Wolf contends that we can balance slow, deep, offline reading with quick, shallower, online reading. In this exercise, reflect on your own reading habits and plan how you might practice both skills.

In a typical week, how many hours do you spend on deep, sustained reading (books or long-form articles) and how many do you spend skimming digital content (social media, news headlines, short articles)?