Read, but not too much, unless you want to be misogynistic

Listen, watch, and draw instead

I am a very visual thinker.

I understand images far better than words. Now, that does not mean that I do not love a brilliant sentence. In fact, I find myself often quoting a brilliant quote from P G. Wodehouse, Jane Austen or Patrick O’Brian.

Recently, in an online book club I’m on, there was a debate about the merits of graphic novels. A participant insisted that graphic novels were essentially children’s comics. I argued thus:

I hope that the remark was spoken in jest, because Graphic Novels since the 2000s have been a literary genre' equal to and in some cases better than the dry-written word in fiction and non-fiction alike. Consider;

Marjane Satrapi's 'Persepolis' series,

Joe Sacco's 'Footnotes in Gaza', 'The Fixer, a story from Sarajevo', 'Safe Area Gorazde' <---journalism

Guy De Lisle's 'Jerusalem', 'Pyongyang', 'Burma Chronicles' <--- journalism

Rutu Modan's 'Exit Wounds', 'The Property'

Marcelino Truong's 'Such a Lovely War' (I and II) about Vietnam

Shigeru Mizuki's 'Showa' (a four part series about 20th century Japan)

Posy Simmonds's 'Tamara Drewe'

Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou's 'Logicomix' (about Bertrand Russell's quest for truth)

Alison Bechdel's 'Fun Home' (which gave rise to the Bechdel test)

Nylon Road by Parsua Bashi

Charles Darwin's 'On the origin of species'

Yoshihiro Tatsumi - A Drifting Life

Lt. Blueberry series (Moebius, but translated into English by Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge of Asterix fame)

The thread led to interesting insights about the conflict between the written word and imagery. A participant referenced two works; Daniel Boorstin’s ‘The Image’, and a stellar work on neurodiversity, Temple Grandin’s ‘Thinking in pictures.’

Which reminded me of an entire thesis on this topic by a brain surgeon from San Francisco (and - apropos for this weekend - volunteer during the Yom Kippur war), the late Dr. Leonard Shlain. He wrote a book titled 'The alphabet vs the goddess' about why goddesses disappeared in western society to be replaced by misogynistic cultures and all powerful male deities. He posits that the written word was the cause since it led to a dominance of one half of the brain, while imagery & the spoken word that functions in the other half (that triggers compassion, empathy etc) was superseded by it Incidentally, one of the late doctor's daughters is Tiffany Shlain, documentarian, film-maker, writer and founder of the Webby Awards.

Link to The Alphabet vs the Goddess talk:

It does make sense. Celtic and Norse goddesses have disappeared from western society, as the written word of the New Testament replaced older native traditions.

One wonders if the Hindu tradition of passing on culture via the spoken word and through imagery is far more superior to the written word that was imposed on us via middle-eastern inspired western cultures.

Feel free to google for counterpoints to the above hypothesis. It is a fascinating topic.