Dyslexia & The Reading Room: In Manchester Central Library With Jules Styles At An Interactive Literary Event by Quarantine Theatre Company
Posted On 07/02/2015
Seeing as it’s National Dyslexia Week, here’s a blog from the archives that touches on this topic via Quarantine’s Live Event The Reading Room. It is written in a sensitive, celebratory neurodivergent way with the help of Jules Styles.
Jules Styles in the 1980s, an undiagnosed dyslexic kid trying her best in the English school system.
“I’ve never been in here before,” said Jules Styles walking about wide-eyed in Manchester Central Library.
It is the evening of Quarantine’s live literary evening in the enormous and graciously domed Reading Room.
“It is completely overwhelming,” she said as she sat down at my table where I was going to tell the audience about one of my favourite books – The Price of Salt by Claire Morgan, more latterly known as Carol by Patricia Highsmith.
Despite Jules being a resident of Manchester for more than twenty years, where she now runs Dog Squad, a dog walking business, it’s not really surprising that reading is not one of her favourite things to do.
As an undiagnosed dyslexic at school in the 1980s, Jules was bullied by her fellow class-mates.
“School was pretty harsh,” she said.
“I was dragged out of the classroom for special lessons and the other kids used to call me all sorts of names.
“I used to hate standing up in class to read out loud. I didn’t know what words look like so I didn’t know what they meant and I used to get laughed at, it was horrible really.
“Books are not my thing and libraries are scare me.”
An image of the Reading Room Map in Manchester Central Library.
Patricia Highsmith’s Carol Read By Nikki Wordsmith In The Reading Room By Theatre Company Quarantine
It was no mean feat when Jules walked in to the £50m newly refurbed library for the live library experience.
Along with two hundred other audience members she was about to be part to of an interactive literary event called The Reading Room by Richard Gregory the Director of Quarantine theatre company.
Inside this room twenty-eight desks with twenty-eight readers reading twenty-eight texts awaited.
I was one of the readers, easily as anxious as Therese Belivet, one of the two main characters of my chosen book – Carol by Patricia Highsmith.
The readers are ordinary folk from all walks of Mancunian life who, under the gentle firm direction of Quarantine’s Richard Gregory, prepare to share stories, poems, books, words in any form that have helped shaped their lives.
High above everyone, a message presses down from the Book of Proverbs etched in a thin gold headband running around the dome wall:
Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom, and with all thy getting get understanding. Exalt her and she shall promote thee; she shall bring thee to honour when thou dost embrace her, she shall give of thine head an ornament of grace, a crown of glory she shall deliver to thee.
Tis I, Nikki Wordsmith sat poised to read Carol by Patricia Highsmith
I am sat at one of these long tables, have been for twenty minutes scribbling out memories of every book I have ever read.
Pieces of white A4 paper with loose inconsistent handwriting spread haphazardly on the desktop:
Annie Proux: Brokeback Mountain – I saw the film first always a mistake.
Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar – This book is about a woman called Ester who is depressed.
Enid Blyton: Five Go To Kirren Island – I was unknowingly drawn to George the tomboy.
Alice Walker: The Color Purple – God, rape and incest all on the first page.
Douglas Coupland: Generation X – Gave us loads of names for new things like McJob.
Hunter S.Thompson: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – “We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”
Robert Tressell: The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – It’s about a man who works on a building site 100 years ago. He thinks differently like you know the rich shouldn’t be so rich and wealth should be shared.
Mary Wesley – I can’t remember the title let alone the book. All I know is an old school friend and I read it to each other on holiday after our A-levels.
“This is the lesbian table by the looks,” says someone sitting down and picking up a piece of paper.
“I’m not,” says my Dad.
“Well you made one so that makes you an honorary one,” says someone else.
What It Is Like To Read With Dyslexia, According To Dog Squad Professional Dog Walker Jules Styles
Twelve hungry faces huddle in. Jules, with her 1950s movie star handsomeness, sits down opposite me. I ask questions like: Who taught you to read? Can you name a book that made you laugh? Who is your favourite writer? Who is your favourite fictional character? Who first read to you?
Jules says laughing: “I first moved to Manchester when I was twenty-two and my partner got me into reading. She used to read The Famous Five out loud when we were going to sleep which was really great and she did all the funny voices like ’Oh Timmy’ and made it really interesting.”
Agreeable murmurs cocooned the table.
“Yes being read to is wonderful.”
“Oh I love being read to.”
“It’s so intimate.”
“The best, it’s incredible.”
“Why is it so nice?”
“Perhaps because your parents read to you when you were little?”
I asked them if they would like to be read to now? And the faces, some familiar some strange, glowed wide-eyed as they leant forward under the canopy into the soft oblong light.
Holding open the now renamed 1991 Bloomsbury Classics edition of Carol by Patricia Highsmith, I read the opening line:
“The lunch hour in the co-workers’ cafeteria at Frankenberg’s had reached its peak.”
I got through four or five pages before stopping to explain why Carol by Patricia Highsmith is as much a part of me as the colour of my eyes. Hence the blog.
I gave them the facts:
The book was published in 1952.
Under the pseudonym Clare Morgan.
And with a different title: The Price of Salt.
It got banned because of the ‘shocking’ subject matter – two women falling in love.
I gave them the feel – love overcomes anxiety.
I gave them my literary heart: In this book no letter is wasted, every word means what is says and the sentences, oh those short sweet cupid arrow sentences, fly across each page as if on fresh snow.
You know what I mean? I looked up expectantly.
“No,” said Jules. “When I read words in my head it’s like they’ve got spikes and they’re all prickly and quite awful like barbed wire.”
“Oh.”
This is exactly why you should never have expectations I said silently to myself inside, while all the while I was intrigued by Jules’s traumatic experience of reading.
Her response had moved me.
With my own Dad, Photographer Ian G Smith, also recently diagnosed as a dyslexic, I was determined to find out more.
After weeks of rehearsing for this special literary event, and being absorbed in some of the most beautiful paragraphs and best lines in fiction, Jules’s experience turned everything everything on its head.
I caught up with her after the event.
“I can see the book in my head like the Harry Potter books, they make me feel like I am really there.”
“Oh you lonely duck.”
“Oh you lonely duck?”
“O. U. L. D. Oh you lonely duck. You should’ve gone home, you would’ve gone home and you could’ve gone home. We were taught to spell things out like this.”
She held up her hands like two index finger guns pointing at each other so the left thumb was b and the right thumb d. “Bed,” she said.
These days being dyslexic is something Jules has more or less come to terms with. She gets by, and it has, she says, been pivotal in her becoming a freelance photographer, and now more lately a professional dog walker.
“It was a big change in my life. In my HND I had to write a 5,000 word essay and wanted to write about heroin chic – that was the trend back then – but I didn’t know where to get the words out of my brain and onto the paper. I knew what I wanted to say I couldn’t physically do it. I didn’t submit anything and I still got a merit because of my pictures.”
“I guess it makes sense that your visual language would make up for the lack of literal,” I said.
“Some books I can get into because they are so visual. I can see the book in my head like the Harry Potter books, they make me feel like I am really there.”
“Never read them,” I said too quickly then added, “I could learn a thing or two off JK. What is it that’s in those books that speaks to everyone?”
“They’re easy to read,” replied Jules, and she made her point wisely.
The Readers:
Desk HA Glyn Treharne: Extract from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame and a Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Desk A Joan Horan: Lyrics for Giving Up, a song by Holly Williams
Desk B Nikki Smith: Extract from Carol by Patricia Highsmith
Desk C Sean McGlynn: Song titles from the album The Real Johnny Cash, The Ultimate Johnny Cash Collection
Desk D Miranda Wade: Umbrella, a poem by Taro Yashima and an extract from The Beach by Alex Garland
Desk E Liam Byrne: Extract from Walter Lippman’s political science book Public Opinion
Desk F Jason Crouch: Extract from computer operating manual, An Introduction to the Commodore Amiga 500
Desk G Tim Cort: Extract from Chief Seattle’s 1854 oration speech concerning concession of native lands to the settlers
Desk H Maureen Stirpe: The Stolen Child a poem by W.B.Yeats
Desk J Claire Andrews: Extract from East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Desk K Libby Edwards: Guess How Much I Love You, a book for children by Sam McBratney
Desk L Ali Wilson: Sea Fever a poem by John Masefield
Desk M Elaine McCann: The Colour of Wednesday, an article about synaesthesia by Valerie Thornton
Desk N Alan Entwistle: Extract from Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
Desk O Miriam Wild: Easy Rhymes A.K.A. Cheap Shots, Royal Shit, Small Times, poems and lyrics by Michael Conroy
Desk P Glenys Mercer: The Life That I Have, a poem by Leo Marks used as code in Second World War
Desk PA Cristina Delgado Garcia: Extracts from Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence by Judith Butler and We Are All Very Anxious, an article by Precarious Consciousness
Desk Q Niamh Horan: Extract from The Folk of the Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton
Desk R Rosie Adam-Clark: How Do I Love Thee a poem by Elizabeth Barrett-Browning and Tales of Love an analysis of narcissism and idealisation by Julia Kristeva
Desk S Scarlette Barber: Extract from when Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr
Desk T Les Kinsey: What Do You See? A poem by Phyllis McCormack/anonymous
Desk U Anne Marie Seymour: Extract from Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah
Desk V Mark Donnelly: Mid-Term Break a poem by Seamus Heaney
Desk W Jacqueline Hall: Extract from Fight Club by Chuck Palahnuik
Desk X Maureen Horrop: Desiderata a prose poem by Max Ehrmann and If a poem by Rudyard Kipling
Desk Y Brenda Hickey: Extract from Churchill – The Great Leader author unknown
Desk Z Amy Liptrott: Extract from If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor
Desk ZA Anne Rua: An Irish Airman Forsees His Death a poem by William Butler Yeats
Everyone: Extracts from A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel.
Find out more about your local dyslexia associations or how to get an individual assessment at the British Dyslexia Association
Hello!
I am a content writer, blogger and journalist from Lancashire, England.
I like to try and provide helpful, reliable, relevant, people-first SEO copy, blogs and journalism.
I also spend a lot of my time raising my daughter and supporting my family and friends.
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Nikki Wordsmith
