Books are Mnemonic Devices

Books are mnemonic devices. A written story in its essence is not the same as the story itself.  There is nothing in ink-blotted paper that on its own has any narrative or plot independent of a reader.  Printed letters are mnemonic devices of sounds, sounds that form spoken words.  The written page is one big memory cue for the reader to interpret from his own memory (of the words symbolized) which allows the reader to “remember” something from the author’s own mind.  It is really an amazing thing, when you think about it.

Some people say that when oral stories are written down, they become fossilized and stagnate.  This is not the case for someone who reads correctly.  The written page, as we’ve said, is only a cue-card.  The story still takes a new shape and form in the mind of the reader, because it is interpreted by the reader through his own memory and imagination.  A story written down is not indeed a story fossilized, but rather an instance of a shaped narrative put down on paper so that the mnemonic cues can be retrieved by somebody distant in space and time from the original narrator.

All stories, whether oral or written narratives (and even stories/narratives conveyed in art and architecture), are extensions of memory.  They are externalizations of the memory of an individual or a community that can be accessed and appropriated by another individual or community. Thus an individual or community can extend their own experience to others, and in turn expand their experience and memory by means of appropriating narratives received through the art and literature of others.

 

The Art of Memory (Part I)

Four Things to Improve Your Memory:

1. First, You should associate the Thing to be remembered with some fitting but unusual image, and keep that image in mind.
This is because you remember sensory things much better than you do abstract things, since the memory is in the same part of your mind and brain as the senses and emotions. The image should be unusual or grotesque that which is unusual is more easily remembered than what is normal.

2. Second, you should carefully think about the thing you want to remember and put its corresponding image or sign in your mind in some sort of visual/spatial order, and do so in relation to other things you want to remember. This is so that you can pass easily from one memory to another and more easily from the image in your mind to the thing you want to remember.

3. Third, you should attach strong emotion and vivid sensory experience to the image of the thing to be remembered, because you’re much more likely to remember something the more deeply it is impressed in your emotional memory.

4. Fourth, you should reflect frequently on the thing it is you want to remember. This is done by re-visualizing and looking over and exploring the space, as it were, where you have these images in your mind, since such reflection more deeply impresses the images of these things and preserves them in your memory.

These are the basic elements of what is sometimes called the “Memory Palace” technique.