A Left-Hand Turn Around the World--and a Chat with the Author
Shelf Awareness caught up with author David Wolman near the
beginning of his counter-clockwise book tour, while he still had
promotional pens to hand out--not strictly left-hand pens but
guaranteed not to smudge. As a leftie and a journalist with a penchant
for travel and science, he is well-equipped to deal with the question
he posed: "If left-handed were a religion, where would Mecca be?" His
search for answers about how left-handers might differ mentally,
physically and spiritually from the right-handed majority resulted in
A Left-Hand Turn Around the World
(Da Capo Press, $23.95, 0306814153, November). Accessible and amusing,
it has a sufficient amount of science to interest the
technically-inclined but is lucid enough for everyone to grasp the
rudimentary concepts.
He pursues one theory and then another about the development of
handedness, as does the reader, sleuthing beside the author. Along the
way, he clears up misconceptions, particularly the popular left
brain-right brain creativity cliché. "It's nice to bust some myths," he
said before his bookstore reading. "Drawing with your non-dominant hand
has its benefits, but as for unlocking your creative self--maybe not."
One researcher says that most of us are mixed-handed, that is, we
perform nearly all functions bimanually, where the two hands work
together in different ways. The idea is that neither hand is the weaker
or lesser, but specialized for different functions and complementary
things. More to the point for some of us, in baseball natural lefties
have statistically more home runs but also more strike-outs and less
control, because the dominant hand is in the power grip position, not
the precision position.
But how is handedness determined? Capacity for speech plays an integral
part in the discussion. It seems to boil down to a chicken and egg
thing: did anatomical changes to hands spur the asymmetrical evolution
of our brains or is right-handedness a by-product of the evolution of
language-capable brains? As for the mechanics of the process, Wolman
clearly explains the research of Nobutaka Hirokawa, at Tokyo University
School of Medicine : "Handedness may stem from the string of
developmental instructions that make us asymmetrical beings in the
first place." In looking at protein's role in the transport of nutrient
and information within nerve cells, he discovered monocilia, tiny,
hair-like structures that spin from right to left. The theory is they
cause the flow of contents to one side of the protein, causing
lopsidedness.
Too much science for you? Wolman said, "I wanted to take the
material seriously, but not take myself too seriously." So he goes to
what could be considered the other end of the continuum: palmistry and
handwriting analysis. In Quebec, he takes a 30-hour course in Vedic
Palmistry. After his first session, he begins calculating how long it
would take to walk the eight miles back to the local town in order to
leave or at least find a bar. Driven back by aggressive black flies
when he attempts the walk, he hunkers down and tries to get with the
program. Initially skeptical, he ends up more so at the end, feeling
used by plugs for books, healing gemstones and tri-metal bracelets. In
Virginia, he attends a weekend seminar put on by Handwriting
University, whose owner analyzed the writing on the envelope used to
deliver anthrax to Senators Daschle and Leahy in 2001. (Whatever
happened to that investigation?) He was promised that with Handwriting
U training, he'd be able to understand Michael Jackson's personality.
Instead of insight into handedness on writing and personality, he
unhappily finds a mindset "reminiscent of zealots the world over . . .
both annoying and creepy."
For even more hands-on research, Wolman visits a Scottish castle with a
counterclockwise left-handed staircase. The staircase enabled the
left-handed owner to wield his sword in an open passage against an
ascending assailant. And in the funniest chapter, "Naisu Boru," he
enters a golf tournament in Karuizawa, Japan, put on by WALG, the World
Association of Left Handed Golfers. Although he's played only four
games of golf in his life, he's game, although he hasn't got game.
After his first exhilarating and successful drive, things fall quickly
apart, confirming the opinion of a Nike marketing whiz he called to ask
about sponsorship: "In light of the impossibility of legitimate skill
development, I was determined to mask my ineptitude by at least looking
the part. Although the phone call . . . ended abruptly, the woman said
something to the effect of: 'So let me get this straight. You've barely
ever played golf, which means you're likely to play badly, maybe even
come in last. Why would we want you wearing Nike?' " A missed
opportunity for Nike, since David Wolman is funny, smart, gracious and
photogenic.
A quote from one of the scientists mentioned, Chris McManus, sums up another aspect of
A Left-Hand Turn Around the World--the
cultural facets of left-handedness: "Wherever one looks, on any
continent, in any historical period or in any culture, right and left
have their symbolic associations and always it is right that is good
and left that is bad." The author discusses the etymological roots of
left, which are "just about as depressing as it gets. The Anglo-Saxon
lyft means weak or broken . . . most definitions of left reduce to an
image of doubtful sincerity and clumsiness", and let's not forget the
worse sinister. But he is quick to say, with a smile, "I'm not here to
push a thesis that we are a persecuted people." He would like to make a
case for left-handers being sexier though, and said, with a laugh, "I'd
love my wife a little more if she were left-handed."--Marilyn Dahl
For more information on both the book and David Wolman's book tour, visit, with a right click, his
Web site.
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