[HN Gopher] Letters by Oliver Sacks review
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Letters by Oliver Sacks review
Author : tintinnabula
Score : 57 points
Date : 2024-10-28 05:00 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| nomilk wrote:
| > Letters represents a mere fraction of the total in his
| archives, which runs to more than 200,000 pages
|
| whoah. Sacks averaged about 11 pages per day for 50 years (that
| are known about).
| nomilk wrote:
| The contrast in Sacks's hobbies made me laugh. Amusing to see a
| neurologist, who's complemented for being
|
| > a brilliant and vivid mind, a man whose intellectual appetite
| was vast, and whose professional and creative passions - far from
| being the self-absorbed obsessions of a pedant - were first and
| foremost an act of reaching out, the means through which he
| sought to communicate with others, a "love affair with the world"
|
| and whose work, _Letters_ , is
|
| > crammed with off-the-cuff profundities, moments of elevated
| perception that briefly unriddle the more inscrutable aspects of
| human nature
|
| can still enjoy the simpler (and funny) things in life, like
| bulking up via powerlifting:
|
| > As a man of 30, dallying with powerlifting, Sacks routinely
| bragged to his parents about his weight, how much he could lift,
| the amount he ate - "I love to shake the pavement as I walk, to
| part crowds like the prow of a ship." At Mount Zion, special
| scrubs had to be made to accommodate his bulk, and he found
| himself in disfavour with his superiors for stealing patients'
| food.
| ttctciyf wrote:
| > The contrast in Sacks's hobbies
|
| Though you wouldn't know if from TFA, Sacks was also a life-
| long enthusiast of mind-altering substances[0]. His 2012
| _Hallucinations_ [1] inquires into the etiology and social and
| phenomenal aspects of its subject by examining cases from his
| patients and from his own recreational episodes and is a
| completely fascinating read!
|
| 0: See, for example,
| https://www.npr.org/2020/09/21/915224016/neurologist-oliver-...
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinations_(book)
| motohagiography wrote:
| shame that these guys are just myths now. while I haven't read
| Sacks, the description reminds me of writers like plimpton,
| hemmingway, and thompson, who were the protagonists of their own
| stories and writing to capture an essence that we were just sold
| as fiction because it's the only way anyone would believe it.
|
| i was disappointed to read the article though. he sounded really
| cool, and I don't think the author did him the justice that
| another man who knows those things or has done them could have
| recognized or appreciated.
| jcims wrote:
| He made a few appearances on the RadioLab podcast. Always one of
| my favorite to listen to.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Sacks books left me deeply impressed but up to this day I don't
| know if they are scientifically accurate or partially fictional
| or exaggerated. Wikipedia is not a reliable advisor on such
| matters so any credible review recommendations are welcome.
| Optimal_Persona wrote:
| Watching "Brilliant Minds" probably won't help, great to see
| Zachary Quinto as Dr. Wolf ;-) https://www.nbc.com/brilliant-
| minds
| aamargulies wrote:
| I was lucky enough to attend a lecture given by Dr. Sacks circa
| 1988. He was a resident speaker for the University of California
| campuses and had come to UCSC to talk about Awakenings and other
| topics. He was such a sensitive, kind, gentle person.
|
| It was a privilege to simply be in the audience and the audience
| was very small. For some reason students didn't take advantage of
| the opportunity, right in front of them, to come and see him
| speak. Baffling.
|
| When I saw him, he was in his mid-fifties and the picture of an
| English academic doctor/professor. It is a kick to see what he
| looked like in 1961. That BMW he's sitting on is a classic.
|
| The world lost a very special person when he died in 2015.
| paganel wrote:
| Wasn't sure what was so special about the letters written by a
| mid-century neurologist, one among many, until I got to this part
| at the very start of the article:
|
| > A young queer man with a growing interest in motorcycle
| leather, Sacks had other reasons to leave
|
| He might have been a great guy, I couldn't tell, cause the
| reviewer was first and foremost interested in who this guy was
| having intercourse with, and not in what he was actually
| saying/believing/thinking of. Many such cases of late.
| levocardia wrote:
| Has anyone read the book? The New Yorker had some excerpts from
| his letters recently (around the "awakenings" era) and they
| seemed a bit haphazardly put together at first glance - more of
| interest to a literature scholar than a casual reader. Should I
| just stick with his actual books, or would a casual reader enjoy
| the letters too?
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