[HN Gopher] Oliver Sacks Put Himself into His Case Studies. What...
___________________________________________________________________
Oliver Sacks Put Himself into His Case Studies. What Was the Cost?
Author : barry-cotter
Score : 38 points
Date : 2025-12-09 13:45 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| zerofor_conduct wrote:
| https://archive.ph/0MFPK
| rendaw wrote:
| Subtitle
|
| > The scientist was famous for linking healing with storytelling.
| Sometimes that meant reshaping patients' reality.
|
| TLDR
|
| > after her grandmother's death...she becomes decisive, joining a
| theatre group.... in the transcripts... [she] never joins a
| theatre group or emerges from her despair.
|
| AFAICT the quote above is the only thing directly relevant to the
| title.
|
| From what I read, skimming through the article, it paints Sacks
| as being a delusion driven emotional romantic and was practicing
| some sort of cult medicine, but I can't tell how much of that is
| reality and how much is NYT's ridiculously flowery embellishing
| of everything.
| AdamN wrote:
| Just a nit but it's the New Yorker, not the NYT.
| cryzinger wrote:
| Also worth noting that the New Yorker published a lot of
| essays from Sacks when he was alive. So there's a sort of
| meta thing happening here with a biography of one of their
| famous contributors.
| burningChrome wrote:
| I agree that its a hard read, and seemingly never got to the
| point of the title of the article. I started reading it and by
| about the eighth or nineth paragraph the article was still
| ruminating on his gay love affair so I just skimmed the rest
| and I couldn't make heads or tails of the rest of it either.
|
| Its shocking how bad some writers are these days.
| RodgerTheGreat wrote:
| The New Yorker's primary editorial thrust has always been
| that the author is more important than the subject, and the
| journey is more important than having a thesis at all.
| paleotrope wrote:
| If you go further, the whole thing wraps around. His
| suppression of his own sexuality, led him to embellish, to
| write out his own internal dialogue into the "nonfiction"
| books he wrote. So it all eventually comes back to the
| thesis, but yes, it's a huge drag to read through, but then
| Sacks' own writing is so turgid and overly dramatic, like he
| was writing for an audience.
|
| The first sentence too is apt, "butter colored suit that
| reminded him of the sun" is a great example of Sacks' writing
| style.
| cryzinger wrote:
| Respectfully, I'm not sure you can draw meaningful
| conclusions about a 100+ paragraph deep-dive article after
| reading the first eight or nine. The biography stuff is
| definitely relevant to the takeaways about Sacks' methodology
| and style:
|
| > Other doctors had dismissed these patients as hopeless, but
| Sacks had sensed that they still had life in them--a
| recognition that he understood was possible because he, too,
| felt as if he were "buried alive."
|
| [...]
|
| > Another patient is so aroused and euphoric that she tells
| Sacks [according to his telling in _Awakenings_ ], "My blood
| is champagne"--the phrase Sacks used to describe himself when
| he was in love with Vincze.
|
| [...]
|
| > "I know, in a way, you don't feel like living," Sacks tells
| her, in another recorded session. "Part of one feels dead
| inside, I know, I know that. . . . One feels that one wants
| to die, one wants to end it, and what's the use of going on?"
|
| > "I don't mean it in that way," she responds.
|
| > "I know, but you do, partly," Sacks tells her. "I know you
| have been lonely all your life."
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Speaking of suboptimal writing, why call it a 'gay' love
| affair, when he was openly gay?
| Matterless wrote:
| One of the most important details of Sacks's life which
| dogged him nearly to the end (and which is important to
| this NY piece), was a minimization by Sacks of his own
| sexuality. He was not "openly gay" at all.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I love when the new yorker gets posted to HN because of how
| many people will proudly announce themselves not equal to the
| challenge of a mainstream middlebrow magazine article.
| CPLX wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| It's the equivalent of those people on Reddit or social
| media in general who make fun of three-star Michelin
| restaurants.
|
| I get that sometimes you just want McDonald's, and I don't
| think there is a definition of better and worse in either
| of these contexts that doesn't require injecting some kind
| of taste. But nonetheless.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| That description (mainstream middlebrow) would have been
| accurate in 1980. I don't think it is anymore.
|
| Long form journalism is not a common thing anymore, men
| (who dominate HN) are not enthusiastic readers anymore, and
| the cultural conversation that a dead-tree magazine
| represents is no longer amplified in mass media (as opposed
| to an era when David Frost and Dick Cavett had primetime
| shows on TV).
|
| I don't disagree about the reverse snobbery, but IMO people
| being "not equal to the challenge" isn't the actual
| problem.
| burningChrome wrote:
| I love most of their stuff and the writing is pretty
| eloquent as it takes you on a journey that's easy to follow
| and flows easily from one paragraph to another.
|
| This was just a slog that I felt went nowhere and the
| points were buried in between rambling information about
| Sacks and his gay lifestyle, lovers and living in NYC and
| the gay lifestyle there at the time.
|
| Not only was it not interesting, it was poorly written and
| hard to read. Sometimes writers just need to stick to the
| facts instead of trying to write another "The Phenomenology
| of Spirit" for a "middlebrow magazine".
| stevenwoo wrote:
| I read four other articles in this week's New Yorker by
| the time I got to this one and the problem it has is we
| are probably at this point all familiar with the story of
| a gay person coming to accept themselves and there was
| nothing new in this version for a very long time so when
| it belabors the point there is a real danger to losing
| the audience, I read the magazine just prior to bed and
| gave up on this one after first attempt, enjoyed the rest
| of the magazine (even some of the culture articles about
| New York residents) and came back to this article and
| fell asleep.
| expedition32 wrote:
| In a few decades reading will be a lost art. Yes the stats
| are really that worrying.
| quesera wrote:
| I don't think it's as revealing as you suggest.
|
| Writers write, and editors edit, for an audience. HN is
| definitely not a perfect match for the New Yorker's
| intended audience.
|
| But most readers of the New Yorker would choke on the kind
| of stuff that is perfectly aligned with HN's readership,
| so...
| kryptiskt wrote:
| If anything is shocking it is how modern readers have to be
| spoon fed bullet points and can't handle the slightest
| complexity of composition.
| usednet wrote:
| A responsible journalist can't say directly that Sacks was a
| confabulist but they can point out facts and allow the reader
| to infer. That's what the article does. There are many facts in
| the article that are relevant to the title in this sense (the
| prime number twins, the journal entries about Hat, etc.).
|
| I also don't agree with your interpretation of what the article
| is trying to paint Sacks as, though of course you are entitled
| to it.
|
| I think the the point of the article is to articulate what
| Sacks himself said:
|
| > "As Sacks aged, he felt as if he were gazing at people from
| the outside. But he also noticed a new kind of affection for
| humans--"homo sap." "They're quite complex (little) creatures
| (I say to myself)," he wrote in his journal. "They suffer,
| authentically, a good deal. Gifted, too. Brave, resourceful,
| challenging.""
| tomcam wrote:
| Haven't read the article yet, but I love the respect with
| which you pointed out your differences to GP. thank you.
| rendx wrote:
| In case this piqued your interest, I really enjoyed the
| documentary about his life's journey,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Sacks%3A_His_Own_Life - can
| recommend! (Also, fan of his books and research.)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-12-09 23:01 UTC)