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On the Move: A Life Paperback – Illustrated, 23 February 2016
by Oliver Sacks (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars (3,911)
Book 2 of 2: Oliver Sacks' memoirs
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A "wonderful memoir" (Los Angeles Times) about a brilliantly unconventional physician and writer, a man who has illuminated the many ways that the brain makes us human. - "Intimate.... Brim[s] with life and affection." --The New York Times
When Oliver Sacks was twelve years old, a perceptive schoolmaster wrote: "Sacks will go far, if he does not go too far." It is now abundantly clear that Sacks has never stopped going. With unbridled honesty and humor, Sacks writes about the passions that have driven his life--from motorcycles and weight lifting to neurology and poetry. He writes about his love affairs, both romantic and intellectual; his guilt over leaving his family to come to America; his bond with his schizophrenic brother; and the writers and scientists--W. H. Auden, Gerald M. Edelman, Francis Crick--who have influenced his work.
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Review
A New York Times Notable Book
One of the Best Books of the Year: NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, BookPage, Slate, Men's Journal
"Intimate. . . . Brim[s] with life and affection." --The New York Times
"[A] wonderful memoir, which richly demonstrates what an extraordinary life it has been. . . . A fascinating account--a sort of extended case study, really--of Sacks' remarkably active, iconoclastic adulthood." --Los Angeles Times
"A glorious memoir. . . . In this volume Sacks opens himself to recognition, much as he has opened the lives of others to being recognized in their fullness." --The Atlantic
"Pulses with his distinctive energy and curiosity." --The New York Review of Books
"A beautiful vision, one that embraces an infinite spectrum of wonder. . . . On the Move illustrates what an exceptional human being he is. . . . He is fascinated by seemingly everything, and, damn, the man can write." --Salon
"Marvelous. . . . He studies himself as he has studied others: compassionately, unblinkingly, intelligently, acceptingly and honestly." --The Wall Street Journal
"Sacks' ability to enact and celebrate intuition in medicine and precision in art is singular." --The New York Times Book Review
"[Sacks is] a wonderful storyteller. . . . It's his keen attentiveness as a listener and observer, and his insatiable curiosity, that makes his work so powerful." --San Francisco Chronicle
"Remarkably candid and deeply affecting. . . . Sacks's empathy and intellectual curiosity, his delight in, as he calls it, 'joining particulars with generalities' and, especially, 'narratives with neuroscience'--have never been more evident than in his beautifully conceived new book." --The Boston Globe
"Intriguing. . . . When describing his patients and their problems, he is attentive and precise, straightforward and sympathetic, and he brings these worthy qualities to his descriptions of his younger self." --The Washington Post
"A compelling read. . . . Offers a glimpse into one of the greatest minds of our time." --Men's Journal
"What a self this book reveals! A man animated by boundless curiosity, wide-ranging intelligence, gratitude for flawed humanity, perseverance despite setbacks. . . . We're lucky to have all the books, including On the Move. It's intensely, beautifully, incandescently alive." --Newsday
"An ebullient telling of a remarkable life." --Paste
"This remarkable man lifts us all. . . . [On the Move] is not only a record of his life-affirming characterological extravagance but also a meditation on what it is to be human in an age of medical arrogance and the numbing clout of technology." --The Los Angeles Review of Books
"An unforgettably passionate, joyous journey." --The Daily Beast
"[A] beautifully constructed and moving memoir. . . . His life and work are a gift." --The Times Literary Supplement (London)
"Moving. . . . Written with exceptional grace and clarity." --Richmond Times-Dispatch
About the Author
OLIVER SACKS was the author of twelve previous books, including The Mind's Eye, Musicophilia, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Awakenings (which inspired both the Oscar-nominated film and a play by Harold Pinter). The New York Times referred to Dr. Sacks as "the poet laureate of medicine," and he was a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books. He lived in New York City, where he was a professor of neurology at the NYU School of Medicine. He died in 2015.
Product details
Publisher : Vintage
Publication date : 23 February 2016
Edition : Illustrated
Language : English
Print length : 448 pages
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From Australia
Susan Jane
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Memoir
Reviewed in Australia on 10 September 2015
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Found this a moving, intellectually stimulating memoir. The lyrical writing and honesty stands out for me and I could easily re-read this book. What a man, what a life!
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avid learner
4.0 out of 5 stars an amazing life
Reviewed in Australia on 27 June 2015
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As a fan of Oliver Sacks's books, I was looking forward to reading this autobiography. It turns out that Oliver's life has been completely different from what I expected. He has only rarely had regular employment, and he has regularly exposed his body and mind to challenges ranging from swimming in shipping lanes to ingesting large quantities of mind-altering substances. What impressed me most was his ability to engage with a very wide range of people, and to learn from all of them. This book does not have the conventional chronological form of an autobiography, but rather weaves time around people and themes. If you are a Sacksaphile, this book is for you.
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Geoffrey Foster
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Australia on 23 June 2015
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Shawny
5.0 out of 5 stars amazing.
Reviewed in Australia on 13 February 2018
Format: Kindle
From the highs to the lows, Sack's book had me hooked. compelling and motivating. highly recommend this to anyone, especially if you're a gay male. sadly missed; vale
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Kathleen Fahy
4.0 out of 5 stars Brillant loving man; good story
Reviewed in Australia on 15 August 2016
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Oliver Sax was an extraordinary man who keep his secret about being gay for most of his life. In the film Awakenings he was protrayed by Robin Williams as straight. How sad that this brillant and loving man had to wait until old age to come out and find true love. I was rivited by his story; both professional and personal.
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Julia Conole
4.0 out of 5 stars excellent condition
Reviewed in Australia on 26 January 2020
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A Christmas present for my husband - he loved it.
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Lyn McDOnell
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in Australia on 11 July 2015
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Great read. What a wonderful life he has had.
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Roger Deacon
4.0 out of 5 stars The man who immortalised the strangest hat ever
Reviewed in Australia on 13 January 2017
Format: Kindle
As Faber feared, dangerously almost obscenely readable for a doctor, let alone a neurologist.
Masterful and moving search for fascinating people, great to see the physician finding the depth of each person.
Richly revealing, over generous on his wart collection. 9 months amassing his protein for research, a tiny amount so long sought them mixed with a bit of hamburger then just lost. A true doctors doctor and writers writer, so prolific and rich enough for great books to appear sometimes effort free yet get entirely lost or discarded, and others dragged and scratched at for years. Which were the better books? No book ever deserves five but this is four+++
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Cliente Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars Un muy buen libro y una buena edición
Reviewed in Spain on 15 October 2016
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Un gran libro a todo el que le guste Oliver Sacks, leer su autobiografía te ayuda a entender cómo este gran hombre se construyó a sí mismo, y cómo desarrolló una visión tan rica acerca del ser humano.
En cuanto a la edición se trata de un libro de bolsillo, muy cómodo; una edición bonita.
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katarinaism
5.0 out of 5 stars and the like. To read Sacks' account of what motivated him ...
Reviewed in the United States on 10 July 2018
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A poignant, powerful memoir of Sacks' life and the line between the humanities and the sciences that he so elegantly balanced his life's work upon. This is my second of Sacks' books that I have read ('Migraine' was the other, though I own them all and plan to read them), and it walks the reader through his life - from his childhood in England, to his coming-of-age and sexual awakening, to his motorbike-riding days in residency in San Francisco and the subsequent career for which most of us know him.
As a migraine sufferer, I too was both frightened and fascinated by my visual auras. I always felt a little crazy admitting or describing them, until I picked up Sacks' "Migraine" in high school and flipped through the pages upon pages of elegantly drawn visual auras and the accompanying descriptions. As a med student, I was impressed by Sacks' ability to write popular science books in the field of neurology, a skill which perhaps is only rivaled by those greats such as Steven Hawking, Isaac Asimov, and the like. To read Sacks' account of what motivated him to write the book and the challenges he faced in doing so only made me appreciate it more.
As a neurologist, I found a lot to relate to here: particular passages of interest were his approach to migraines, and his feeling as though he was "not like a super-specialist in migraine but like the general practitioner these patients should have seen to begin with. I felt it my business, my responsibility, to enquire about every aspect of their lives." Any neurologist who cares for migraine patients would relay the complex entanglement between sleep, stress, caffeine habits, and medical comorbidities to patients' migraine disorders. He also writes eloquently and relatably about the intersection between neurology and psychiatry and the importance of realizing a holistic, multifaceted approach.
But most of all, what I enjoyed about this book, was that it tears down the stereotypes of what a traditional 'neurologist' is. Many of us have the picture of the neurologist as the straitlaced, nerdy physician with the briefcase full of tools and a very bookish approach (and I am a neurologist). The image of the artistic, motorbike riding, poetry-appreciating young neurologist with a rebellious, inquisitive streak is satisfying because it shows who a neurologist can be -- an artist, a bodybuilder, a traveler, a writer. Sacks' memoir paints the picture of a life well-lived, well-enjoyed, and well-spent; he spent his life not dwelling on limitations of science but savoring scientific inquiry, by pursuing purpose and possibility. I hope his book inspires the artists to appreciate the beauty and subtlety of science, and the scientists to appreciate the emotion and abstraction of art. It certainly inspired me.
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clotilded
5.0 out of 5 stars easy to read and what a life!
Reviewed in France on 12 August 2015
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I've been reading Olivers Sacks for a few years and was curious to understand the character.
this book made me discover facets that I could not have imagined. Oliver Sacks connects private and professional life and the interconnections between these two.
I read the book in English on Kindle. the level is understandable and thanks to the automatic translator, synonyms are offered for more complicated or unusual words.
There are still some improvements to be made on this tool because it sometimes happens that the synonym is out of context, however this is still understandable.
Book that I would gladly recommend for those who are curious to discover the author behind the books as “the man who mistook his wife for a hat”.
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Miriam
5.0 out of 5 stars A charming man who lived his life at the fullest
Reviewed in Italy on 16 June 2019
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The life of a genius seen through the eyes of the genius himself. A life lived at the fullest.
Oliver Sacks was a very curious, empathic, witty, extremely cultured man, always eager to learn new skills and open to new experiences whenever he had the chance, in a word, a life enthusiast.
I certainly could have imagined what kind of man he was by reading his other books and essays, however it's the autobiography I'd recommend above the others, it is such a compelling reading.
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JDX
5.0 out of 5 stars Challenging stuff and a great read.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 July 2015
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This is a quest as much as it is a biography. Sacks takes on a great and surprising journey through his incredibly productive life. In these pages you will discover or rediscover much of his life's work. Additionally I was delighted by the cameos of others who have made great contributions to the thinking world in the last sixty years or so. As always he is very readable and there is so much to learn from him. Part of his success is due to his reluctance to follow any path but his own. He has been a great observer of people who has always sought for meaning in his subjects and in his projects. His comments on Gerald Edelman alone open up a huge revision in thinking about matters neurological and psychological. The book could seem like one big name drop but my view is that this would be to massively miss the point. Since Kuhn's paradigm shift notion enabled a great resurgence of mindless scholasticism intellectual adventure has been sold down the river. Or the academic world sold itself down the river. Sacks (who doesn't mention Kuhn but does have some interesting thisngs to say about Andy Capp) was constitionally incapable of such a gross error. In these pages you may find the thread of the true adventure. If the unexpected is not in evidence you are following the wrong trail. And a majority of those names will feature in the history of the recovery of intellectual excitement and real progress in science.
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Swami
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best books I have read that kept me reading way ...
Reviewed in India on 10 February 2016
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One of the best books I have read that kept me reading way past my sleeping time. Funny, witty, emotionally rigth, scientifically superb, superbly written. I am surely going to read it again and again
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Luiz E. Pellanda
5.0 out of 5 stars More than autobiography
Reviewed in Brazil on 24 May 2015
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It is a true transcript of his own self-analysis, his feelings as the foreground for the description of the events that were significant to him. Essential for everyone to rethink their own life trajectory. Heartwarming.
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neelam
5.0 out of 5 stars Just brilliant
Reviewed in India on 28 October 2015
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He isn't just a story teller or even a field worker! Sacks has a gift of making the most abstruse concepts understandable, and his book is almost unputdownable. His writing grips you and doesn't let go until the very end.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars great reading
Reviewed in Germany on 18 September 2015
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I've known Oliver Sacks so far because of his outstanding patient descriptions. In this very readable autobiography, the person Oliver Sacks is brought to you - with all his self-doubts: a life path ON THE MOVE as a doctor, scientist and writer. Moving to read.
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Chouchou
5.0 out of 5 stars His books and his life: The secrets of his books and the meaning of writing for Sacks.
Reviewed in Japan on 9 March 2016
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Oliver Sacks' "On the move" is an overwhelmingly honest confession in the form of autobiography. By reading this, I for the first time, understood why he kept writing books. Writing books had been probably the only way to give him "self-esteem", as the alternative way as introduced in the book "muscle building" functioned in the same way. As the title tells us, he had to keep writing, keep seeing people, anyway whatever the kept activities might have been, in order to give him a feeling of "self-esteem". You might wonder why such a great guy suffered from lack of self-esteem. In the very first part of this autobiography there's some description before he goes to Oxford. By being asked by his father, Sacks tells him that he preferred boys and that he didi not want this known by his mother, but his father broke the promise. Next morning, his mother dashes into his room, maybe this is my imagination, and says probably loudly, my imagination again, "You have not have been born. You are an abomination." Sacks does not write how much he got hurt by mother's words, but rather defensed her by writing that it was very natural in that time. He says, although, "But her words haunted me for much of my life and played a major part in inhibiting and injecting with guilt what should have been a free and joyous expression of sexuality". As this description stands, Sacks kept himself in the closet for most of his life. It was only 4 years before his death in the last summer that Sacks was able to overcome, if properly rephrased, his mother's old shots. He met Billy Hayes, a writer and Oliver's first and last lover. He goes; " we often swim together, at home or abroad. We sometimes read our works in progress to each other, but mostly, like any other couple, we talk about what we are reading, we watch old movies on television, we watch the sunset together or share sandwiches for lunch. we have a tranquil, many-dimensional sharing of lives--a great and unexpected gift in my old age, after a lifetime of keeping at a distance".
By reading this beautiful paragraph, I understood why he wrote numerous books, mostly in the form of medical essays, and why he attempted otherwise difficult medical explanations can be rephrased in easy words for general readers. Being understandable was the key concept, though Sacks himself might not have been conscious, in all his books, as he wanted being understood by people. I felt this way as well: he was in time with and catch up with retrieval of his real "self-esteem" before his death. Oliver, you made it. Congratulations!
This book is recommendable to anybody. I do not think there will be very many readers who can overlay their lives with Oliver's, but I am sure anybody can find subtle words that make your family members, your friends and your lovers and mostly importantly yourself happier in this book. I am happy to know Oliver made it eventually.
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Rikkie
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant
Reviewed in Canada on 21 October 2020
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This is author on whos work was created the film "Awakenings". This, though, is only a small portion of the life's work of a brilliant mind and a sensitive soul. One of those books you want to read over and over again, it's direct generosity draws me in every time. Don't miss this one.
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Xavier Gil
4.0 out of 5 stars Un cant a la vida ple d'emoció, sentiments i ciència d'un magnífic writer.
Reviewed in Spain on 27 July 2015
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It's a great book for all those who have followed Sacks's books. In these darrers moments of his life, when he has already announced his death due to brain cancer and after publishing the most important diaries in the world his emotive committee to life, this book is a darrer effort to leave the seven experiences to the posteritat. It is a fun book, emotive and a gallery of very interesting characters and scientific debates from the 50 years to the present. Very recommendable. Wait for me to translate Aviat.
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From other countries
Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars The book was in good condition with prompt delivery
Reviewed in India on 27 April 2017
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The book was in good condition with prompt delivery. It is a lovely book typical Oliver Sacks style. It moves, and tugs the stings of your heart. It is also an honest account with nothing hidden, where Dr Sacks opens about his sexuality. The brilliance of his character comes to the forefront. Abig thumbs up for Dr Sack's autobiography
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Gopal R
5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional autobiography
Reviewed in India on 16 January 2016
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An exceptional autobiography that only Oliver Sacks could have written. His writing draws you, fascinated, into the way his life unfolds. It is candid too, speaking frankly about living life as a gay individual and his youthful motorcycling and drug-taking years. Just superb! Sadly, his voice will be heard no more but his writing will live on.
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Thiago Luiz de Salles Gomes
5.0 out of 5 stars To complete Sacks' understanding
Reviewed in Brazil on 25 May 2015
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The book helps to understand this excellent author! Putting up the difficulties and shaping your vision of the world, worldview.
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MR O DURAND-EVRARD
5.0 out of 5 stars An extraordinary book
Reviewed in France on 5 June 2018
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I like to read in English and it's nice with Paperwhite. Oliver Sacks is an extraordinary author and his autobiography is rich, generous in all dimensions and very honest in the events experienced and felt. A very great writer and I had the impression of losing a friend when I (virtually) turned the last page of his book.
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Marco Schwarz
5.0 out of 5 stars Fun, informative and well written
Reviewed in Italy on 8 October 2015
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Worth reading for those who learned to appreciate Oliver Sacks through his 'clinical tales'. This book sheds light on Sacks' personal life and it sounds as thoughtful, passionate, insightful and interested in all aspects of human life as Oliver Sacks (I guess) has been.
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Kindle Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Review of On the Move by Oliver Sacks
Reviewed in the United States on 11 February 2016
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I must admit that before seeing that NPR’s Science Friday had a book club and that the inaugural selection was On the Move, I had no idea who Oliver Sacks is. Working in the public library, I had seen Musicophilia come in a while back and its subject immediately piqued my curiosity. I was working on several other things at the time and so added it to my “To Read” list on Goodreads. Knowing a bit more about the eminent Mr. Sacks now it appears that there will be several other books I will have to add to the list.
What I find most striking about Sacks is not his vast knowledge of neurology and a myriad of other subjects but his eye for people. He seems to me, to be one of those individuals who can see right into a person without losing his sense of the entire being. Medical science could use a few more like him.
The book is not only a list of the events Sacks has witnessed, which span World War II to California culture in the 60s to the 21st century in New York. It is also, very much, a catalog of his relationships with a wide array of people, both in and out of the sciences.
You’ll also find stories that make Sacks very human. Memoirs, real memoirs, are not works of self-aggrandisement. Sacks’ willingness to show less than dignifying moments makes him more accessible. For example, he relays a couple of examples of road rage from his early days as a motorcycle enthusiast. He chased down a vehicle that had almost knocked him off the road only to realize that it was just a bunch of scared kids. This brought to mind a similar incident I experienced. I once got so angry at someone on the road that I attempted to throw a large tea out the car window at another driver. Fortunately for both of us, the window was closed. The other driver got away without injury and I decided that I would no longer listen to heavy metal while driving and that road rage was stupid.
He spoke of experimenting with drugs in the 60s and 70s and how, one time, he experienced a completely auditory hallucination. What was striking about it was that it took the form of a very mundane conversation with a pair of neighbors he thought were in his living room (he was in the kitchen preparing lunch). When he emerged he discovered no-one was there. For me, I had to have my neck rebuilt in the mid-90s. I was given morphine for the pain. I fell asleep while reading and dreamt, rather vividly, that I had read the entire book. When I awoke I found I was really only about 100 pages in. It was the most boring dream I have ever had.
There is a lot about the endless number of subjects which have fascinated Sacks throughout his life. He has a style of writing that makes these complicated concepts understable for the average person (such as myself). I learned much more about neural mapping, Tourette’s, encephalitis, disassociated limbs, and color blindness than I thought possible just by merely touching on the subjects.
All in all, Sacks has experienced an amazing life and it shines through in his writing. The moral of the story, however seems to be that it is a grave mistake to ignore signs such as “Beware of Bull.” If you haven’t read it, McCarthy’s Bar by Pete McCarthy has a very funny example of the consequences of ignoring a similar sign. Sacks’ own bull incident does not end with a snicker. It just amazes me that both men see the sign, comprehend what it means, and choose to think it a joke. Anyway, read the book and stay away from bulls!
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Michael Jones
4.0 out of 5 stars Sachs comes across as a sweet, caring
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 October 2016
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Winner of the 'hottest-young-scientist-on-a-motorcycle' award, 1966 (not many contenders, I suspect, but he certainly aced it). Sachs comes across as a sweet, caring, insecure, empathic, insightful and engaging person. Deeply shy but with an empathic drive to connect with and understand his patients and with a burning desire to produce strong, well regarded work. Interesting to read about his extensive periods of drug use, the highs and lows. Charming, vulnerable and 'flawed' - I have some reservations that he holds back on the full picture - that there's a lot more to tell. But this is an engaging, wide-ranging series of snapshots of a life lived to the full.
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Karl
4.0 out of 5 stars Oliver Sacks, Neurologist
Reviewed in Germany on 12 June 2024
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Very important autobiography. A must read.,
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Lynn Brealey
4.0 out of 5 stars Well done,it,s a wild ride!
Reviewed in Canada on 14 June 2015
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Doctor Sacks has had a real ride,mostly enjoyable,exciting. He quite fascinated me.
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lara Calissi
5.0 out of 5 stars Good biography, lots fo reference to other books can be used to choose next reading
Reviewed in Italy on 10 December 2018
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Good biography, lots fo reference to other books can be used to choose next reading
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Oliver Sacks' memoirs #2
On the Move: A Life
Oliver Sacks
4.03
21,405 ratings1,920 reviews
Goodreads Choice AwardNominee for Readers' Favorite Science & Technology (2015)
When Oliver Sacks was twelve years old, a perceptive schoolmaster wrote in his report: “Sacks will go far, if he does not go too far.” It is now abundantly clear that Sacks has never stopped going. From its opening pages on his youthful obsession with motorcycles and speed, On the Move is infused with his restless energy. As he recounts his experiences as a young neurologist in the early 1960s, first in California, where he struggled with drug addiction, and then in New York, where he discovered a long-forgotten illness in the back wards of a chronic hospital, we see how his engagement with patients comes to define his life.
With unbridled honesty and humor, Sacks shows us that the same energy that drives his physical passions—weight lifting and swimming—also drives his cerebral passions. He writes about his love affairs, both romantic and intellectual; his guilt over leaving his family to come to America; his bond with his schizophrenic brother; and the writers and scientists—Thom Gunn, A. R. Luria, W. H. Auden, Gerald M. Edelman, Francis Crick—who influenced him.
On the Move is the story of a brilliantly unconventional physician and writer—and of the man who has illuminated the many ways that the brain makes us human.
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Nonfiction
Memoir
Biography
Science
Psychology
Autobiography
Biography Memoir
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397 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2015
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About the author
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Oliver Sacks
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Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE, was a British neurologist residing in the United States, who has written popular books about his patients, the most famous of which is Awakenings, which was adapted into a film of the same name starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro.
Sacks was the youngest of four children born to a prosperous North London Jewish couple: Sam, a physician, and Elsie, a surgeon. When he was six years old, he and his brother were evacuated from London to escape The Blitz, retreating to a boarding school in the Midlands, where he remained until 1943. During his youth, he was a keen amateur chemist, as recalled in his memoir Uncle Tungsten. He also learned to share his parents' enthusiasm for medicine and entered The Queen's College, Oxford University in 1951, from which he received a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in physiology and biology in 1954. At the same institution, he went on to earn in 1958, a Master of Arts (MA) and an MB ChB in chemistry, thereby qualifying to practice medicine.
After converting his British qualifications to American recognition (i.e., an MD as opposed to MB ChB), Sacks moved to New York, where he has lived since 1965, and taken twice weekly therapy sessions since 1966.
Sacks began consulting at chronic care facility Beth Abraham Hospital (now Beth Abraham Health Service) in 1966. At Beth Abraham, Sacks worked with a group of survivors of the 1920s sleeping sickness, encephalitis lethargica, who had been unable to move on their own for decades. These patients and his treatment of them were the basis of Sacks' book Awakenings.
His work at Beth Abraham helped provide the foundation on which the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function (IMNF), where Sacks is currently an honorary medical advisor, is built. In 2000, IMNF honored Sacks, its founder, with its first Music Has Power Award. The IMNF again bestowed a Music Has Power Award on Sacks in 2006 to commemorate "his 40 years at Beth Abraham and honor his outstanding contributions in support of music therapy and the effect of music on the human brain and mind".
Sacks was formerly employed as a clinical professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and at the New York University School of Medicine, serving the latter school for 42 years. On 1 July 2007, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons appointed Sacks to a position as professor of clinical neurology and clinical psychiatry, at the same time opening to him a new position as "artist", which the university hoped will help interconnect disciplines such as medicine, law, and economics. Sacks was a consultant neurologist to the Little Sisters of the Poor, and maintained a practice in New York City.
Since 1996, Sacks was a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters (Literature). In 1999, Sacks became a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences. Also in 1999, he became an Honorary Fellow at The Queen's College, Oxford. In 2002, he became Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Class IV—Humanities and Arts, Section 4—Literature).[38] and he was awarded the 2001 Lewis Thomas Prize by Rockefeller University. Sacks was awarded honorary doctorates from the College of Staten Island (1991), Tufts University (1991), New York Medical College (1991), Georgetown University (1992), Medical College of Pennsylvania (1992), Bard College (1992), Queen's University (Ontario) (2001), Gallaudet University (2005), University of Oxford (2005), Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (2006). He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours. Asteroid 84928 Oliversacks, discovered in 2003 and 2 miles (3.2 km) in diameter, has been named in his honor.
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Profile Image for Petra X.
Petra X
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February 1, 2022
Oliver Sacks died today, 30th August 2015..
Back in the 50s/60s in California he was Dr. Sacks, a neurologist all week, but a gay, leatherclad biker called Wolf at weekends. That is when he wasn't on Muscle Beach going in for weightlifting competitions!
Oliver Sacks great accomplishment to me was to show us the people of the cases he describes as quite separate from their disorders. Not schizophrenics, but people with schizophrenia, not autistics or even autistic people, but people with autism and all of them appreciated by Sacks as suffering from their symptoms but not, in any basic way, being them. One of Sacks' brothers had schizophrenia and needed care almost his entire life so Sacks knew mental as well as neurological disordered thinking and never confused the person with the problem.
Essentially, Sacks was as interested in the person as he was the disorder and never thought of his patients as just 'cases'. He treated his patients as co-researchers into their symptoms and gave them a new perspective, one that, as might be said, was healthier than thinking they were sick and needed to find a doctor to cure them.
Sacks life was made more difficult by the fact he had prosopagnosia, face blindness. It's a terrible disorder. No one knows you have it when you don't recognise them in the street. They think you are snobbish and can't be bothered to acknowledge them. They talk to you and you are kind of cool because you don't know who they are. It didn't happen with everyone he met and it didn't happen all the time. It's a disorder that comes and goes and you have no idea when you have it and just not recognised someone. Add to that shyness, and this great author and neurologist had a lot to overcome with his patients himself. Probably it made him much more empathetic. I have prosopagnosia too, and I'm shy.
For most people Oliver Sacks will forever be Robin Williams who played him in the film Awakenings based on his book of the same name. His most famous book is The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales. A brilliant book as a lot of his books were, but none as good as his last book, his autobiography On the Move.
I will miss Oliver. After reading this book I feel he is "Oliver" to me. He was truthful, vulnerable and didn't cover up either his faults, his rather unusual and only semi-legal hobbies - drugs for instance, or was falsely modest about his great achievements. I would like to have known him. A lovely man, an innovative scientist and doctor and an enjoyable author. This has been by a long way the best book of 2015.
Oliver, Alav haSholem, RIP.
Update This piece, Sabbath is the last piece Oliver Sacks wrote. It's an essay written just two weeks before he died. If you are a fan, you will enjoy this. If you come from an Orthodox Jewish community in the UK, you will identify with it, nodding your head perhaps at the traditions, perhaps at how he deserts it, perhaps at both, as I did. It is worth reading though.
_________________
Reading notes Just going to start this. So looking forward to it after the abridged version On the Move: A Life which I enjoyed but turned out to be the worst abridgement ever. This is much better. The story of a man who lived life to the full. The super-intellectual doctor full of humanity and love for people, disease processses and chickens in the week. But the gay leather man lifting weights on Shoal Bay high on amphetamines at weekends! What a life he lived.
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Petra X
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April 23, 2021
The print book, this one On the Move got 5* and a more extensive review. This review is for the BBC book and only gets 2*. Update But I have rerated it 5 star as for some reason, only this review shows. It is the worst abridgement of a book I have ever read. However I did enjoy reading it so much I bought the full book. The abridgement shows Sacks as this young man who liked motorbikes and drugs and grew up to become a genial doctor and best-selling author. A man who suppressed his homosexuality and lived alone, lonely all his life until he met his soul mate in his 70s. Nothing could be further from the truth! Absolutely nothing.
Whoever abridged this should be sent to work in a packing factory away forever from words, because they don't understand enough about books, writing or people to do anything but ruin them.
________
Original notes and review, all rubbish as it turns out. This was the BBC abridged version. I regard abridged books almost as a 'pilot' programme on the tv. If I like it I will buy the book or watch the show, and On the Move is amazingly good so I bought it and can't wait to read it, starting now.
I never knew he was gay and into drugs! This is very enjoyable. Sadly, he never fell in love until he was in his 70s, I was wrong about this. More fool me for taking an abridged book for gospel imagine waiting that long. And they are still in love.
His family home was in Mapesbury Road. My stamping ground! His house was solid Edwardian, mine older with 9'5" ceilings, 1852 Victoriana. I bet his house, like mine, is flats now though.
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Glenn Sumi
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November 21, 2015
Neurologist. Doctor. Author. Pianist. Motorcycle enthusiast. Amateur weightlifter.
Oliver Sacks packed a lot of life into his 82 years (he died in August). And this incredible volume, the second part of his memoirs (the first is 2001’s Uncle Tungsten), chronicles his busy, fascinating adult life: Oxford, navigating his way through research and clinical studies (a trip to an Israeli kibbutz helped him focus on his career), his move to the U.S., his travels (“On The Move” indeed), discovering his passion for writing, finding his subjects, publication ups and downs, maintaining his deep friendships (among them the poets Thom Gunn, whose poem gives the book its title, and W.H. Auden), his family – both parents and two brothers were physicians, a third brother was schizophrenic – his battle with substance abuse and his late-in-life romantic partnership.
A tougher editor could have tightened some of the prose – I lost count of the number of times Sacks refers to someone as “genial” – and the science gets pretty dense near the end. But this is quibbling.
Sacks gives you the backstory to all his books (including Awakenings, which was made into a film, and his breakthrough book of essays, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat), tells you about some brushes with death (including one example of road rage that’s like something out of a thriller), and a couple of times includes some of his earlier written sketches that recount experiences more accurately than memories can.
What emerges is a portrait of a deeply complex, private, brilliant man who seized hold of life and found a way to utilize and appreciate all the gifts he was given. I’ll return to this inspiring book many times.
***
A couple of observations:
• One of his best friends was… Carol Burnett! No, not the comic actress. This Carol Burnett is an African-American doctor. I chuckled whenever he mentioned her.
• I suppose this is Sacks’s “coming out” book. When, at 18, he told his father that he might be attracted to men (up til then he had never done anything), his mother told him he was “an abomination” and she wished he “had never been born.” Sacks never theorizes about how this affected him. After 40, he was celibate for more than 35 years. He doesn’t explain why this was, but also, tactfully, doesn’t say how, living in New York City at the time, this might have reduced his contact with certain diseases. His various affairs, and his finding love late in life, gives the book an emotional resonance without ever feeling maudlin. His love of his schizophrenic brother Michael also adds heft, and may have instilled in him a curiosity about science and the brain.
• Sacks lived on City Island in New York City. I had no idea this place existed! It also provides a wonderful metaphor for the man himself.
• He spent time in Canada, and may have ended up as a physician in Manitoulin Island.
• Two of his famous cousins are: Al Capp, the cartoonist, and Israeli politician Abba Eban!
• If you want to know where Sacks's love of footnotes comes from, it's explained here. Often, his books would mushroom in size after they were submitted for publication because he would keep adding notes.
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Jane
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June 14, 2015
I love Oliver Sacks, so I was incredibly disappointed to realize more than halfway through that I couldn't stand this book. It made me sad as well, for these are the last words of a dying man whose accomplishments and writings have made this world a more enlightened and decent place. This memoir is rambling and tedious. It has some good moments, such as when he describes coming to terms with his brother's mental illness and his own homosexuality. But then he cuts off the discussion and moves on to something trivial. Pay tribute to Oliver Sacks by going back and reading his earlier books, or listening to him on Radio Lab, or re-watching "Awakenings."
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HP Saucerer
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June 4, 2019
”I am a storyteller, for better and for worse. I suspect that a feeling for stories, for narrative, is a universal human disposition.” — Oliver Sacks
On the Move is the second of two memoirs written by British neurologist Dr Oliver Sacks; the first book, Uncle Tungsten, is an account of Sacks’ childhood growing up in England before the Second World War, with this book a recollection of Sacks’ adulthood.
Throughout the book, Sacks writes with unflinching honesty, with openness and sincerity, recalling in detail his friendships and his falling-outs, his failings and misfortunes, his family, his experimentation with LSD, his bungled love affairs and his homosexuality.
From early on, we see how writing was an integral part of his mental life. How, from the age of fourteen, he kept journals (in all, he had close to a thousand), and how indispensable to him this was, for it facilitated his need to think on paper.
Sacks writes candidly about the many obstacles he faced in becoming a published author; we see how his motivation for writing wasn’t fueled by a desire for fame or fortune, but how it came from a sense of wonder and a yearning to bring his passion for the intricate and intriguing workings of the brain to the public consciousness.
Sacks’ passion for neuroscience shines through, as does his unadulterated joy in the natural world, but what I found most fascinating, were the numerous other (often surprising) pastimes he pursued: from botany and classical music, to swimming, motorcycling and powerlifting - from just the opening few chapters, you get the sense that his was truly a richly lived life.
This was an infinitely intriguing and deeply moving memoir recalled with unbridled honesty and humour and I, for one, am certainly glad I took the time to read it. 5*
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November 20, 2016
An essential endnote for the indefatigable Sacks reader. Recommended with brio. However, those just starting on the Sacks oeuvre are probably best off with The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings, The Island of the Colorblind or An Anthropologist on Mars. Read and be reborn.
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Nicole~
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December 17, 2015
I am a storyteller, for better and for worse. I suspect that a feeling for stories, for narrative, is a universal human disposition, going with our powers of language, consciousness of self, and autobiographical memory. (On The Move: A Life - Oliver Sacks)
Oliver Sacks was the youngest of four boys born in England to a family in which a medical career seemed to be a hereditary trait: his father, mother, older brother, uncle and three first cousins were all doctors. At age 6, he and his brother were sent to boarding school during the Blitz, where they were often severely punished by a sadistic headmaster. Such abuses could easily be interpreted as psychological scarring and the origin of the thinly developed self confidence and awkwardness of his teenage years and young adulthood; a reservedness exacerbated by the awakening of his homosexuality at a time when in the UK this was considered a sex crime mandatorily treated by chemical castration, the likes of which Alan Turing suffered. Sacks recalled his mother reacting terribly to the reality of it: “You are an abomination,” she said. “I wish you had never been born.”
Seeking their instinct, or their poise, or both,
One moves with an uncertain violence
Under the dust thrown by a baffled sense
Or the dull thunder of approximate words.*
At 22, vacationing in Amsterdam , he was determined and later successful in losing his virginity in a drunken one night stand, not remembering for a minute if he liked it or not. Though Sacks might have been disinclined to do anything impetuous while living in England, he transformed over the years since his move to America. He became fascinated by racy motorbikes, exchanging the professional physician's white coat by day to bikers' gear by night.
In goggles, donned impersonality
In gleaming jackets trophied with the dust,
They strap in doubt – by hiding it, robust –
And almost hear a meaning in their noise.*
He became drawn to the weightlifting crowd on Muscle Beach and trained almost obsessively, setting a record for squat lifting 600 pounds, earning him the nickname 'Dr. Squat.' Bodybuilding was just one of many ways of overcoming his timidity and fears; he challenged and experienced life's great bounty with gusto from experimentation with recreational drugs, or speeding perilously at 100 mph on his motorbike at night through Grand Canyon, exhilarated with freedom and the sense of being "poised motionless above the ground , the whole planet rotating silently beneath [him]," to creating a unique niche in the field of neuroscience by developing unorthodox clinical, analytical and documentary approaches to his patients' cases, which when coupled with a commendable gift for prose, have eruditely and harmoniously merged Science and Literature.
They scare a flight of birds across the field:
Much that is natural, to the will must yield.
Men manufacture both machine and soul,
And use what they imperfectly control
To dare a future from the taken routes.*
In his practice, Sacks showed anything but the disassociated, aloof manner a physician generally presents to his patients; genial and devoted was he to getting to know and understand them, to listen and process what they were experiencing into a cohesive picture. Information from clinical treatments, observations and conversations with patients burdened by some of the most unusual case histories were oriented and presented in narrative form with great care and sensitivity, yet still garnered from his critics harsh accusations of unethical behavior and exploitation. For the most part, his patients contributed generously, without reservation, and actually enjoyed their tales being told, in a sense, because someone compassionately took the time to listen.
Scene from Awakenings starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams as Dr. Oliver Sacks, courtesy independent.co.uk
Sacks's memoirs read in much the same way he took notes all his life: from feverishly scribbled sketches, vignettes and anecdotes jumping back and forth in time, to emerge into a coherently constructed self-examination, his life as a case history qualified by voluminous introspections, insights and the poignancies which tend to flash clearly into view upon approach to one's end. The book's photo illustrations at the end tell a satisfying story of family, friends and the newly found love in the last decade of his fully lived life.
A minute holds them, who have come to go:
The self-defined, astride the created will
They burst away; the towns they travel through
Are home for neither bird nor holiness,
For birds and saints complete their purposes.
At worst, one is in motion; and at best,
Reaching no absolute, in which to rest,
One is always nearer by not keeping still.*
Oliver Sacks (1933-2015)
*Excerpts from the title-inspired poem On the Move by Thom Gunn - poet, writing mentor and friend ( 1929-2004); poem in its entirety @ http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/...
Works by Dr. Oliver Sacks:
Migraine (1970)
Awakenings (1973) ****
A Leg to Stand On (1984) ****
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985) ****
Seeing Voices: A Journey Into the World of the Deaf (1989)
An Anthropologist on Mars (1995) *****
The Island of the Colorblind (1997)
Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood (2001)
Oaxaca Journal (2002)
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (2007) ****
The Mind's Eye (2010) *****
Hallucinations (2012) *****
On the Move: A Life (2015)****
------
I've been exploring the world of neuroscience and all its unfathomable intricacies, wonders and anomalies through Dr. Oliver Sacks from a professional aspect since the 1980's, and in a more personal level since the 1990's as my son entered his toddler years showing delays in neurodevelopment. His books feature some of the most unusual cases in Neuropathology evidenced in the world, written in a readable way with empathy and understanding for the victims and their families. He wrote as he lived with heart and genuine concern for humanity, to live to one's fullest potential as he did... always on the move. He will be sorely missed. Rest in Peace.
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João Barradas
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June 25, 2019
A concepção geral da sociedade sobre a classe médica baseia-se em dogmas fundados em generalizações brotadas de casos pontuais, estrumadas pelos mesquinhos media. Esquecidos do arcaico ideal de João Semana, o Zé Povinho acomoda-se em preconceitos mesquinhos, colocando os médicos num patamar deificante para, no momento seguinte, os criticarem, qual treinador que sofreu uma derrota ou santo que não atende as preces - a passagem de bestial a besta no país da fé e do futebol.
Somos seres humanos, como tal susceptíveis a errar, a perder, a ceder a tormentos... mas também ao entendimento. Quiçá por o trabalho implicar uma relação constante com o outro, num tempo de sofrimento, a empatia é trabalhada, no dia-a-dia, num casting sucessivo para assumir o papel de actor na vida de outrém. Sem estar livre de carregar uma escuridão corrosiva, essa capacidade leva à colecção de histórias de vidas, numa clara alusão às medicina narrativa, de que Sacks é um exemplo nato.
Para lá dos soberbos livros repletos de histórias-caso que deliciam quem queira conhecer (profissionais e leigos, a linguagem usada assim o permite) mais sobre esta massa cinzenta que carregamos na nossa calote, Sacks é um exímio narrador de outras histórias. Neste livro, conta a melhor delas todas - a sua própria. Com ela, desmistifica a ideia do primeiro parágrafo. Não foi uma vida idílica - sofreu e fez sofrer, chorou, transgrediu, sentiu-se impotente, foi abandonado, abandonou, questionou-se. Essa sua curiosidade premanente levou-o a querer trilhar outros caminhos além da neurologia, tornando-o, a meu ver, melhor ser, um escritor com experiência plena.
Sem conseguir explicar estas teorias probbilisticas (como aquelas que me fizeram cruzar novamente com o autor), não contenho uma estupefação quase pecaminosa ao descortinar cada ponto que partilho com esta prodigiosa mente: o gosto pela descoberta, o amor pelas viagens (Islândia, um dia), a incapacidade de síntese (se posso usar seis adjectivos para caracterizar algo porque não usá-los, numa enumeração infinita?), a curiosidade pela vida dos seus doentes, o interesse pelas mesmas referências literárias, a quase pecaminosa comparação na forma de escrever (tão bem descrita adiante), o receio da solidão, o medo do abandono.
Existem pontos menos positivos - a tradução de literal de "patient" por "paciente" ao invés de "doente" (como costumo dizer, paciência todos tenos, em maior ou menor grau). Ou mesmo divisão nem bem cronológica nem bem temática dos capítulos, que pode dificultar a experiência do leitor (mas, tal como a consciência, a existência pode ser comparada a um rio, com as seus caudais, rápidos, zonas mais profundas... e diferentes barcos em diferentes rumos).
Do sumo sorvido, sobrevalorece um mergulho numa vida que espero banhe o meu ser, active as minhas células nervosas em sinestesias prazerosas, não se contentando com nenhuma categorização imposta, me submerja numa curiosidade interminável,sempre a aguardar a próxima história. Após esta apneia deliciante, sempre com um livro na margem, deixarei secar esta água edificante ao sabor do vento desta viagem, permacendo sempre em movimento.
"Tenho a sensação de que descubro os meus pensamentos através do ato de escrever, durante a escrita. Por vezes o texto sai-me perfeito mas normalmente os meus textos requerem extensas podas e revisões porque sou capaz de exprimir a mesma ideia de muitas e diferentes maneiras. Acontece ser emboscado por ideias tangenciais ou associações a meio de uma frase, o que conduz a parêntesis, orações subordinadas ou frases do tamanho de parágrafos. (...) Às vezes fico embriagado com torrentes de pensamentos e sou demasiado impaciente para as colocar na ordem certa. Mas uma cabeça fria, e intervalos de sobriedade, são tão necessários como essa exuberância criativa."
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Chris
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August 31, 2015
Note: I wrote this review in May, 2015, then let it sit until today when I heard that Oliver Sacks just passed away. I have not re-edited the text to reflect that sad fact.
This is a book that I could not put down until I finished it, save for six hours of sleep overnight.
For Dr. Oliver Sack's most personal and poignant work, which I believe is his best, I will provide a different perspective to what others on Goodreads and most respected newspaper reviewers have already said. The differences are mostly those of other reviewers' omissions.
Dr. Sacks is a very well known neurologist and a widely-read, successful author. He is greatly liked as a lovable "teddy bear" by his many hundreds of clinical patients. These are indisputable, well-deserved facts. Sadly, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer shortly before this book was released, too late to be mentioned within. Certain issues I will mention have nothing to do with Dr. Sacks or the book's content, and don't reflect upon him in the slightest.
I enthusiastically agree with essentially every reviewer that this is a wonderful book. It's open and candid, inclusively covering every phase of his life after his earlier 2001 memoir of boyhood, Uncle Tungsten. It's written in the typical Sacks style: direct and logically organized for clarity, with repetitions here and there for reinforcement. If it sounds like I'm describing the usual "scientific" style as applied to a life story, that's exactly what it is, but without any overloading pedantics. The key characteristic is that you feel as if you are sitting with him at dinner, or at a bar, while he's talking one-on-one with you, describing his life. It's an excellent example of what must be his clinical style when dealing with patients. It reads effortlessly, almost automatically.
Of course, Sacks is a man of science, as is plainly evident by examining his large output of books on various aspects of neuroscience. In a nutshell, these record his clinical observations, then synthesize these observations into general hypotheses, which often lead to the discovery and application of palliative treatments and sometimes outright cures.
However, all the science he presents is available in much more detail from his other books. What's here is a summary of those books, to which the reader should go if more depth is needed. His memoir is more valuable as a record of how Sacks' career evolved, how each subject area fitted into his larger life. Not all were successes: I found his honest acknowledgments of his failure as a research scientist a surprise, and he supplies ample amusing evidence of this. Thus, fortunately for his patients, and us, he was "forced" to become a clinician and writer.
If not the scientific details, then why do I think this is book so great? I could say it's in how it provides comfort to struggling writers. We sympathize with Sacks as he writes manuscript after manuscript, each being rejected by multiple publishers. He often wrote a long book, 50,000 words say, in just a few days, which was subsequently rejected. Then he would immediately start another one, shelving the rejected one for possible later rework, but most often it was forgotten. He gives us an inside view of the creative process.
More of a lesson to us, he lost several complete manuscripts, and some irreplaceable research data, due to carelessness. Again, rather than rewrite or redo, he either tackled another work or conveniently changed jobs. Genius? Assuredly. Absentmindedness? Certainly. Irresponsibility? Yes, he admits it. But these memories still are not why the book is so important.
What's left then? Only the most important part of anyone's life: his real life, his loves, his experiences which make him human—all of which are deliberately defined as apart from his career. What a life's treasure Dr. Sacks includes! Just by reading published reviews and advertising, we expect to read—and do—about his disturbing near-fatal drug addiction, his love for motorcycles, which also nearly killed him, and his wandering nearly penniless across tens of thousands of miles of American roads. The jacket copy gushes nicely and adds to the list of Sacks' enthusiasms:
With unbridled honesty and humor, Sacks shows us that the same energy that drives his physical passions--weight lifting and swimming--also drives his cerebral passions. He writes about his love affairs, both romantic and intellectual; his guilt over leaving his family to come to America; his bond with his schizophrenic brother; and the writers and scientists--Thom Gunn, A. R. Luria, W. H. Auden, Gerald M. Edelman, Francis Crick--who influenced him.
Embedded there is mention of "romantic love affairs." This, finally, is what On the Move delivers in a big way! The first four chapters, a full 132 pages out of a total of 384, deals predominantly with sex: his sexual shyness in college, his sexual awakening, his search for partners, his emotional devastation of being dumped, and the terror of dumping in turn. (Of course, nothing is pornographic.) I was nearly open-mouthed in amazement to see how his sexual urges drove him to risky behavior and fairly extreme promiscuity in San Francisco and New York City around 1960, when Sacks was in his late-20s, at the height of the Beat movement.
All this sex is interwoven with motorcycling, speed, adventuring, and eventually drugs. This is a raucous new voice for Sacks. It rounds out the person and brings his sometimes distant scientific expert persona closer to many, if not literally every, reader.
The remainder of the book, eight more chapters, are framed by—not his career—but by this same theme of sex and love. As he gets older into his 50s and 60s, his sexual experiences understandably recede: in his case, to almost nothing. Indeed, Sacks avows that he was celibate for several decades at this time. The story then is solely his growing career as a neurologist and writer, with occasional wistful imaginings as erotic subjects appear and disappear, almost as signposts to the narrative.
Sacks chooses to end his memoirs by revealing a late, new love affair he entered into at age 75. With this most moving section of the entire book, he closes his recollections. It's all very extraordinary, beautiful—this episode, and the entire book—it's so human, and unexpected.
I'm sure you've guessed it by now: Sacks is gay. All his sexual experiences have been with men, save for the usual unsuccessful experimentation driven by curiosity. He discloses this on page 9 and it is the central thread of the entire book all the way to the end.
Thus, Dr. Sacks comes out publicly, frankly, and with no apologies, at age 81. This is important. That is the real value of this book: it shows to his adoring reading public, and to politicians who literally control the fate of gay people around the world, that someone of his stature, popularity, intelligence—his "value" to society in short—can actually be gay. He can be sexual just like everyone else, and still help innumerable people with their neurological problems. Yet the world didn't end as a result. Amazing, yes?
There is a serious problem, though. Why is his homosexuality, which I show is so central to this book that gay sex, his relationships, and love affairs actually frame the narrative—why then is this missing from reviews and advertising? It's certainly no secret to all readers of the book, including all of its reviewers.
Why do respected reviewers from major book review publications and newspapers, and all Goodreads popular reviews, fail to mention the most important aspect of the book? We can assume they've read it, right? They probably didn't skip the first 132 pages, huh? And every reviewer on the planet, particularly if they don't have time to read a book in its entirety, will at least read the last chapter or two for its conclusions, where Sacks reveals with deeply moving prose, his new "love affair" (to use the book's oh, so gender-neutral advertising term) with author Billy Hayes. Surely any reviewer whose reviews are worth reading would consider the book as a whole, not just some filtered parts of it, excerpted to avoid inducing his, the reviewer's, queasiness.
If Sacks instead were straight, and had revealed his sexual history as he has done in these memoirs, every single reviewer would mention it, and some of them certainly would be negative given their general uncomfortableness with sex, period. So why the double standard?
I obviously love Sacks book, its intellectual content right along with its gay sex. This pairing of the "high" and the "low" is what makes it great. But not everyone, surely, would agree with me.
Reviewers, please, treat all writers equally, straight and gay, with respect and honesty. To do otherwise is to hide, through "covering," a normal aspect of the human behavior. Doing so perpetuates homophobia in social relations and politics.
biography
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