Oliver Sacks is going to die, and that makes us (and him, of course) the unlucky ones. In February I wrote with sadness about Sacks’ announcment that he had terminal cancer, an announcment that was poignant and as full of humanity as we’ve come to expect from the man. The guy was sui generis—plagued by his own mental and physical problems, which he wrote about with candor, but filled with empathy for the badly afflicted people he encountered as a neurologist. He was, too, a superb writer and storyteller: maybe not so much a scientist as a messenger of science. But whatever you call him, you can’t dislike him, and I think we’ll all miss him when, as he predicts, he’ll be gone in a few months.
That love of the world and Dr. Sacks’s wisdom about human beings — and the mysterious connections between the brain, the mind and the imagination — have animated his writing over the years, from “Migraine,” published four and a half decades ago, through “Awakenings” and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” and more recent works like “Uncle Tungsten,” “Hallucinations” and “On the Move,” his deeply moving new memoir.
. . . In “On the Move,” Dr. Sacks trains his descriptive and analytic powers on his own life, providing a revealing look at his childhood and coming of age, his discovery and embrace of his vocation, and his development as a writer. He gives us touching portraits, brimming with life and affection, of friends and family members (relatives that include, remarkably enough, the Li’l Abner cartoonist Al Capp and the Israeli diplomat Abba Eban). He recounts conversations about writing with the poet Thom Gunn — “the rushes and stoppages, the illuminations and darknesses.” And he describes W. H. Auden leaving America after 33 years to return home to England, looking “terribly old and frail, but nobly formal as a Gothic cathedral.”
And, in the latest issue of the New Yorker, Sacks has penned a fascinating description of his work with Spalding Gray, an actor famous for his searing and autobiographical monologues (you might remember “Swimming to Cambodia”.) In Sacks’ piece “The Catastrophe,” he recounts how Gray, after a car accident that injured his frontal lobe, became increasingly depressive and, despite treatment by Sacks, ultimately killed himself by jumping off the Staten Island Ferry. It’s a case study, but an empathic one, and perhaps the last example of this kind of writing we’ll get from Sacks. (I hope not.)
Finally, Sacks has written an autobiographical essay/literature survey in the New York Review of Books: “A general feeling of disorder.” It’s largely about his own battles with migraines, and he winds up discussing the dreadful medical treatment he accepted to buy himself a few more months of respite from the metastatic cancer that had filled his liver. It’s a grim but fascinating procedure in which beads are injected into the hepatic artery to block blood vessels, cutting of circulation to the liver tumors and thus killing them. The unfortunate byproduct is that all the dead cells and their exudates flooded his system, causing him a long period of “general disorder” as the debris was mopped up by his immune system. Fortunately, it seems to have worked, and he’s going to have it done again. Here’s his ending:
Epilogue
The hepatic artery embolization destroyed 80 percent of the tumors in my liver. Now, three weeks later, I am having the remainder of the metastases embolized. With this, I hope I may feel really well for three or four months, in a way that, perhaps, with so many metastases growing inside me and draining my energy for a year or more, would scarcely have been possible before.
His books demonstrate that anecdotes can be data.
It will take hundreds of years to answer the questions he asks about how minds work.
He is the red pill.
Reblogged this on The Ratliff Notepad.
A wonderful writer and human being. I will mourn his passing.
Wow, just conetemplating Oliver Sacks work and output is overwhelming.
I have to read his piece on Spalding Gray. I was a fan, and saw Spalding do his monologues several times. You always wondered what turn his life would take leading to the next monologue. And it was so sad that this smart, self-reflective and insightful man nonetheless succumbed to suicide.
sigh…”contemplating”….
Just finished the New Yorker piece on Spalding Gray. Very melancholy writing for Sacks. Two great, great guys.
I hadn’t ever experienced Spalding Gray before I read that essay last week (I live under a rock) and afterwards, I stayed up until well past 2 a.m. on youtube watching everything I could by him. Dr. Sacks continues to have such a wonderful impact on my life, as a teacher/mentor from afar, just by sharing his experiences and opinions. I just wish I had been exposed to both men years ago.
I’d strongly suggest buying “Monster in a Box”. It’s virtuoso work by Gray at the hight of his powers.
ok, I’ll add it to the list. thanks.
Let’s hope he has a relatively pain free and enjoyable last few months. I would not want him to force out more writing for my sake if he has something else he’d rather do. He’s earned a vacation. A time on the beach watching the waves and sunsets. It makes me wonder, now, what I would do if I was given just a few months and nothing more.
I think he’d prefer being under the waves than watching them. As I recall from The Island of the Colorblind that he loves snorkeling/diving. Also, I’d recommend a listen to his Desert Island Discs appearance from 1994, which is just great.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/find-a-castaway?q=Oliver+Sacks&type=all
The link doesn’t seem to be working right now. “try again later”, it says. I will.
well you can just do a google search for desert islands discs and then search their site for Sacks, or search for him on an iphone podcast app if you have it, under BBC Radio 4. Dawkins is on there too somewhere, Brian Cox, and some other great people I can’t think of at the moment. Wish the US had something like DID, or The Life Scientific by Jim al Khalili. The BBC has such great stuff, especially on Radio 4.
OK. Found it. Thanks.
If your life would be substantially different from what it is now if you knew you’d die in the next several months…then you likely should rethink how you’re living your life now.
b&
The saying is, live every day as if it were your last. Agreed. However, there could be a bunch of people you’d like to see before the big sleep. Years ago my aunt had cancer with a short life expectancy. She traveled to visit all her friends and relatives. She stayed with us for several days. I thought that was a great gift from her to us. She also put all her nephews and nieces into her will.
There are also those who’s jobs are far from ideal. Many people would opt for quitting work and spending more time with family.
So, there are a few things that would likely change when death is at your door.
I read the Sacks essay a couple of days ago. The way Sacks chose to close it is incredibly powerful and I’ve re-read it several times and the entire essay twice.
The essay made me think about this kind of dying in terms of terminally ill patients who make a decision to end their lives. Similarities. Differences. No conclusions. When I go home tonight I’m going to read that ending again.
How grateful I am to have been a Sacks reader (not everything). He has always made me think of human complexity and of Darwin’s world of variation.
Someone mentioned one-offs…anecdotes. In his book “Raven’s Mind,” one of our finest naturalists, Bernd Heinrich, has some interesting comments on the use of anecdotes in science, especially in natural history. And I should re-visit this, too!
One more book to add to my list; must get his autobiography.
I was thrilled to find his new book sitting on my doorstep when I got home today. Can’t wait to dive in! I will say, though, that it’s strange to see him so young (and hunky) on the cover and in some of the photos inside; he’s always been a charming, gray-bearded professorial type (like the back cover photo) to me. And, wonderfully, there’s a photo of him and a friend strolling along Darwin’s famous Sandwalk at Down House. I’m really excited to read this, and of course, one other book I’ve pre-ordered…
also, even though he doesn’t use twitter much (I don’t have an account at all) he does post links to articles he writes or videos he has uploaded to youtube from time to time, so it’s worth a peek now and again.
A remarkable human with a remarkable legacy to leave for us. I so hope that embolization is working the way he expects it to.
Sub
Would that all human beings could have the impact on others that Oliver Sacks has. I’m glad he has written so much that will keep him and his perceptions with us when his physical self no longer can be. Thank you, Oliver Sacks!
Great human being. I hope his end will be peaceful and painless. He surely deserves that.