Whipped Cream Difficulties

NYT. Michiko Kakutani appreciation. LAT. WP. A/V Club.

“The Oliver Sacks Reading List” from The Atlantic.

I like what Kakutani says, and I don’t think I could say it any better:

The world has lost a writer of immense talent and heart, a writer who helped illuminate the wonders, losses and consolations of the human condition.

Dr. Sacks was a personal hero of mine. Unlike most of my personal heros, I actually did get to meet him once. He probably wouldn’t have remembered it, even if he wasn’t famously “face blind”…

Many years ago, the American Booksellers Association used to have conventions. One year (I am thinking it was 1990, but am willing to be corrected), the convention was in Las Vegas. Mike the Musicologist and I thought it would be fun to go out to Los Angeles, where our great and good friends Glen and Jill were living at the time, spend a few days sightseeing there, and then go to Vegas for the ABA Convention. (As I recall, we were able to gain admission to the convention through FACT.)

So we did all these things. A complete description is outside of the scope of this entry, but I remember being amazed at the ABA Convention. People would give me books and tchotchkes. For free.

(To give you some idea of how long ago this was, I got an advance reading copy of Rules of Prey, the first of John Sandford’s Lucas Davenport books. That series is now up to 25 books.)

(Edited to add: Huh. Wikipedia shows Rules of Prey as being published in 1989. So maybe it was 1989 or 1988? Or maybe they just had stacks of ARCs to give away?)

Anyway, at one point, Glen said to me, “Hey, Oliver Sacks is signing The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales. Wanna get in line?”

And I said, “Sure!” I’d already read the book by that time, but Glen hadn’t. So we got in a somewhat long line, Glen in front of me, and worked our way up to the front. Glen gets up to Dr. Sacks, jerks his thumb over his shoulder at me, and says, “This guy says I should read your book.”

I don’t remember what Dr. Sacks said to Glen, though I think it was something along the lines of “I hope you like it.” Meanwhile, I was looking desperately for a convenient hole to crawl into, which is a little tough to find when you’re in the middle of a Las Vegas convention center.

So it’s my turn. Dr. Sacks looks at me and says, “So. You liked my book.”

“Yes,” I responded. “As a matter of fact, I read your book, Luria’s The Mind of a Mnemonist, and Minsky’s The Society of Mind in the same week.”

And Dr. Sacks gave me one of those big warm smiles that you can see in the jacket photos of his books – probably the same one he gave his patients – and said, “Ah. You know, when I first came to this country, Dr. Minsky was one of the first people I visited.”

Then it was the next guy’s turn. We thanked each other and I moved on. I never saw Dr. Sacks again, but I treasure that memory.

(Some small background: Luria’s book is mentioned several times in Hat, which is one of the reasons I read it. At the time, I was very interested in artificial intelligence, and I had the rather silly idea that if we could understand how the brain breaks, we could understand how the brain behaves, and possibly emulate it. Which is why I went on that binge.)

Dr. Sacks’ books shook up my thinking. Even though my AI dreams didn’t pan out, Hat sparked my interest in neurosciences. Seeing Voices got me interested in language and how we acquire language. And An Anthropologist On Mars, in addition to being an incredibly moving book (perhaps his best, in my humble opinion), introduced me to the work of Temple Grandin.

I know I’m not the only person who reacted this way to Dr. Sacks and his books. It took a while for Glen to get around to Hat, but I remember after he did, he asked me, “WHY didn’t you HOLD ME DOWN and MAKE ME read this before now?” This amused me to no end, since I’ve had similar reactions to books Glen has recommended to me, but those are stories for another time.

82 is a pretty good run. And it seems like he died in full possession of his faculties up until the end; better that then a slow descent into Alzheimer’s.

But the world is still a smaller, dimmer place today.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 31st, 2015 at 11:53 am and is filed under Books, Clippings, Geek, Neuroscience, Obits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.