Oliver Sacks's Blog, page 12

Footnote of the Month: January 2011

What are the "minor metals," so-called?  They are metals not traded on the London Metal Exchange, but they nonetheless have a wide range of uses essential to modern life. Some of them fall into a category called the rare earth elements–which are not especially rare, but were very difficult for early chemists to separate. No fewer than four of these are named after the tiny village of Ytterby, Sweden, where they were first discovered: yttrium, terbium, erbium, and ytterbium.  The other minor metals have lovely names, too: antimony, arsenic, beryllium, bismuth, cadmium, calcium, cerium, chromium, cobalt . . . and on through tantalum, tellurium, titanium, tungsten, vanadium, and zirconium. Tom Lehrer, anyone?

In Uncle Tungsten, Dr. Sacks talks about his first encounters with the rare earths.

I think I first heard of the rare earths from my mother, who was a chain smoker and lit cigarette after cigarette with a small Ronson lighter. She showed me the "flint" one day, pulling it out, and said it was not really flint, but a metal that produced sparks when it was scratched. This "mischmetal"—cerium mostly—was a mishmash of half a dozen different metals, all of them very similar, all of them rare earths. This odd name, the rare earths, had a mythical or fairy-tale sound to it, and I imagined the rare earths as not only rare and precious, but as having special, secret qualities possessed by nothing else.

Later Uncle Dave told me of the extraordinary difficulty which chemists had had in separating the individual rare earths—there were a dozen or more—for they were astoundingly similar, at times indistinguishable in their physical and chemical properties. Their ores (which for some reason all seemed to come from Sweden) never contained a single rare-earth element, but a whole cluster of them, as if nature herself had trouble distinguishing them. Their analysis formed a whole saga in chemical history, a saga of passionate research (and frequently frustration) in the hundred years or more it took to identify them.

from Uncle Tungsten, Knopf edition, p. 207.

Wrapping up 2010

Season's Greetings from the Sacks office!

We hope your holidays are full of peaceful moments, firelight (see Dr. Sacks's piece about his love of fire), and, of course, music (see his tribute to conductor David Randolph).

Some highlights of our year:

–The Mind's Eye has now been published in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and the Netherlands.  More translations will be available in early 2011.  In North America, the book is also available in large-type, audio, and e-book formats.

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–A film based on "The Last Hippie" from An Anthropologist on Mars. "The Music Never Stopped," directed by Jim Kohlberg, has been selected to premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. The film features the music of the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and Crosby, Stills & Nash.

–A ballet based on Awakenings!  By Aletta Collins and Tobias Picker, performed by the Rambert Dance Company.

–An artists' edition of Rota, excerpted from The Island of the Colorblind, featuring photographs by Abelardo Morell and designed by Ted Muehling for the Museum of Modern Art Library Council.

To one and all, thank you for your support and friendship in 2010, and our best wishes to you for 2011.

Happy Holidays

from Dr. Sacks, Kate, and Hailey

Giving Thanks for Great Readers!

The Mind's Eye is a New York Times Editor's Choice pick this week.  Okay, so Keith Richards' autobiography is number one, but we're number two!  Thank you, New York Times editors. And special thanks to all the other enthusiastic readers and reviewers out there for giving The Mind's Eye two or three thumbs up—we are glad you are enjoying the book.

Many of Dr. Sacks's fans have heard him on NPR's "Fresh Air" or "Radio Times"  or other radio programs in the last few weeks, and have written to him regarding his eye tumor, with messages of encouragement and support. We are sorry he cannot answer all of these messages personally, but he thanks you for each and every one. As he describes in The Mind's Eye, it has been an interesting journey, but his tumor is under good control, and he looks forward to writing many more books.

If you enjoy listening to audiobooks, you can hear Dr. Sacks read his own story, "Persistence of Vision," on the unabridged audio version of The Mind's Eye. And if, like Dr. Sacks, you have difficulty reading regular print, The Mind's Eye is available in e-book formats, as well as a paperback Large Print edition.

On another front, "The Music Never Stopped," the new feature film based on one of the essays in Dr. Sacks's An Anthropologist on Mars, is now screening in selected cities. It is a deeply moving film that also features music by the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and Crosby, Stills and Nash.  Click here to explore the movie's website, or to request a screening near you.

Best wishes for a holiday season full of thanks, good company, and great books!

PS: Squid Alert: Thanks to Kenneth Feldman for this link about flying squids!

The Mind's Eye is now available!

October 26, 2010

The Mind's Eye launches today!** In hardcover, large type, e-book, and audio editions. Check out our new YouTube channel for video clips of Dr. Sacks talking about his new book; also, tune in to his interview with Terry Gross for NPR's Fresh Air on Tuesday, October 26, 2010.  And, please, forward this newsletter to a friend!

In The Mind's Eye, Dr. Sacks tells the story of his own eye cancer and the bizarre and disconcerting effects of losing vision to one side. He also examines some very strange paradoxes–people who can see perfectly well but not recognize their own children, blind people who become hyper-visual, or who navigate by "tongue vision." Along the way, Dr. Sacks considers more fundamental questions: How do we see? How do we think? How important is internal imagery—or vision, for that matter?

Here are some advance reviews:

"What makes The Mind's Eye stand tall is his recounting of how humans—and the human brain—can adapt, finding creative and ingenious ways to cope with physical losses and disorders. . . . From first phrase to final sentence, Dr. Sacks will draw you into a fascinating mental landscape that will leave you in awe of its strange, often spiritual and exquisite pathways. . . . The final essay on perception, which discusses blindness, visual imagery and memory, direct visual experience and the paradox of the power of language, is breathtaking."           –BookPage.com

"Sacks, author of the acclaimed Musicophilia, among other titles, combines neurobiology, psychology, and psychiatry in this riveting exploration of how we use our vision to perceive and understand the world and our place in it."           –Booklist

"A no-brainer for the smart crowd; Sacks is so cool."            –Library Journal

Dr. Sacks will be signing books at Barnes and Noble Union Square (NYC) on October 27; inCambridge, Massachusetts on October 28; and at the Rubin Museum in New York on October 30.

Thanks for your support!

The Sacks office

** In the U.S. and Canada.  THE MIND'S EYE will be available November 1st in the U.K., Brazil, the Netherlands, Australia, and New Zealand.  Coming soon to Germany and elsewhere…

The Mind's Eye book tour

It's only a few more weeks until Dr. Sacks's new book, The Mind's Eye, is published in hardcover, large print, audiobook and e-book formats—in the United States, Australia, Brasil, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the U.K. (Other translations will be available in 2011.)

But if you are one of three lucky people on our newsletter subscription list, you can get an early look at the book, since we will give away three bound proof copies on October 1. If you are on our newsletter list, you are already signed up for the random drawing. But we hope you'll help us get the word out and encourage your friends to sign up, too, since we're reserving one of the proofs just for someone who joins our list between now and the end of this month.

One chapter in The Mind's Eye is the story of Dr. Sacks's own experience with eye cancer, and the strange visual effects it has caused. Dr. Sacks talks about the tumor in his eye in a recent interview with Steve Silberman.

Finally, we are happy to announce that Dr. Sacks will be speaking at several East Coast events later this fall—see the list below.

Happy autumn, and happy reading!

–The Sacks Office

New York: October 27, 2010 at 7:00 pm. Barnes and Noble Union Square

Boston: October 28, 2010 at 7:00 pm. Harvard Bookstore at the First Parish Church

New York: October 30, 2010 at 3:00 pm. Rubin Museum of Art

New York: January 11, 2011 at 6:00 pm. Museum of Modern Art

Washington, DC: December 9, 2010 at 7:00 pm. Politics and Prose at Sixth and I Historic Synagogue

Philadelphia: November 10, 2010 at 7:30 pm. Philadelphia Free Library

Gotta Dance!

In Musicophilia, Dr. Sacks writes about music and its therapeutic effects for movement disorders like Parkinson's disease and Tourette's syndrome. His Awakenings patients (who had an extremely rare and severe form of parkinsonism) were frozen, virtually motionless, for decades.  But even when medications failed, they would respond dramatically to music. Astonishingly, although they could not walk, they could dance; though they could not talk, they could sing.

This fall, Britain's Rambert Dance Company will debut a new dance work inspired by Awakenings, with music composed by Tobias Picker and choreography by Aletta Collins. The piece will have its world premiere in Manchester, England, on September 22, 2010 and tour the UK this fall, with a London opening on November 9, 2010.  Dr. Sacks says he is "thrilled—and honored—that my book was a spark for the firing-up of Tobias Picker's creative powers. I look forward to seeing this new work inspired by the Awakenings patients."

While we're on the subject of dance, kudos to the Mark Morris Dance Group for their pioneering work collaborating with people who have Parkinson's disease. The MMDG has offered their Dance for PD classes to communities all over the world. (Find out more on NPR's All Things Considered.) Dance therapy is traditionally aimed at improving mental and emotional health, but it's great for physical and neurological health as well!

Footnote of the Month: August 2010

Bravo to the Mark Morris Dance Group for their pioneering program bringing music, and dance, to people with Parkinson's disease.  Dr. Sacks first saw the power of music in his Awakenings patients, survivors of the encephalitis lethargica epidemic who had an extremely severe form of parkinsonism which left them motionless, like human statues.

The power of music to integrate and cure, to liberate the parkinsonian and give him freedom while it lasts . . . is quite fundamental, and seen in every patient. This was shown beautifully, and discussed with great insight, by Edith T., a former music teacher. She said she had become "graceless" with the onset of parkinsonism, that her movements had become "wooden, mechanical—like a robot or doll," that she had lost her former "naturalness" and "musicalness" of movement, that—in a word—she had been "unmusicked." Fortunately, she added, the disease was "accompanied by its own cure."

I raised an eyebrow. "Music," she explained. "As I am unmusicked, I must be remusicked." Often, she said, she would find herself "frozen," utterly motionless, deprived of the power, the impulse, the thought, of any motion; she felt at such times "like a still photo, a frozen frame" . . . without substance or life. In this state, this statelessness, this timeless irreality, she would remain, motionless-helpless, until music came: "Songs, tunes I knew from years ago, catchy tunes, rhythmic tunes, the sort I loved to dance to."

With this sudden imagining of music . . . the power of motion, action, would suddenly return, [along with a] sense of . . . restored personality and reality. Now, as Edith T. put it, she could "dance out of the frame," the flat frozen visualness in which she was trapped, and move freely and gracefully: "It was like suddenly remembering myself, my own living tune." But then, just as suddenly, the inner music would cease, and with this all motion and actuality would vanish, and she would fall instantly, once again, into a parkinsonian abyss.

Equally striking, and analogous, was the power of touch. At times when there was no music to come to her aid, and she would be frozen absolutely motionless in the corridor, the simplest human contact could come to the rescue. One had only to take her hand, or touch her in the lightest possible way, for her to "awaken"; one had only to walk with her and she could walk perfectly, not imitating or echoing one, but in her own way. But the moment one stopped, she would stop too.

From Awakenings, Vintage paperback edition, p. 60.

Reading, writing and evolution

Reading and writing: do they go together like love and marriage? Well, it turns out the story is complicated.  Take Howard Engel, a novelist who wrote to Dr. Sacks a few years ago.  He had a stroke that suddenly destroyed, with almost surgical precision, his ability to read.

Uncannily, the stroke did not affect Howard's ability to write at all. And (as Dr. Sacks's subjects often do) he came up with a remarkable strategy to continue as a novelist, despite being unable to read what he has just written.

You may have seen Dr. Sacks's essay about Howard in the New Yorker a few weeks ago, but if you missed it, fear not: the unabridged version is included in The Mind's Eye. You can also read a little bit in July's Footnote of the Month.

The center in our brain for understanding and producing language is uniquely human, having evolved some hundreds of thousands of years ago. But how is it that reading, a cultural invention only a few thousand years old, also has a dedicated center in the brain? If evolution didn't put it there, what did?

We won't give it all away here, but the answer involves a lot of your favorite characters and ideas, including Darwin and Wallace, Borges and Japanese poetry, the colorblind painter, hyperlexia, musical alexia, the evolution of alphabets, and, of course, amazingly adaptable brains.