December 2024 – …
This is book # 16 in the no-longer-very-aptly named Essays Project. Though perhaps, having detoured into the wilds of Shakespeare, a tour of the letters of Sacks, who is a formidable essayist, is steering us back towards the main track. Of course, letters are not essays, but their relative brevity and personal cast, as well as the wide-ranging nature of Sack’s epistles, give them a familial resemblance.
The book is edited by Kate Edgar, Sacks’ assistant and editor of several decades; she also contributes a brief preface which offers her perspective on Sacks’ compulsive writing process. Alas for her brevity; I believe she could offer a lot of insight on Sacks. But perhaps his letters will serve. Onward!
Preface and Editor’s Introduction
Sacks loved correspondence. He felt one ought to reply to letters, immediately if possible. He corresponded with, literally, thousands of people, from school children to Nobel laureates. Sacks took pains to preserve his letters with carbon sets, drafts, or later, photocopies, though by no means does all his correspondence survive. But that part which does runs to about 200,000 pages, or about 70 bankers’ boxes.
Letters were an important way for Sacks to connect to the larger world, possibly a way to do an end-run around what he described as his ‘crippling shyness.’ Certainly they opened him to a vast range of ideas and stimulation; as Edgar says: “Often a serendipitous letter, totally unexpected, would launch him on a new essay or even a book. (p xiii) The letters are also important for understanding Sack’s development, both personally and intellectually.
Edgar offers interesting insights on Sacks’ approach to writing. “[Sacks] had difficulty […] editing his own work. Thus, when one editor or another asked him to clarify something or boil it down, he would simply crank a new piece of paper into his typewriter and start over. Voilà, a new draft. Eventually, the editor would have a pile of drafts, to say nothing of a sheaf of follow-up letters with new footnotes and addenda. It was difficult to choose the best among these, since most versions contained wonderful passages, but each headed in a different direction.” Edgar dealt with this by cutting and pasting among the many draftsand stitching together his various trains of thought.
In the longer term, they developed a more interactive way of working : “Oliver, on the other hand, wanted me actually sitting by his side as he tore each finished page out of the typewriter: “Here! What do you think?” I began referring to this as “combat editing.” I would arrive home after a day with Oliver, exhausted from the nonstop effort of trying to keep up with his restless intellect for eight hours. But it was also exhilarating work, and when he phoned me an hour or two later with new thoughts, I was ready to dive back in. What started for me as a freelance job, occupying a day or two a week, soon became a full-time vocation-and then some.”
1. A New World: 1960-1962 (27 – 29)
The letters begin with Sacks’ arrival in North America at the age of 27. He had finished four years of medical school and two years of internship, and left England in part to escape the draft, and in part to re-invent himself at a more comfortable distance from his large and opinionated extended family. It is easy to imagine that a significant motivation was his family’s non-acceptance of his homosexuality, but that seems to have only been a small portion of his discontent: his home life, particularly with relation to his parents, was quite a bit more complicated and fraught than was evidence from his biographies. Yet, despite this evident desire to escape, most of his letters are to his parents. I did a double take when he addressed them as “Ma and Pa,” not something I associate with either a Jewish or English upbringing. With regard to his reinvention of himself, we will see that, in addition to continuing in medicine and specializing in neurology, Sacks pursues other interests including motorcycling, weight-lifting, and clandestine sexual encounters.
After an initial period of exploring Canada, and establishing himself in the YMCA in San Francisco, he managed to get a position as an intern in Mt Zion Hospital in San Francisco; he was frustrated because the American medical establishment would not recognize his prior internships in England, and so he had to start afresh in the U.S. While he was initially delighted to get a position at Mt Zion, and spoke well of his bosses — Feinstein and Levin — he grew increasingly discontented with his position and colleagues during this period, until he is able to land a new position in Southern California.
On the personal front, he embarked on a period of trying new things . These included motorcycling (although he had begun this in England I believe), weight lifting and body-building, and various motorcycle tours around North America (trips to southern California; a circuit of most of the U.S., during which he wrote his ‘Truckers’ essay. Other activities he mentions include boar hunting, scuba diving, spear fishing, and camping.
A few other notable things in this section.
- He mentions his love of writing
- He mentions, in a letter to Jonathan Miller, that he has indulged in the purchase of a prism of thallium bromide. Thallium bromide is a superconductor, and is used in detecting gamma rays and other electromagnetic radiation. He reminds Jonathan that he “used to have a strange mystic about such things;” however, as we shall see, his fascination with the elements, and even his totemization of them, is a theme that persists throughput his life. Perhaps this is another indication the he is trying to re-invent himself. However, note, as well, that thallium bromide is “extremely toxic and a cumulative poison which can be absorbed through the skin,” something of which Sacks, in his deep knowledge of chemistry, is no doubt aware. It makes me wonder about his motives, given that a few months later he writes his parents that he is manic depressive and that he has periods of acute sloth and misery.
- He mentions, as well, a neurology conference he attended (paid for by one of his bosses) with many of (at least in hindsight) the ‘greats’ in attendance, including Wilder Penfielld, D. O. Hebb, and Aldous Huxley.
- He also confides to his parents that he thinks he is manic-depressive (something, in later years, that his analyst never agreed with). At one point he refers to “jewel-like spams.”
- He vacillates between an eagerness to see patients and get to know them, and an aversion to them: ‘I should have never become a doctor.’
2. Los Angeles: 1962 – 1965 (29-32)
Sacks is now 29. So far, most of the correspondence — at least that covered in the book — has been with his parents.
He has moved from Mt. Zion hospital in San Francisco where he was an intern to the Neuropsychiatric Institute in Los Angeles, where he is a resident working for Augustus Rose. He will had a tumultuous two years here. On the positive side, it appears he succeeded in impressing his boss and colleagues with his intelligence and drive, but on the negative side his eccentricities — habitual tardiness, slovenliness, large size (due to gaining weight for weight-lifting competitions), consumption of large quantities of hospital food (free to residents, but his degree of consumption is apparently shocking to many). He is reprimanded for the latter, and writes a frosty and indignant letter to his boss taking issue with the reprimand, but also adding, at the end, that “saying ” “a man is not the sum of his minor misdemeanors, but of his best endeavors…” and hoping that he can still count on Rose for recommendations when the time comes to move elsewhere.
He describes writing a paper on hereditary photomyoclonus, and presented it at the big neurological conference which was held in Minneapolis inn 1963 — it was apparently well received. He also mentions becoming interested in neurodegenerative diseases, and imagines writing a major book on the topic, something that has not been done in 50 years. During the next year he apparently continues his work on the topic, and he presents another paper on hereditary myoclonus at the big meeting in Denver — this is apparently a bit of a hit, and he receives job offers and is forgiven by August Rose, who appreciates the publicity.
As in San Francisco, his letters contain mention of many things he is trying out, including photography, camping, fishing, gold panning. scuba diving and spear fishing. He also describes going to a wrestling event with some of his weight-lifter buddies, and how one of the body-builders he’s with, growing impatient at the gates, rips them off, and he and Sacks and a companion lead a crowd on a rampage into the arena. The police are summoned, and arrived, but no one is caught. In another incident, Sacks runs out of gas during a motorcycle trip to southern california, and disassembles his stethoscope to try (unsuccessfully) to siphon gas from parked cars. Also, during this period, Sacks has also amassed enough speeding tickets that he is in danger of having his license suspended, and writes a letter to a Mr. Hobson at the LA DMV pleading for leniency. Clearly Sacks is a rather wild character.
Other notable events
- He gets to know Augusta Bonnard, a friend of his parents, who helps him understand some of the ways the dysfunctionality of his family affected him, and who urges him to undergo analysis, loaning him money to do so.
- He moves in with Mel, a man whom he falls in love with, but who does not return his feelings — or perhaps does, but is too conflicted about his sexuality to act upon it. They part, and Sacks declares he will never live with another person again. This is addressed in the editorial notes (and in his autobiography) but not in these letters.
3.Jeno: 1965 (32)
Sacks is 32, and has arrived in NYC to take a job at Albert Einstein School of Medicine, one of two plumb jobs that were offered to him. He has chosen Einstein because he feels that the people and the institution will be more tolerant of his eccentricities.
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