A Life of Restless Energy and an Energetic Read

Title: On the Move: A Life
Author: Oliver Sacks
Host: Chris at Open Book

After an initial hubbub caused by changes to the Loft Literary Center's book club room policy, we settled down to the energetic business of revisiting the amazing life of Oliver Sacks. Before reading this memoir, which Sacks characterizes as autobiography, each of us had known at least something about Sacks. But that limited knowledge had prepared none of us for the arc of his life and the sheer magnitude of his experiences.

Insights and Opinions

+ What is remarkable about this book is Sacks' incredible generosity with the reader. He was willing to write, to share everything, to reveal his flaws, and to let us really see him.

+ Unlike other books we've read, which we sometimes race through to get to the end before our book club conversation, many of us found ourselves slowing down to really savor it. The writing is superb, and his descriptions of his work with neurobiology and color perception opened a whole world about which we knew very little.

+ Sacks seems to have never thrown a thing away. All of his letters, journals, letters he received from others -- he saved everything, and then used it in this book. Shirley wondered if this compelling need to record everything, including thoughts as they came to him, the writing of which he didn't necessarily remember doing, could reveal savant tendencies or perhaps a place somewhere on the autism spectrum.

Oliver Sacks, M.D., called "the poet laureate of medicine"
by the New York Times.

+ We were all uniformly amazed at the breadth of his experiences. How many lives would include chapters as a body builder, a biker dude, a drug addict, and a leading scientist of perception and the mind? And to be part of a family that included Al Capp and Abba Eban as his uncles? To have W. H. Auden as a best friend?

+ Sacks died just days before we talked about this book, and the memorial coverage exposed his knowledge that death was near, and his acceptance of its inevitability. Yet his life story is infused with an incredible will to live. He should have died many times, between the unsafe homosexual sex, the risks he took on his motorcycle, the drugs, the time he was found unconscious in an Amsterdam gutter -- and at the same time, he was recording this elegant writing, and making an incredible contribution with his work.

+ Chris admires the workings of his brain -- to be so unendingly curious, to keep poking, poking, poking. Shouldn't we all aspire to this?

+ Sacks came up scientifically during a period when scientists still shared their work with each other while doing it. Reading about these exchanges is fascinating, and adds historical detail that fleshes out our understanding of his discoveries and how he got to answers.

Oddments and Telling Details

We spent a little time talking about what we have all been reading beyond our book club selections. For those of you who want to know what this remarkable group of readers has been up to, here is the list of "recently read."
+ All the Light We  Cannot See (Vickie)
+ Life After Life (Liz)
+ Fates and Furies (Joanne)
+ Academic books on early modern literature (Shirley)
+ Short Loves That Last Forever (missed the reader of this one)