Yes, I saw Studs’s[*33] book in manuscript (and blurbed it)—I love it, and he, tho’ physically frail, is wonderfully alive in feeling and wit at 93—but you probably see more of him than I do (he was here in New York, gave interviews all day without a hint of fatigue, when his new book came out). Robbin[*34] and John Betts[*35] (to say nothing of Kate & myself) miss you…COME SOON.

  Love from us to you both,

  Oliver

  PS Thanks for the zeolite stamps and mineral postcards.

  To Gayle Tanaka

  Correspondent

  November 23, 2005

  2 Horatio St., New York

  Dear Gayle Tanaka,

  I was intrigued by your letter—thank you so much for writing to me.

  That your mother, despite being verbally limited, can listen to a song for the first time and sing (it) back (with) the words is fascinating—and, amongst other things, shows the preservation of musical memory despite her increasing difficulties in other ways. And equally fascinating, and very moving (and very useful!) is her appreciation of music, and the way it can keep open your relationship & communication with her. (I am currently writing about such matters, and others, in a book about Music and the Brain.)

  The talking—to the photos, the stuffed animals, the birds, the Japanese prints etc—raises a dilemma (whether to preserve “her hold on reality,” or to encourage her “conversation,” however inappropriate), as you say. You do not say anything about the sort of things she says to the photographs, animals, etc (tho’ earlier you speak of her being limited to a set number of phrases and words). You will have to work this out for yourself; this may involve a re-definition of “reality” for her—a re-definition which one might call “regressive,” but which might also be adaptive for her, not only in encouraging “a form of communication” but in surrounding her with a host of make-belief “companions”—but these should be additional to real people, not instead of them. I am reminded (tho’ much is different) of some of my Awakenings patients, before they awakened, before they could move and talk (in reality), having hallucinatory visitors and companions, who (in a sense) kept them sane, allowed a sort of “social life” when none was possible in reality. The hallucinations were all given up when they found they could talk, move etc once “awakened.” I also think of a VERY demented old lady I once saw, no longer capable of any speech or interaction with others, apparently, who would “mother” a stuffed doll if given one, croon to it, rock it, even offer it the breast. Her caretakers were uncertain whether to disallow this “unappropriate” behaviour, or to allow it when it manifestly gave the old lady so much pleasure, and also served to calm and focus her (when she did not have her “baby” she was agitated and chaotic). Neither of these situations are that close to your mother’s—but I cannot prevent them from coming to mind.

  I cannot advise you, but I hope you will tell me what you do—and how your mother does as time goes on,

  With best wishes,

  Oliver Sacks

  To Tobias Picker

  Composer

  [December 8, 2005][*36]

  2 Horatio St., New York

  Dear Tobias,

  I couldn’t collect my thoughts too well immediately after the Opera, and with the acclaiming hubbub all around you—it must have been a marvellous moment!—but I really think you have written a masterpiece—a huge weaving together of brilliant orchestration, and […] of your ability to glide seamlessly from atonalism through a whole range of style, including amazing percussion effects. Actually (as with Encantadas) I could not think of the Music, the Drama and the Staging separately—they came together as a marvellous whole.

  It is easy to believe that it has demanded ten years of work, of your life—but, of course, you have also been doing so much else at the same time.

  I cannot help wondering what will come next—though, at this point, with the huge achievement of An American Tragedy under your belt, you should be taking a long holiday, and not thinking of what comes next—tho’ (as a sort of creator myself) I know that one is always thinking, consciously or unconsciously, of new ideas, projects, etc. In particular, of course, I wonder if you have had any further thoughts about Awakenings.[*37]

  I am currently writing a series of essays—there will be a dozen or so—for what I think will be a book on Music and the Brain—and I wonder whether, sometime, you might come and chat with me about your musical memory, imagery, thinking, modes of composition, etc. I think (if my memory doesn’t deceive me) that you once spoke of having a “congenital disorder,” and I thought you meant Tourette’s. No, you said, it was your musicality, the precocious, often overwhelming musicality which had dominated so much of your life from childhood on—sometimes preventing you doing other things you would have liked to. Freeman Dyson made a similar comment to me about his “congenital disorder,” in his case, an enormous mathematical propensity, which dominated his life and work until he was about fifty (since then he has been able to do many of the other things he always wanted to, and has written dozens of enchanting and profound essays on a dozen different topics).

  Perhaps there is something very special about music and mathematics here. For myself, not having any particular overwhelming gift (but only an overall curiosity) I cannot quite imagine what it must be/must have been like for Freeman and you.

  Anyhow, I would love a chat one day.

  My congratulations again on a great work, a real magnum opus—and my best regards to you both,

  Oliver

  To Stephen Whitzman

  Actor

  January 23, 2006

  2 Horatio St., New York

  Dear Mr. Whitzman,

  You raise a deep issue—thank you for your fascinating letter.

  Soon after Hat was published I started to distance myself from the notion (Penfield’s notion) that there was, or could be, any actual replay of experience in the sort of seizures and stimulations he described. And this distancing was widespread among neurologists. My friend Israel Rosenfield published a book a year or two later entitled The Invention of Memory (I wrote a foreword to it), and by that time I was persuaded that all “autobiographic” memory (“episodic” memory, to use the technical term) was “constructed” in the act of remembering (and re-constructed, and re-re-constructed with further rememberings and re-rememberings). Freud, I think, came to think similarly, on the basis of psychoanalytic practice, that whatever archaic traces there might be, these were re-worked, “re-transcribed” again and again. And yet, and yet—this said, one cannot help wondering whether some memories, and perhaps some sorts of memory, are preserved in their original form. Traumatic memories, for instance, which may be repeated with hallucination-like vividness, detail and fixity. And, as you hint, perhaps memories of intense sensations (tho’ it is interesting that pain, usually, can’t be remembered, tho’ if it is a specific pain, it is instantly recognized if it recurs). You might read Frederic Bartlett’s great (1932) book Remembering: he is at pains always to use the verb, always to speak of remembering as an activity, an active process, and never to speak of “memory” as if it were reified, a thing. This said, I do have the impression that there are some kinds of memory which are NOT “Bartlettian,” not “constructed”—and this category (roughly) corresponds with what psychologists call “procedural” memory (the memory of HOW—how to do things, skills, performances—rather than WHAT). I am currently writing about one profoundly amnesic musician, who has lost virtually all autobiographic and episodic memory, but retains all his powers of musical performance, etc.

  All these things (among others) are revolving through my mind at the present time, and I cannot come to any clear resolution. I enclose a couple of short pieces on memory which I wrote—but you give me YOUR thoughts now!

  With best wishes,

  Oliver Sacks

  PS Some of my later thoughts on memory are contained in my Anthropologist on Mars book, especially the chapter “The Landscape of his Dreams.”

  But I have never really addressed or thought closely about what you call “sensory memory”—it’s a tricky area.

  Skip Notes

  *1 An untitled essay manuscript, eventually called “In the River of Consciousness.”

  *2 The hypothesis Crick and Koch were working on proposed that a visual scene consisted of discrete “frames” or “snapshots,” which were endowed with continuity by the brain rather than by external reality.

  *3 Giulio Tononi.

  *4 “The Mind’s Eye.”

  *5 Koch quoted a passage about what OS calls “cinematographic” or “cinematic” vision:

  I asked [Nurse Sulu] to look at the picture, talk, gesture, make faces, anything, so long as she moved. And now, to my mixed delight and disquiet, I realized that time was fractured, no less than space, for I did not see her movements as continuous, but, instead, as a succession of “stills,” a succession of different configurations and positions, but without any movement in-between, like the flickering of a film run too slow. She seemed to be transfixed in this odd mosaic-cinematic state, which was essentially shattered, incoherent, atomized. (A Leg to Stand On, chapter 2.)

  *6 OS’s essay “In the River of Consciousness,” about theories of visual consciousness.

  *7 Nature titled this “Early Work on Elephant Gait Not to Be Forgotten.”

  *8 “Credit to a Pioneer,” OS’s letter to the editor of the New York Times’ Science section, was about the work of an early physiologist, Étienne-Jules Marey.

  *9 Working titles for an essay that would be called “In the River of Consciousness.”

  *10 William James’s The Principles of Psychology (1890).

  *11 Transcranial magnetic stimulation.

  *12 Borden’s husband, Allen Heinemann.

  *13 Carl Wilhelm Scheele, an eighteenth-century chemist and pharmacist, discovered oxygen and identified many other elements, including tungsten, hydrogen, and chlorine.

  *14 Yttrium, ytterbium, terbium, and erbium, as well as four other elements, were all discovered in a mine in the village of Ytterby, so naturally OS wanted to make a pilgrimage there.

  *15 Windhorse Integrative Mental Health, a program in Northampton, Massachusetts, provides support to people with severe mental illness, using an approach based in part on the philosophy of Edward Podvoll, one of its cofounders. Podvoll was an intern at Mount Zion when OS was there, and went on to direct the Contemplative Psychotherapy graduate program at Naropa University.

  *16 Podvoll (see footnote at the start of this letter).

  *17 Max Whitby, a chemist and naturalist who worked in close partnership with Theodore (Theo) Gray, the author of a popular series of books about elements, molecules, and other subjects.

  *18 An artist and jeweler.

  *19 A drug widely used to prevent malaria.

  *20 “Speed.”

  *21 Wasserman.

  *22 Crick had been diagnosed with colon cancer.

  *23 Ralph Siegel, a neurophysiologist, spent summers in La Jolla, close to Crick and many other neuroscientists at the Salk Institute, the Neurosciences Institute, and UCSD.

  *24 OS did write an essay about Barry, titled “Stereo Sue.” His interest and encouragement also led her to write a book about her experience, Fixing My Gaze.

  *25 Working titles for “In the River of Consciousness.”

  *26 “Mysteries of the Deaf” and “The Revolution of the Deaf.”

  *27 This essay, “Remembering Francis Crick,” was published in The New York Review of Books, as well as in The Threepenny Review, and it appeared, in somewhat different form, in On the Move.

  *28 OS is using this term as a shorthand for topographical agnosia. (“Topagnosia” generally means an inability to identify which part of one’s body is being touched.)

  *29 American Fern Society.

  *30 An essay about a woman with aphasia.

  *31 A small town near Antwerp.

  *32 OS published his essay “The Lost Virtues of the Asylum” four years later.

  *33 Studs Terkel, the legendary radio journalist, who lived, as Borden does, in Chicago.

  *34 Robbin Moran, a pteridologist at the New York Botanical Garden, who shared OS’s and Borden’s passion for mineralogy.

  *35 A mineral aficionado and dealer.

  *36 This letter was dated November 8, 2005. But Picker’s opera An American Tragedy, based on the Dreiser novel, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York on December 2, so presumably the letter was written on December 8.

  *37 OS and Picker began talking about a possible opera based on Awakenings. The opera was eventually written after OS’s death, with a libretto by Picker’s husband and creative partner, Aryeh Lev Stollman. It had its world premiere at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis in 2022.

  15

  Visions

  2006–2015

  To Anna and Joseph Horovitz

  Cousins

  January 28, 2006

  2 Horatio St., New York

  Dear Anna and Joe,

  It is a while since we have written, but you have been in my mind for various reasons, not least that I have been writing about Music and the Brain—have actually written fourteen essay/narratives now and begin to think that these might be organized into a little book; and, of course, I associated you, all the Horovitzes, with Art and Music.[*1]

  A second reason is not so good. I am afraid the New Year brought me an unexpected problem, a sudden disturbance of vision in my right eye, which turned out to be due to a melanoma behind the retina. Fortunately these (very rare) ocular melanomas carry a much better prognosis than the more usual sort, and it looks as if this is contained entirely within the eye. I have had intense radiation to the eye, and the chances are that this will burn the tumor out completely. It may do so, however, at the cost of some vision—difficult to predict. Now, a couple of weeks later, the swelling etc is going down, and vision is improving. But it has been difficult to read ordinary print (my left eye has never been of the best), so I have been turning, more and more, to listening—“talking books,” and especially music—and in particular, Joe, have been enjoying the CD you gave me with your Trumpet Concerto, your Oboe Concerto, Jubilee Serenade and Sinfonietta—what a huge range of styles and moods and modes you bring together so masterfully. And all of these, if I understand the label, are relatively early pieces. I think I have often been too busy reading to listen to music as I should, and perhaps the current difficulties reading have an up-side too.

  I have hesitated WHETHER, WHAT, WHEN, HOW to “tell” people what I have got, but it “came out” with the Sackses […], and I suppose it should be known (at least not be a secret) among the Landaus,[*2] if any of them are interested. I would not like it to come to your ears, for example, without warning, or presented as more alarming than it is.

  Cousin Robert John (Aumann) happened to be in New York this month, visited me in hospital, and told a funny story. His son was moving house, and the movers wondered why he was constantly on the cell phone.

  “I shan’t tell you,” [the son] said. Their curiosity grew. He refused again, saying, “You won’t believe me.”

  Their curiosity went beyond all bounds. “Tell us!” they said. “We will believe you. We promise to believe you.”

  “Alright,” he said. “My father got the Nobel Prize.”

  “We don’t believe you,” they said.

  I have no clear English/European plans at the moment, but am sure I will come sometime this year; and, of course, I always love to see you.

  Kate too sends her best—she has had back surgery, but is recuperating well.

  Love,

  Oliver

  To Rita Levi-Montalcini

  Neurobiologist, Nobel Laureate

  February 14, 2006

  2 Horatio St., New York

  Dear Rita,

  I was delighted to get your letter (of January 20), and the extraordinary chapters from your book Without Oil, Against the Wind (I am not clear as to whether this has been published in English yet—it should be, it must be, because it is among your most beautiful writing).

  I was deeply affected by your portrait of Max Delbrück,[*3] which is so alive, so poetic, so tender, so rich in insight, so deeply personal, and at the same time only a fellow-scientist, or perhaps only you, could have written it. It is really a masterpiece of loving yet a clear-sighted biography (and Delbrück would surely have felt this himself).