I read about this case several times; these are the facts that stuck out the most for me from the long article. S actually studied to become a professional mne

I read about this case several times; these are the facts that stuck out the most for me from the long article. S actually studied to become a professional mnemonist, after leaving journalism, and learned from circus people how to make his performances more engaging. He didn't actually have 100% recall: "His uncle, Reynberg said, could be forgetful. If he didn’t consciously try to commit something to memory, he didn’t always recall it later." "Reynberg told me that his uncle trained hours a day for his evening performances." "Luria doesn’t deny Shereshevsky’s use of mnemonic devices, but he maintains that these came later, and that they merely complemented Shereshevsky’s immense natural abilities." "The strength and durability of his memories seemed to be tied up in his ability to create elaborate multisensory mental representations and insert them in imagined story scenes or places; the more vivid this imagery and story, the more deeply rooted it would become in his memory." "Instead of burning memories on scraps of paper, Shereshevsky found a different kind of erasure in his final years, according to his nephew: he turned to drinking."