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Subtitle > The scientist was famous for linking healing with storytelling. Sometimes that meant reshaping patients’ reality. TLDR > after her grandmother’s d
by rendaw 10mo ago
Subtitle
> The scientist was famous for linking healing with storytelling. Sometimes that meant reshaping patients’ reality.
TLDR
> after her grandmother’s death...she becomes decisive, joining a theatre group.... in the transcripts... [she] never joins a theatre group or emerges from her despair.
AFAICT the quote above is the only thing directly relevant to the title.
From what I read, skimming through the article, it paints Sacks as being a delusion driven emotional romantic and was practicing some sort of cult medicine, but I can't tell how much of that is reality and how much is NYT's ridiculously flowery embellishing of everything.
- AdamN 10mo agoJust a nit but it's the New Yorker, not the NYT.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- cryzinger 10mo agoAlso worth noting that the New Yorker published a lot of essays from Sacks when he was alive. So there's a sort of meta thing happening here with a biography of one of their famous contributors.
- AdamN 10mo agoYeah he was the consummate neurotic New Yorker writing for the New Yorker and now in death he has been woven directly into the New Yorker.
- burningChrome 10mo agoI agree that its a hard read, and seemingly never got to the point of the title of the article. I started reading it and by about the eighth or nineth paragraph the article was still ruminating on his gay love affair so I just skimmed the rest and I couldn't make heads or tails of the rest of it either. Its shocking how bad some writers are these days.
- RodgerTheGreat 10mo agoThe New Yorker's primary editorial thrust has always been that the author is more important than the subject, and the journey is more important than having a thesis at all.
- IAmBroom 10mo agoThank you. You've just summed it up for me. <chef's kiss>
- paleotrope 10mo agoIf you go further, the whole thing wraps around. His suppression of his own sexuality, led him to embellish, to write out his own internal dialogue into the "nonfiction" books he wrote. So it all eventually comes back to the thesis, but yes, it's a huge drag to read through, but then Sacks' own writing is so turgid and overly dramatic, like he was writing for an audience. The first sentence too is apt, "butter colored suit that reminded him of the sun" is a great example of Sacks' writing style.
- cryzinger 10mo agoRespectfully, I'm not sure you can draw meaningful conclusions about a 100+ paragraph deep-dive article after reading the first eight or nine. The biography stuff is definitely relevant to the takeaways about Sacks' methodology and style: > Other doctors had dismissed these patients as hopeless, but Sacks had sensed that they still had life in them—a recognition that he understood was possible because he, too, felt as if he were “buried alive.” [...] > Another patient is so aroused and euphoric that she tells Sacks [according to his telling in Awakenings], “My blood is champagne”—the phrase Sacks used to describe himself when he was in love with Vincze. [...] > “I know, in a way, you don’t feel like living,” Sacks tells her, in another recorded session. “Part of one feels dead inside, I know, I know that. . . . One feels that one wants to die, one wants to end it, and what’s the use of going on?” > “I don’t mean it in that way,” she responds. > “I know, but you do, partly,” Sacks tells her. “I know you have been lonely all your life.”
- RC_ITR 10mo agoSpeaking of suboptimal writing, why call it a 'gay' love affair, when he was openly gay?
- usednet 10mo agoA responsible journalist can't say directly that Sacks was a confabulist but they can point out facts and allow the reader to infer. That's what the article does. There are many facts in the article that are relevant to the title in this sense (the prime number twins, the journal entries about Hat, etc.). I also don't agree with your interpretation of what the article is trying to paint Sacks as, though of course you are entitled to it. I think the the point of the article is to articulate what Sacks himself said: > "As Sacks aged, he felt as if he were gazing at people from the outside. But he also noticed a new kind of affection for humans—“homo sap.” “They’re quite complex (little) creatures (I say to myself),” he wrote in his journal. “They suffer, authentically, a good deal. Gifted, too. Brave, resourceful, challenging.”"
- tomcam 10mo agoHaven’t read the article yet, but I love the respect with which you pointed out your differences to GP. thank you.
- devilbunny 10mo agoAs a general rule, neurologists are an odd bunch. I'm married to one; I've met lots of them at her conferences.
- ajb 10mo agoThe stereotype, which is sometimes true, is that people do that kind of degree because they want to understand and solve their own issues. Those who are are interested in people as such, can be more drawn to anthropology.
- devilbunny 10mo agoMore true of psychiatry than neurology, though there is of course some overlap. The running joke in neurology is that neurologists are left-handed migraneurs/euses. I was once at a small dinner talk by a well-respected headache specialist, surrounded by a dozen neurologists. He asked, "How many here have chronic headaches?" Every hand went up except mine and the drug rep's.