Letters, p.10
Letters, page 10
You ask whether I wish to stay in America. A difficult question. I cannot conceal that there are an enormous number of things I detest here. And yet, there are enormous opportunities, not merely professionally, but for leading a full and fascinating life in many other ways. It would hardly be fair to judge my environment by the experience I have had thus far as a resident, i.e. as someone on a shoestring salary, with very little leisure, and a large number of acute and chronic anxieties, as well as the overall feeling of being unfulfilled. A more responsible job, higher financial rewards, and the still greater rewards of creative scientific work, will all come, I hope, in not too long; and with these, I may find that life is really very pleasant here. I will confess, however, that I have nostalgic thoughts of London. It is a magnificent city, whatever people say of it. The only comparable city here is New York, where I have a feeling I may come to roost.
I left England under peculiar circumstances, hurried, furtive, deceitful etc. A London which ceased to please an irritable superannuated student in his mid-twenties could become the ideal home for the prodigal son, when he returns as a professor. I phantasy! Seriously, I have had thoughts of returning. It would not, however, be sensible unless I returned to something good: in effect, to a consultant or Professorial position secured for me by any reputation I shall have made in the States. If I were to go back now, I would merely find myself in the interminable middle of the registrar rat-race: probably behind all my contemporaries, because of my absence, and any dubiety which might exist about American residency training. […]
I will look forward to your next letter, and endeavour to be a better correspondent. My best love to Auntie Len—it’s her turn to write now!
To Augusta Bonnard
Psychiatrist[*41]
May 31, 1964
UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles
Dear Dr. Bonnard,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I too enjoyed your company immensely; I came to discharge a duty, and found a friend. It’s been a very long time since this happened! […]
I think you may have hit on an important and unrealized motive for my having left London, viz. the profound discomfort at having a psychotic brother around the house. In more general terms, I have retreated from a position which drove him right out of reality, and was driving me into a state of perpetual anxiety and conflict. The dilemmas posed (it sounds hideous to “blame” my good parents for this) stem largely from my parents’ rigid Jewish ideas on propriety. Thus it seemed eminently proper to them that I should become a doctor: for myself I wanted to be, in turn, a mathematician, an inorganic chemist, a zoologist, a neurophysiologist—anything but a doctor. I never had the courage or conviction to oppose them. Only now, at the age of thirty, after a decade of idiotic vacillation, am I finally turning away from the clinical life, into something more congenial. I am really quite terrified of clinical responsibility. My parents envisage (what Jews do not?) my marrying a “nice Jewish girl,” taking over part of my father’s nice Jewish practice, and settling in Brondesbury for ever and ever, with my uncles and aunts and cousins and children and grandchildren, in a sort of cosy incestuous intimacy. Unbearable idea: the negation of self. Yet if I stayed around, it might have happened, representing as it does the line of least resistance. Although I wax eloquent on America’s great virtues—her geographical splendour, her energy, her opportunities, her exciting newness—this is mostly pretence. America could have been almost anywhere else, so long as it was well out of range of England. Many of these very virtues have become utter dross: the physical magnificence is vanishing with each passing day (and perhaps will soon cease to exist outside the National Parks); her energy no more than a robotic busyness; the loose social organization emphasizes human apartness and solipsism; and the novelty evaporates in stale gimcracks. There remain only the professional opportunities: and perhaps I should know by now that a good man finds opportunities everywhere. Only I don’t know if I’m a good man.
To Elsie and Samuel Sacks
July 1, 1964
UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles
Dear Ma and Pa:
I am exceedingly sorry to have been so dilatory in writing for the last few months. The reason, no doubt, is that these have been months of considerable anxiety and uncertainty about the future, as well as being hectically busy. Today, July 1, is the first day of the new academic year, the first day of my Senior Residency, and the first day of what I hope will be a tranquil and productive career in Neuropathology. My clinical responsibilities will be minimal (one afternoon a week in the Neurology Clinic, to keep my hand in, and to satisfy the requirement of the Neurology Boards); I do not regret the years of clinical work behind me—I am sure they will always stand me in good stead. I am no fool at diagnosis, and I have earned the affection of many of my patients. But I have always felt, in a sense, anxious and diffident with patients, and can only give of my best in something like neuropathology, where I am my own master, can do things in my own time and way, and have no instruments but a microscope and a typewriter. This, at least, is my present feeling. If I am mistaken, nothing has been lost; for in any case I will be eligible for any Neurology consultants jobs at the end of the coming twelve months. Actually I will be doing a double residency, since I shall also be doing all the autopsies at Brentwood Hospital, a large State mental hospital affiliated to UCLA: this will be accredited to me as a year of General Pathology, so that when I am through with my training, I can expect to have formal qualifications both as a neurologist and as a neuropathologist. With these I should find the highest positions open to me. […]
I have seen a good deal of Augusta Bonnard, whom I admire more and more. We have had many talks together about everything under the sun, and particularly about life in England compared with that in the States. She herself cannot tolerate professional life here, and as you know is returning to England this September. I too share many of her doubts and dissatisfactions about life here, and am also feeling a considerable urge to return to my own country. On the other hand, there is no point returning to England when I am only half qualified. […]
Otherwise life is fairly quiet. I entertain a fair amount; am having a small dinner up in Topanga for Augusta Bonnard tomorrow. I go up to San Francisco every few weeks, where I always see the von Bonins, that marvellous couple whom I am so fond of. They will soon be going to Europe for a year or so and I hope you will be able to see something of them when they are in London. I shall be taking a few days off next week, for some skin diving down in the clear waters of Mexico (the sea of Cortez). […]
Keep well, and write soon.
Much love,
Oliver
* * *
—
In September 1964, OS began seeing a psychiatrist, Seymour Bird—presumably at the urging of Augusta Bonnard (though psychoanalysis was in its heyday, and OS would have known a great many analysts and analysands). He had long been plagued by mood swings and especially by a fear that he, like his brother Michael, might be schizophrenic or perhaps manic-depressive. (He frequently used the term “psychotic” of himself and others in this period but usually applied it more loosely than we would today.) By December 1964, when he wrote the following letter to his brother Marcus, he was also facing the decision of whether or not to return to England once his residency ended in the summer of 1965.
To Marcus Sacks
December 22, [1964]
1840 Iowa Trail, Topanga, CA
Dear Marcus:
[…] You and Gay sound enormously happy together, or so my intuition tells me. And God knows you’re overdue for this sort of happiness. Although nobody, or no factor, can be held “culpable” in any direct sense, I think all of us—but perhaps especially you and I—have remained infantile Jewish dumplings for far too long. David got drawn into a strong woman’s ambit quite early; you late, after years of housekeepers and superficial consolations; I’m still pending, as you might say; and poor Mike is wandering round somewhere in the psychotic recesses of outer space. Second: you sound, if I am not mistaken, as sick of Australia as I am of the States, and both very anxious yet very reluctant to “return.” One half accepts the conventional view that return is a sort of failure. One had imagined coming back in a blaze of glory, like a prodigal son; but fears that one is really coming back like a beaten dog, with its tail between its legs. I think the crux of the matter is a psychological one. Neither of us emigrated in any sort of heroic spirit; we weren’t going to seek our fortune in foreign places, and see the world, and all that. We might have thought so. And certainly, the professional scramble being what it is in England, could rationalize our departure this way, to ourselves and others. But I am coming to entertain a different, and rather awful, thought: namely, that we (or certainly I, and I sort of assume you) left in a negative way, left because we couldn’t stomach the home situation, left, in short, because there is something intolerable and destructive about having a psychotic around the house. And though one hesitates to use the word “tragedy” about one’s own home (it sounds so theatrical), I think there has been a real tragedy in our parental lives consequent upon keeping Michael at home. Sure, one can entertain, in a rather limited way; one can go out occasionally; one can leave for short, slightly fearful, holidays—but I think Ma and Pa have been forced to lead painfully constricted lives because they kept Michael at home; have been in a state of chronic, helpless embarrassment; and, not infrequently, in actual physical fear of him. I was eleven when Mike had his first psychotic break, and I remember I was profoundly terrified, both physically and mentally. Physically, because he was larger and older and irrational, and therefore—I had to presume—potentially violent; mentally, because I sensed his appalling isolation and vacuity, and because I feared for my own sanity, by analogy, or identity. Perhaps I am talking out of the top of my head. One is in deep waters here, and I know no way of determining the truth, even though the truth is, simply, a matter of feeling, but I am persuaded that this is one of the reasons we left, and consequently one of the reasons we would hesitate to return.
I had no intention of launching on this immense tirade. It sounds shockingly callous. What are your feelings on the subject?
Myself. I am spending an externally tranquil, internally rather violent, year, my last, in this Neurology residency. I am spending it in Neuropathology, with a little soupcon of clinical work. I veered away from clinical work, because the grinding anxiety and responsibility of looking after patients drove me nuts. But now, although I love neuropath, I find I rather miss patients, and stand in something of a dilemma: which shall I stay in?
Part of the trouble is that I have been a resident for far too long, denied real responsibility, so that I am now almost terrified of it. […]
To Elsie and Samuel Sacks
May 26, 1965
[Los Angeles]
Dear Ma and Pa,
I am so full of good resolutions about writing, and so incompetent about realizing them. But here I am, actually started: so here goes!
First, JOB: letters have been sent, recommendations solicited, sent (“he arrives late, he rides a motorcycle, he dresses like a slob, but he has a good mind tucked away somewhere, and maybe you’ll have better luck with him than we have had. I like him, but he has given me a lot of grey hairs”), and everything ratified. I will be starting at the Einstein as a fellow in Neuropathology on September 1.[*42] Or—if I can get a little extra time to go to a conference in Vienna in the first week of September—a bit later. My first year there will be divided, half and half, between classical neuropathology and neurochemistry. My stipend will be an initial $7000, which can be supplemented by one or two thousand more by doing one or two Neurology clinics a week. Not princely, but by no means miserly. Undoubtedly I could earn twice this by starting in a staff position in Neurology, or three times this by practicing privately, but so far as I am concerned I shall be doing what I want to do at Einstein, and working with the best and most creative team in the country in Neuropathology. And if and if and if (and how frightened I am of the reverse side of it all!), if things work out, I should find a degree of absorption and satisfaction in work which I have not known for many years. Terry, my professor, is a comparatively young man, fiery, ebullient, sardonic, Jewish, volatile, creative, neurotic, and probably the best electron microscopist in the world.[*43] Unfortunately he himself will be in Paris on sabbatical for the academic year 1964–5, and this is one of the reasons why I am electing to spend this year […] doing Neurochemistry, in his absence.
I was also offered a position by Abner Wolf and David Cowen at Columbia. Abner Wolf is really the founder of neuropathology in this country, and ex-president of the Neuropathological Association, while David Cowen is the editor of the Journal of Neuropath[ology]. I was, needless to say, immensely flattered and flustered by their offer (coming the day after Terry’s) and could hardly believe that after dragging out a fifth-rate, depressed, submarginal, barely tolerated existence at UCLA, I should find myself flying to New York impulsively, and immediately being offered the two most coveted trainee jobs in Neuropathology in the country. […] Despite the great eminence of Wolf and Cowen, the classical tradition they supremely represent, and the great prestige which would accrue to working with them, I finally decided that the atmosphere at Einstein, the ebullience and creativity and informality of the school, and in particular the personality of Terry whom I immediately took to, would offer not only the best excitement and incitement to work, but also (what with my chronic history of unreliability and depressions and ups and downs etc.) the best chance of survival. Einstein has accommodated greater odd-balls than myself, and somehow helped to realize their potentialities despite the trouble they give: and I was very fearful that the cool, monastic, crystalline atmosphere of Columbia would be both intolerable to me, and intolerant of me. Bird[*44] has been of immense assistance to me in settling some of my “problems,” but I am well aware that I constantly threaten my own existence by impulsiveness and rages and this and that, and I must take this factor into consideration in the choice of the most prudent position open to me. Einstein offers a superb opportunity, and I hope to God I am ready to make full use of it. My ignorance of neuroanatomy is still unspeakable, and I never will be a good anatomical pathologist. This, of course, is one of the reasons why I wish to venture somewhat into the very new field of Neurochemistry.
[…As] a result of paying Bird his $300+ a month since September, and pouring about $700 into major repairs on the motorcycle (I should of course have sold it when it was at the 50,000 mark, and hadn’t started to crack up: but, as is inevitable when one is on a pretty marginal budget, I have been constrained to patch and repair, which is never economical), and my general sloppiness and disorganization, I am now in a shaky state financially. Indeed, had not Augusta Bonnard insisted on leaving me some money before she left, I could not have continued the analysis, as a start. I have now taken some $800 from the nest-egg which she left me, and hope that I will not have to deplete it further. I think that by selling the piano and what remains of the motorcycle, I should just about have enough to pay my fare to England, though nothing left over. I am arranging to get a new BMW (the de-tuned, rather slower version, instead of the R69S, the fast but ultimately expensive and troublesome model which I bought in 1962). […] I will, of course, have neither the climate nor the necessity of using it for daily travel in New York, where the subways represent by far the most convenient method of getting anywhere. I can therefore reserve the bike for occasional and weekend use, which should be a lot less hard on it. I confess that after eight years’ motorcycling, I have little wish to change to anything else: I have survived over 250,000 miles driving without incident, and feel that I am as safe on a motorcycle as anyone is, or as a motorcycle ever permits. […]
The Einstein is in the Bronx, which is emphatically no place to live, being rather like the drearier areas of South London. I will probably get an apartment on the West Side (near Central Park) or in the Village: both of these are within 30 minutes train ride of the Einstein. Apartments are relatively expensive in Manhattan, probably 50% dearer than in Los Angeles, and I shall obviously have to get something far less commodious than my house in Topanga. I think I have had my fill of being a recluse, and am returning to urbanity in all senses of the word. […]
The Exhibit,[*45] I am delighted to say, seemed to be a great success, and attracted a lot of favourable attention, and also I suppose, indirectly, the job offers from Columbia and Einstein. We are putting it up at UCLA now, where it will be my swansong and farewell to the University. […] I don’t think I have the capacities, and I am sure I don’t have the temperament, to make a first class research worker, but talking and writing, lectures, and exhibits, and I hope one day, books and monographs, seem to be my forte. Perhaps my only forte. I see myself as a sort of middleman, with few ideas of my own, but capable of expressing other people’s ideas rather better than they do it themselves. Scientists tend to be a rather inarticulate lot, and I hope that I can somehow survive as a teacher, a sort of neuropathological Talmudist, despite indifferent practical abilities. This, at least, is how I see things at present. I shall be surrounded by millions of people, which will be a change, and I think a very congenial one, after my two years’ communion with the rodents and rattlers of Topanga.
