Letters, p.47
Letters, page 47
Above all, the identity of spiritual feeling—the sense of a most precious and beautiful interim—a Sabbath—in which Mind and Body find perfect repose, but find this in the perfect stillness, the mysterious still, of action. So one is not lazy, one is intensely alive—it is life intensified into a pure and perfect “Now”—just as it was, when I was convalescing, eight years ago—
…For this special interim,
So restful, yet so festive,
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Fog.[*40]
For Auden it was being fog-bound, at Christmas in “an ancient manor-house” in the company of old and dear friends—a brief “time-out” of “lenient days” before having to re-enter the World, “the world of work and money.”
External circumstances—especially if gratuitous, imposed by necessity—can provide this special sweet Interim; but, equally, it is a need, the most profound need, of the Mind. And no-one analyses this more beautifully than (his friend) Hannah Arendt, in her last book (Thinking)[*41] which we both so profoundly admire, when she speaks of the Gap between Past and Future—“the quiet of the Now in the time-pressed, time-tossed Existence of Man.”
* * *
—
In 1979, Mary-Kay Wilmers, the editor who had earlier invited OS to contribute to The Listener, cofounded the London Review of Books, a sister publication to The New York Review of Books. Between 1981 and 1984, she published four of his “clinical tales” in the LRB—including “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.”
OS had also been in touch, for a decade, with Robert Silvers, the editor of The New York Review of Books; in January 1984, Silvers published OS’s debut essay in that paper, “The Lost Mariner.” Silvers had a remarkable instinct for selecting newly published books to send to his writers, hoping to instigate an essay review. It is likely that Silvers sent Steven B. Smith’s 1983 book, The Great Mental Calculators, to OS, leading to the following reply.
To Robert B. Silvers
Editor, The New York Review of Books
May 24, 1984
119 Horton St., City Island, NY
Dear Bob,
[…] During a brief “release” in the Botanic Garden this week I found myself thinking again of the Finn twins[*42]—the calculating identical idiot savants we spoke of—but in a much more general way. What seems to me centrally important about them, (and so many of The Great Mental Calculators, a book I feel to be as wrong in its conclusions as fascinating in its material), is that it is not, in fact, “calculation” at all, not a series of mental operations, but an instantaneous and intuitive seeing—as Dase[*43] would see, at a glance, if someone threw down a handful of peas, that there were 117 of them. He did not count, he instantly “saw” the 117-ness, as a unique, familiar numerical physiognomy or landscape. This is obscured in Steven Smith’s book, I think, but clear from F.W.H. Myers’ account a century ago, though it is indicated anecdotally. […] The Finn twins are referred to (pp. 29–30), and their “methods” ascribed to the formation of unconscious algorithms. I don’t think this is the case, and I have known them for eighteen years. I think they live, so to speak, in a romantic landscape of numbers—and that this is the only landscape, the only passion, in their poor narrow lives. My own calculations, as a child—and I was quite a calculator, and can speak from experience—were far more akin to music, or language, than computation: everything was suffused with feeling and meaning—there were never strings of figures, but number-words and poems.
And this makes me think of, and in an article might turn to, other, higher forms of “calculation”—for example Mendeleef’s calculation of the existence and properties of missing elements (which I also did, in my chemistry days, before I had heard of Mendeleef). I would carry with me lists of the properties of elements, but what was perceived was not lists, but “characters,” “physiognomies.” I felt the elements as my friends, I got to know all their faces, and after a while one just knew what the missing faces would be like—the actual computations, the quantitative, was entirely secondary.
And I have been very excited by rereading Helmholtz[*44] (Sensations of Tone), and his speaking of tones as perceived, instantly, “synthetically” as qualities, even though they might be broken down by (a Fourier[*45] or other) analysis.
So a consideration of the Finn twins, hopefully, could lead to a general discussion of synthetic perception, “judgement,” “intuition,” and it would be especially nice if one could in fact show that the most mechanical sorts of thought, seemingly, and in the narrow heads of morons, was as romantic and intuitive as anything in Helmholtz. Anyhow, this is just a thought for a future piece. […]
* * *
—
I am more grateful than I can say for your generosity to me this year. “The Lost Mariner” made me happier than any piece I have ever had published—and (I have received many further letters since we spoke) has had a wider impact and resonance; and it is marvellous of you to “risk” yourself, and the NY Review, with the opening chapter or prologue of my book. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Bob!
Will contact you on my return—
Oliver
* * *
—
Early in 1966, while on a visit to New York, Jonathan Miller had introduced OS to his friend Susan Sontag, but OS was too shy to stay in touch with her. (He wrote to Miller, “I liked Susan Sontag immediately, which is almost without precedent for a human female. I will try to keep in touch with her, although I feel intimidated both by her calibre and her sex. You, of course, feel exhilarated by both, which is only right and proper. Give me a year with a good analyst, and I’ll feel the same way.”) It would be nearly twenty years later that the two of them began spending time together. Sontag was one of the founders of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, which hosted Friday luncheon-seminars for its fellows, and she admired OS’s work. In an August 30, 1984, letter to him, she wrote: “So much of what I read, and I am (alas) a compulsive reader, makes the space in which I feel and write seem smaller. You make it seem larger, and more accessible.” OS was elected to membership in 1984 and began seeing Sontag more often.
To Susan Sontag
Writer, Author of Against Interpretation and Illness as Metaphor
May 24, 1984
119 Horton St., City Island, NY
Dear Susan,
I meant to write to you straightaway after that (for me, at least, immensely enjoyable) evening—and your quite outrageous, but much appreciated, introduction of me—but the intention has somehow got caught with the general chaos and inhibition of these last, difficult weeks—I am very sorry.
I enclose “The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat”[*46]—I hope you enjoy it. I think the issues involved in such cases are quite fundamental, and at the heart of what is involved in any living recognition, in “life.” The article was fairly reduced from the expansive (10,000 word) MS I gave to the LRB, but I hope I can bring back some of the deleted portions if I can collect this (and other pieces) in a book, as I want to. I had a piece in the LRB[*47] earlier this month, which was so cut as to be rendered completely meaningless and reduced to the level of anecdote or curio—I am sort of furious about this, and am not sending [you] this (indeed I hope that no one sees it!). The issues which arose here were also deep—it may be that sometimes things just occur to me, first, as “stories,” and only then get charged with imaginative depth and power. I do thank you for your sensitivity in bringing out the “allegorical” aspect—perhaps not too clear in these articles, but absolutely central in A Leg to Stand On, my own journey to a neurological Underworld and back—which is published (in England) next week and here (with quite a different ending!) in July. I am quite nervous about this—it is so long since I have brought out a book, and it is autobiographical (and so “naked”) in a way I have never attempted before. This is one of the things which has been paralysing me these last few weeks. I hope I may take the liberty of sending you a copy of this.
I found Friday, at NYU,[*48] unexpectedly delightful—and am sorry only that you were not there. I did not realize that I would be expected to re-present what I had said to a quite different, and perhaps terrifyingly critical, audience. But in fact there was a lovely thoughtfulness and rapport, a sense of thinking community I suspect I am starving for. I felt the ridiculousness of my isolation almost violently after the lunch, and perhaps I can start to emerge from it, in part.
I had admired you, as you must know, for many years—since I met you (with Jonathan, one breakfast-morning in the early sixties, and before), and hope we may perhaps see more of each other now.
With kindest regards, and deep gratitude,
Oliver
* * *
—
In 1984, A Leg to Stand On was published in England, and soon after, Mary-Kay Wilmers published Michael Neve’s very caustic review of it in the London Review of Books. (OS often wondered whether Wilmers had used Neve’s review to “punish” him, since, he thought, she had felt “betrayed” by his offering “The Lost Mariner” to Robert Silvers for The New York Review of Books.)
To Lawrence Weschler
July 2, 1984
119 Horton St., City Island, NY
Dear Ren,
[…] it was very nice to get your letter, with its friendliness, and its business-like questions. I am relieved to hear there is some (internal and external) consistency in what I have said (and what has been said about me) in the past three years—the more so as a disquieting lead-review in the London Review, in addition to everything else, accuses me of confabulation—the words “disbelief,” “unbelievable” occur seven or eight times. Similar imputations of my veracity/sanity appeared wholesale in that dreadful issue of JAMA,[*49] of which I don’t think that I have a copy (but I could get one, I suppose, if you so wished). ITS date was about Dec 15 (1970), and its poisonous effect lasted through January into February, obnubilating any pleasure I might have got from the publication of Migraine (which, though dated and slated for 1970, didn’t appear till January ’71—looking up my album[*50] I find Jan 25. 71). It was greeted that day, Publication-Day, by a very nice thing in the Times,[*51] unlike ALTSO[*52] which was greeted, on publication-day, by a very nasty thing in the Times […]. Eric tells me I must be more philosophical and less “vain,” but I think that vulnerability, rather than vanity, is the problem—though perhaps, they go together, or at least share too great a dependence on the reactions of others. At the deepest level, of course, there is no such dependence, and I judge myself and my thoughts evenly and justly. […]
Fondly,
Oliver
July 5, 1984
P.S. I had better get this in the post this morning—otherwise, with my gift/weakness for deferment, I will never get it off. Isabelle[*53] cooled me down, made me feel saner, less self-indulgently “annihilated,” about the LRB review etc. Nevertheless, I fear I may just have to “work through” a summer of bad feelings. […] Glad Shengold is around, so I don’t translate my negative feelings into actions, At least, not too much. […]
Thank God for Helmholtz! He stands for a better world, the good of the intellect, integrity, balance, and ceaseless creativity. He is the only salve for my wounds. Also, specifically, he is the pointer for so much. I have especially been reading him on stereoscopy, and think I may write something on this […] about the perception, the feeling, the idea of depth, and how fundamental it is to one’s sense of the world. […] My only recreation these past weeks has been playing with the stereoscope I bought at the book fair.
When I was in England, I spent almost a whole weekend with Duncan[*54] (dear Duncan!) talking about stereoscopy, and little else! I said it was one of the earliest and most constant interests I had; he wondered if this was because I regarded stereopsis, binocular fusion, unconsciously at least, as “a metaphor for a mental act.” I think he’s dead right—I do; and I find Helmholtz does, and I think this must be why it was one of his most constant interests (his papers on it come out over a thirty year period). I don’t know whether I ever talked to you about my early passion for stereophotography, making stereoscopes, hyperstereoscopes, pseudoscopes, etc. and also, though less, color vision & photography. But now, strangely, almost forty years later, in this period of disquiet, my mind goes back strongly to this. It is the only thing which gives me peace.
I also want to write a piece on color. I have some patients, and can find others, with partial/total congenital/acquired absolute lack of color vision i.e. only black-and-white vision. I wonder what their idea of colour is like. You will recall that this (in a particular example: as to whether a man who had never seen a particular shade of spectral blue could imagine it) is discussed by Hume.
Must post!
To Chaim F. Shatan
Psychoanalyst
July 7, 1984
119 Horton St., City Island, NY
Dear Dr. Shatan,
I must at once acknowledge, though I cannot fully “reply” to, your very kind letter and important, fascinating reprint. […]
This power of music to articulate, organize, animate perception and movement is something I constantly see in neurological patients—perhaps especially Parkinsonians (and as such is something I repeatedly advert to in Awakenings). Whatever occurs is eminently demonstrable—sufficiently so to convince the hard-boiled State to allow us a full-time music therapist at Beth Abraham (the “Mount Carmel” of Awakenings…). The music, as you imply, has to affect the person, to “touch” them, to “move” them—I also see this quite amazingly in patients with cerebral palsy, patients practically doubled up with spasticity and athetosis, incapable “normally” of anything but the most limited and pathological movement, who can “relax” and dance quite beautifully. I have patients who say, “When I hear music, when I feel music, I forget my cerebral palsy, my Parkinsonism, etc.” I think there can be a Parkinsonism of the mind (rigidity, inertia, difficulty starting and stopping, perseveration, etc.) in Parkinsonians, abetted by a sort of inturning and obsessing of the attention, that, in this way, they “think Parkinsonian” but, quite radically, can get out of this, and find a mental and affectomotor freedom in art, most especially a kinetic or time-art.
As you indicate and imply there seems to be a limitless transparency between body and mind—the somato-psychic no less than the psycho-somatic […]. So that not only does every state of mind find expression in bodily tone and posture, but vice-versa. It is typical, as you say, that all our most evocative terms (“rigid,” etc.) have precisely this double connotation. […]
Parkinsonians, and especially post-encephalitics, may show an extreme acceleration or retardation of movement, thought, perception, time-judgement—so much so as to make them almost unintelligible, through being so “out-of-synch” with normal people around them. […]
Anyhow, thank you again for your letter and reprint. […] I am sure we are both dealing with important realities, however difficult they may be to conceptualize.
With kind regards,
Oliver Sacks
To Lawrence Weschler
July 18, 1984
119 Horton St., City Island, NY
Dear Ren,
It was indeed nice getting your Sunday phone-call—I am sorry I forgot to congratulate you on your fine Hockney piece which I thought full of interest. […]
I was just in at Beth Abraham, seeing the situation today. The picketers were marching up-and-down, chanting, “Want, want, what do we want? We want more money, that’s what we want.” Inside, at this early stage, it is still felt as a bit of a lark—fun joining in, volunteering (like my firefighting was, in B.C. back in ’60). But, already, the twelve-hour shifts are taking their toll; it is not quite fun as it was on Day 1. Nurses, doctors, secretaries, volunteers, etc. are all looking a bit strained and exhausted. Many patients, who are normally got up, and turned, and exercised, are left to lie in bed all day. This too is “fun,” like a holiday, for a day or two. Then the skin breaks down, bedsores start; breathing flat isn’t enough, pneumonia sets in; joints and muscles start to stiffen, there are contractures in a week—this is the deadly effect of a strike which lasts for more than two days. And, of course, only the physical effects: unstimulated, left in bed, apathy, confusion, disorientation—and fear; the demented patients no longer know what’s happening, or where they are—they start to feel punished, abandoned, in prison, in hell.
Perhaps you and a couple of colleagues from The New Yorker should act as volunteers—and document in detail what happens to EVERYONE in these strikes (the picketers, the Staff, no less than the patients). There are mendacious (at least, superficial) reports put out to reassure, telling us that the level of Care is being maintained. You should see for yourself exactly what happens—physically, morally, to everyone concerned. Had I not worked round the clock with my students for 11 days in 1974, there would have been a fearful morbidity and mortality among our poor “Enkies”:[*55] as it was, the bonds between us—the patients and myself—were perhaps strengthened by the experience. But it is a fearful experience, horrible, dangerous, after the first day or two. I again feel that such a cost in human suffering, such a bargaining with vulnerable lives, should never occur whatever the grievance. […]
I met Wystan first at Orlan’s apartment—I don’t think you ever met Orlan Fox. (He was Wystan’s closest friend, I would think, for […] the last 15 years of Wystan’s life; and a fairly close friend of mine from the time we first met, in November ’65.) I am afraid I cannot quite date it[*56] (something to date it may occur to me)—it was either in ’67 or ’68.
