Letters, p.9
Letters, page 9
I have taken up photography in the past three months. It is becoming an insane preoccupation. I fancy myself the new photographic Hogarth of Santa Monica, perpetually recording its squalor, its ugliness, and relentless facetiousness. The construction of an album is wonderfully satisfying, both a logical and creative exercise, and almost a means of psychoanalysis, of retracing your own subterranean longings and associations. Grotesque amorous syllogisms. I enclose, for your delight, a photo of a gigantic advertisement in the desert, fifty miles from the nearest habitation. It can be an introduction to the “wilde enormities”[*27] of the West. I am also enclosing a particularly horrifying handbill which was thrust under my door. Southern California is stiff with racists, fascists, righters, Birchers, etc.
Readings: Doctor Faustus: tedious but monumental. Marvellous descriptions of neurosyphilis and imaginary compositions. Catch 22: the best and wittiest and only mature war-book I’ve ever read. Malamud: the Jewish monologue affects me deeply, then I forget him. Baldwin: wow! in grain, in literary and intellectual texture, second only to Faulkner. At best, magnificent, but patchy. I haven’t read his latest.[*28] Kazin and Hardwick, on your promotion, remain my general moral/cultural references.
Write me, and tell me your plans.
My best love to you both,
Oliver
To William Tunberg
Artist, Weight Lifter
[Undated]
UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles
Dear Bill,
[…]Went to the Wrestling Matches last Friday with Big Steve, Jim H. and Peanuts.[*29] The four of us weighed about 1000 lb. Steve is becoming grotesque in size and strength, and approaching Ahrens on both counts, as well as in personality. There was a huge line outside the building. Steve loped up and down it, like a caged animal, and then he butted through, grabbed the huge iron Exit doors of the building, and tore them open. The three of us rushed after him through the opening, followed by two hundred of the crowd. They were impotent to stop us, although dozens of police were called in and milling in all directions. The wrestling was a lot of fun, entirely ham, of course: Blassey [sic][*30] the favourite, an old veteran, was (let himself be) beaten by an immensely tall Negro fighter, and after his fall beat his breast and sobbed and yelled, a pugilistic Lear, a great tragic actor. I didn’t realize at first that these fights are the lineal descendants of the old time melodramas, with their heroes and villains, homey morality, and clowning. There was a little old man next to me, very mild and watery in appearance, but absolutely bloodthirsty, who kept muttering: Go on, get him, pull his eyes out! Grab his balls! etc. in an undertone, an awful sadistic litany. After the fight, Steve was raging, vicariously: he suddenly let out a bloodcurdling Armenian war cry in the streets (surely an ancestral memory) and hurled his huge bulk into a STOP sign, which fell and toppled, like a felled redwood. […]
But things are quiet once again.
I’ll see when you arrive.
alles gut,[*31]
Oliver
To Marcus Sacks
Brother
September 12, 1963
UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles
My dear Marcus,
[…] Your visit revealed several things to me. First that we are very similar in an astonishing number of ways, though ludicrously different in others. Second that we are, I suppose, both adults, or as much so as we (I) will ever become. Thirdly, that as possibly the only responsible or conscience-ridden members of our own family we have certain problems in common. It is evident from the intimacy and completeness of your letter that you have come to the same conclusions. For one reason and another I tended to feel like an “only child” when I was growing up: partly age differences between you and David vs. myself, partly the war—and the separations this involved, and partly Michael’s withdrawal and psychosis. I hardly ever had the sense of having any brothers, and so this is a very pleasant discovery to make so late. When you left England I was still an undergraduate, practically a schoolboy, in mentality, and you were a remote, and even slightly forbidding, figure (don’t take this amiss! but such were my feelings ten years ago). And now I am, like yourself, a crusty bachelor of sorts, ageing, and obscurely discontented.
This brings me to some of the problems you mention. You have known Gay for some time now, two years (?), long enough for you to have a fairly shrewd idea of your own and each other’s feelings. It sounds to me, from the tone of your letter, that if you do not marry her, you will regret it for the rest of your life. You are faced with two problems: first, considering differences of age, background etc. can you “make a go” of it? It sounds to me as if you are both fairly confident of this (I say fairly confident, because one leaves supreme confidence in anything behind with one’s teens). Characteristically she, as the younger, is the more confident, whereas you, with twenty years’ experience of being tossed around by life, and full of morbid Jewish timidities, are less certain. The second problem is Ma and Pa’s reaction. Pa is the more flexible, Ma is a chronic brooder. It is a problem: what will he tell Rabbi Landy? And what will Rabbi Landy think? And what will everyone in NW2 think?
The answer is—nothing. There will be kefuffling and whispering and indrawn breaths for a bit, and then everyone will “accept” it and the world will go on as before. Pa will recover from the “blow” fairly quickly, Ma will take a year to do so. I have no real doubt that the passion to see you “settled,” a wife, a home, and (best of all) the voices of little grandchildren, will bring them great and enduring happiness. And before you know where you are, Ma will be teaching your big blonde shikse how to make gefullte fish.
There is, of course, one obvious step which might minimize or eliminate all these vexations: that is, if Gay became a Jew. You naturally are reluctant to suggest such a step—it seems an appalling imposition. If Gay is a red-hot Roman Catholic, for example, it’s naturally out of the question. But if she is as lackadaisical as you, then it is a move she might not take exception to. But then there are her people? What would they say? What would the priest say? etc. There must not be a contest of wills over a thing like this: this would ruin your future together. But if Gay is complaisant about “conversion,” then this might be a very happy solution all round.
Emotional blockage. We all have it, one way or another: sometimes the more promiscuous, the more blockage, of any real feeling. I’ve no doubt our good parents have played an unwitting role in turning all their children into emotional simpletons, part passive, part predatory, and dreadfully timid (“shy,” “well-bred,” “self-contained,” “diffident”). I think you are doing an excellent thing going to a psychiatrist: if he’s any good he should help you a lot. The fact that your letters to Gay are becoming, pari passu, warmer and more intimate, is hardly a coincidence. It takes so much to give oneself to anyone wholeheartedly. I have a feeling that this is something Ma never did, conjugally, although her feelings for her children have been over-powerful, possessive, dependent, helpless. All of us, in consequence, have been “mother’s boys” to varying extents, rendered emotionally ischemic by apron-strings.
How right you are about 37.[*32] The house has a terrible force of its own, like those decayed Southern mansions in Tennessee Williams’ plays. It’s full of ghosts, and the ghosts are dated—roughly—1938.
1938! Last golden year before the War: Marcus and David, rowdy and boisterous, in stained cricket shorts, wrestling on the back lawn. Michael, already perhaps a little reserved, reading a book in the library. Oliver, a tiny pudgy boy, running out of the front door and leaping into his mother’s arms. [Ma’s] brothers and sisters—Annie, Isaac, Abe, Dora, Birdie, JoeVic, always visiting, and writing, and talking, buzzing with vitality. Vitality! Michael running into their room in the summer holidays at Felpham (this is his story) and pulling Pa out of bed for an early morning swim. Pa huge, grumbling, happy: “What do you mean, pulling an old man of forty-three out of bed for!”[*33] The huge number of patients, carelessly encompassed by a huge vitality: Ma’s absorption in the EGA.[*34] Erev Shabbat: Father Duck and his four ducklings going to shool. “Shalom, Sammy! Ooiiy, vot beautiful children!” The old man with rhinophyma[*35] who pinched our hairless cheeks. 1938! Dreams, ambitions. Brilliant boys, great careers, nice Jewish girls one day (but a long way off), the daughters-in-law becoming daughters, the grandchildren, all living very close, all in NW2, in a perpetual almost incestuous intimacy.[*36] […]
* * *
—
In a 1992 history of the UCLA Department of Neurology,[*37] a former colleague, Charles Markham, described how OS tested the patience of their boss, Augustus Rose. Markham wrote that OS “was a weight lifter with great muscular mass which frequently led to the emergence of his shirt tail from the back of his pants when on duty. […] At one point he grew a beard much to the displeasure of Rose, who made him remove it.”[*38] And as OS continued to compete as a weight lifter, he also continued to consume prodigious amounts of food, often wolfing down numerous double cheeseburgers and milkshakes at the hospital cafeteria, where food was free to residents and interns. He was sometimes known to help himself to food from patients’ meal trays in the middle of rounds.
To Augustus S. Rose
Chair, UCLA Department of Neurology
October 21, 1963
[Los Angeles]
Dear Dr. Rose,
I acknowledge receipt of your letter regarding the consumption of hospital supplies. I will in future regard them as sacrosanct. I feel compelled to make you a reply.
First: I have no clear recollection of there being any hospital regulation forbidding the consumption of hospital stores. But perhaps my memory is at fault here. Second: there has existed a cordial tradition, in all hospitals that I know of, that a Resident on duty may take a cup of milk or coffee etc. if he is thirsty. I have always regarded this as a courtesy, or unspoken privilege, rather than as an “infraction of regulations.” And this too is the view of many of my fellow-residents here, who have habitually availed themselves, as I have, of hospital milk from time to time. None of us have had any thought of crime or censure being involved. Third: it seems grossly reprehensible to me that the kitchen should report me in this fashion, without first intimating to me the state of affairs. To find oneself spied and informed upon in this fashion, while in complete ignorance of the situation, smacks more of a police-state than a University. Fourth: as my Professor, it is your duty to reprimand me, or deal otherwise with me, for infractions of hospital regulations or derelictions of moral standard. But as a man who has sponsored and supported me in the past, I might have hoped that you would at least have discussed the matter personally with me, before having your secretary type so accusing a letter. Fifth: I take strong exception to the moral aspersions implicit in your letter—if you regard me as a thief, I will make full restitution for the milk “stolen” (it must total at least $3), and take my leave at the end of the academic year.
I will no longer delude myself regarding the auspiciousness of my career at UCLA, having spoiled my academic record by the heinous sins of untidiness, unpunctuality, and slaking my thirst at the Ward Refrigerator. But you must know, as well as I, that a man is not the sum of his minor misdemeanours, but of his best endeavours. You are well aware that I am not devoid of intelligence or of serious interest in the neurological sciences, and I shall still nourish the hope that you will not entirely abandon me if I seek your support in finding myself a position elsewhere next year.
Yours truly,
Oliver Sacks
To Mr. Hobson
Los Angeles Department of Motor Vehicles
December 3, 1963
[Los Angeles]
Dear Mr. Hobson,
I have tried without success to contact you in the past couple of days, and so will now take the liberty of writing to you.
Despite scrupulous efforts to avoid the slightest infraction, I am afraid that I have compromised myself twice since my interview with you: once, by making a U-turn in a business district (a momentary inadvertence, on an empty road, for which I have been fined $10), and a speeding violation (75 mph) returning from San Francisco last weekend. In both cases the carelessness of an instant has blotted out the otherwise continuous caution I have exercised, and in both cases—unhappily—a patrol car materialized with the promptness of an avenging Fury! I am profoundly apprehensive of the effects of these two further violations, and am writing to you first to emphasize that both were due to momentary lapses for which I am exceedingly sorry, and secondly to enquire about my probable situation at this juncture.
There is little I can say in this letter which has not already been discussed by us. You are aware that I have accumulated a large number of violations in the past year, all of which are trifling in themselves (minor excesses of speed, for the most part, with no suggestion of reckless or dangerous driving), but which constitute a lethal indictment in their cumulative effect. You are aware that I have driven for fifteen years, more than 600,000 miles, under all possible conditions, without incident or accident, thus indicating my essential care and competence. You are aware, thirdly, that my life and career in California are critically dependent upon my having the use of my own transport: I have to commute between a number of hospitals here (UCLA, USC, Children’s, Pacific State, etc.), and the distances are vast. If my driving licence is suspended, I will have to give up my residency, tear up all my roots in California, and settle elsewhere. All of which would be tragic, brutal and unnecessary. Finally, I must hope that your intuition tells you that I am a serious and responsible member of the community, and have shown myself over the years an equally serious and responsible driver.
I shall strengthen my resolve to stay within the strictest letter of the law, and “make assurance doubly sure.”[*39] I shall force myself to concentrate and watch the speedometer etc. sixty seconds in the minute, rather than fifty-nine, and so do all I humanly can to avoid any further violations, and further embarrassment for you, me, or the Department of Motor Vehicles. I hope that I may receive charitable treatment, even though I have doubly trespassed on the patience of the Department.
It is, I fear, conceivable at this point that I have nevertheless passed beyond the tolerated limits, and that the suspension of my licence is now probable or certain. If this is so, I would like to be apprised of the situation as soon as possible, in order to start plans and preparations for leaving this state. I sincerely hope, however, that you will reassure me that the sands of time haven’t quite run out on me, although they have almost done so. I look forward to your early reply.
Yours truly,
Oliver Sacks, M.D.
To Elsie and Samuel Sacks
May 16, 1964
UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles
Dear Ma and Pa:
[…] I had perhaps concealed from you some of the vagaries of life at UCLA. There is, in general, less formality, but more rigidity, in American universities, compared to English ones. In consequence, some of my (comparatively harmless) idiosyncrasies—viz. untidiness, unpunctuality, huge size, waddling gait, mode of transport etc. etc.—had attracted amused but inimical attention, and even placed the tenure of my job in jeopardy. I was told that I had better reform, or wd find myself out of a job. With this sword of Damocles above my head, the more painful because I knew myself to be basically a good and responsible doctor, I naturally found myself in something of an anxiety state. An anxiety state which sometimes seems to be, let me add, a common and chronic symptom with many people in competitive academic circles.
On the other hand, there is one thing which they go for here even more than a bland conformity, and this is advertising. If a man shows himself an accomplished and prolific writer, if his papers are readily accepted for publication, then he is a most useful asset wherever he is, and some of his foibles may be passed over in consequence.
So far as I am concerned, Denver[*40] marked something of a turning point. I had been in very bad odour prior to the Academy meeting. But I scored (if I may be immodest) a triumph at Denver: I was widely complimented on my paper and received a number of tentative job offers the same day, from scattered centers here and there. I rather suddenly ceased to be Sacks the embarrassment, and became Sacks the ornament. Rose, my professor, who had been thoroughly upset about me, became overwhelmingly genial, discussed various things pretty freely with me.
The upshot of all this is roughly as follows. I find in myself a mounting interest in neuropathology. Cells being easier to deal with than people. I think I probably want to become a neuropathologist, or at least take a minimum of two years training in this subject. Good neuropathologists are excessively rare, and can command handsome posts and salaries wherever they go. People enter neuropathology from different areas—some from general pathology, some from neurology, some even from psychiatry. […] On the other hand, it would be utter folly for me not to finish my neurology residency, of which I have my last, and senior, year to go. Rose, in effect, has said to me: stay on at UCLA on your own terms. You will be, in name, Senior Resident in Neurology, and thus complete your formal residency requirements with us, but you may spend the year doing your beloved neuropathology. You are good at this, and your untidiness, unpunctuality etc. etc. really doesn’t matter too much over there. […]
In addition, it has been arranged that I should do a couple of Neurology Clinics a week (thus keeping my hand at clinical aspects, without being burdened by patient care on the wards), and also a number of complete postmortems, thus giving me at least a modest background in General Pathology. […]
