‘Letters’ review: A multilayered man’s life revealed in letters

Oliver Sacks: Letters ★★★★★
Edited by Kate Edgar
Picador

Dear Reader

If I were to mention “Oliver Sacks”, how would you describe him? “British neurologist”? Sure.

“Author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”? Also yes. 

But how about self-ascribed "‘astronomer of the inward’-meets-fervent letter writer”? 

For yes, Sacks was an epistle enthusiast par excellence, as is evident from this tome — selected and introduced by the erudite physician’s long-time editor, Kate Edgar — archiving five decades of Sacks’ written correspondence.

The first letter, dated August 2 1960 — and addressed to “Dear Ma and Pa, and, of course, Auntie Len” (his beloved Aunt Helena) — was written from Qualicum Beach, Vancouver Island, with the following excerpt capturing Sacks’ aptitude for descriptive writing and his undeniable joie de vivre: “All vegetation and animal life dies away as one climbs towards the summits, except moss campion, and various mosses and lichens ... It is possible to run down a mountain, and this is one of the most exciting experiences in the world. And I did run down that mountain — flew, it seemed — leaping from boulder to boulder, yelling and weeping and laughing all at once, miraculously exempt from fear or injury or fatigue.”

The final letter — written to Dan Frank, his editor at Alfred A. Knopf — was penned on August 15 2015 in New York, just 15 days before Sacks died of metastatic ocular melanoma. “Dear Dan, I am going down fast, and do not know how long I can hope to retain consciousness and coherence”, his opening sentence to Frank reads. The metastasis of Sacks’ cancer is a recurring topic in all his letters from February 2015 — shortly after he received the news he had metastases in the liver from the melanoma in his eye. 

Yet Sacks’ equanimity — and love for letter-writing — remains evident when he declares (on February 15) to his friend and swimming companion Nicholas Naylor-Leyland: “But, with luck, I should bounce back, for a time, to be able to enjoy life, to write, and (most important!) to see friends, those whom I love, and who have loved me. Not least — you. All my love, Oliver.” (And, yes, this brain doctor, who believed swimming was instinctive, swam until he died.)

Such was his love of laps that the index contains no less than 44 entries under “swimming”. It is in this selfsame index that you will find a mengelmoes of Sacks’ literary correspondents, including Björk, WH Auden, Susan Sontag, Robin Williams, Francis Crick and Peter Singer.

Illustrious names and references to Sacks’ aquatic activities aside, the index also includes subjects such as “cephalopods”, “motorcycles”, “parkinsonian space-time”, “automobiles as neurotic focus”, “creativity”, “Kabbalah”, “luminous seawater”, “playfulness”, and “religion and quantum theory” — all alphabetised evidence of a man with a plethora of knowledge and interests.  

A big editorial hurrah for the inclusion of footnotes, courtesy of Edgar, wherein she explicates medical terms in layperson’s language, shares background details about Sacks’ childhood, explains acronyms, and adds cross-references to the letters. 

An assortment of photographs — depicting his parents and brothers, Auntie Len, Harold Pinter, Nasa astronaut Marsha Ivins, patients at Beth Abraham Hospital, savant artist Stephen Wiltshire, and the author himself typing away in his office while wearing his favourite periodic table T-shirt — adds an extra visual dimension to an already multilayered man. 

From his love of breakfast buffets and his passion for complex neurological case studies to his struggles achieving recognition and acceptance (both in the medical field and as a gay man), Oliver Sacks poignantly, wittily, honestly and wisely shares his deeply colourful life with the reader — down to the letter.

Lekker lees!

Mila