Letters

Edgar—the longtime assistant, editor, and researcher for Sacks (1933–2015)—provides an intimate window into the neurologist’s personal and professional lives in this expansive collection of his correspondence. Sacks’s trademark lyricism is evident throughout. For instance, a 1960 message he wrote to his family describes the dour mood in British Columbia during a drought: “The sky is low and purple, even at midday, from the smoke of innumerable fires, and the air has a terrible stultifying heat and stillness.” Other entries offer insight into Sacks’s distinctive approach to medical practice, which he calls “a sort of love-affair” in a 1973 letter to poet Thom Gunn (“I cannot understand anything, I cannot approach it intellectually, except as a relation, in a sort of devotion or intimacy”). Numerous celebrity scientists number among the correspondents. For example, Sacks discusses face blindness with Jane Goodall and the “ ‘evolution’ of illness” with biologist Stephen Jay Gould. Letters to more obscure figures can be just as amusing (a groveling 1963 message implores the L.A. DMV not to suspend his license, despite his numerous traffic violations), and frequently more revealing (a series of 1965 exchanges traces the doomed love affair between Sacks and a Berlin-based Hungarian theater director). What emerges is a pointillistic portrait of an incredible intellect with all-too-human frailties and an insatiable curiosity about the human condition. This is an essential resource for understanding Sacks. (Nov.)