Friday, January 4, 2008
Oliver Sacks: Uncle Tungsten
The science writer George Johnson said that Uncle Tungsten was the best science book he had ever read. And reading books about science is what Johnson has done his whole life. I had read things by Oliver Sacks, bits and pieces, here and there, but am now rolling forward with said book.
Sacks was always an appealing figure — his gentle manner, erudition, lack of affect; Sacks is a civilized man. But I also knew that sometimes people who on the surface are gentle-appearing and quiet in manner are repressed and can have negative aspects to their nature that leak out unexpectedly. I also was a bit suspicious of what seemed to me someone who was something of a fabulist, not trusting that the audience would share his wonder at things, and so enhanced the story and cued the audience. I'd prefer to just be told about the experience than prodded. We'll see…I'll be making some notes as I go along, reading and posting.
The first few chapters set the scene — it appears this will be a life in science. Sacks has the ability to remember his early sense of wonder with clarity and has admirably retained that sense into his maturity. This is no mean feat as cynicism and distraction can lead to a sour demeanor as experience whittles away energy and hope.
I have learned that it also is not always a feeling people experience in their youth (or sometimes, ever) — that sense of the innate mystery of things — a sore lack I think. But the world and its mystery were early with Sacks, and his difficult experience at a vulnerable age, being bullied by his fellow students and beaten by a crazy headmaster in WW11 Europe, elevated this sense of wonder about the physical world into a land of escape; science became a realm where things were perfect of their sovereign nature — a world in which to lose himself.