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Letters by Oliver Sacks review

The kaleidoscopic world and polymathic interests of a great neurologist brought to life in his correspondence

Unleashed in a self-described “volcanic logorrhoea” that typifies his writing style, these letters variously consider botany, etymology, entomology, geology, neurology, and literature; the tussle between xenophobia and xeniality in Star Trek; the “phantasmagoric-comic unconscious” of actor Robin Williams. Despite these excisions, Letters leaves one with the overwhelming impression of a brilliant and vivid mind, a man whose intellectual appetite was vast, and whose professional and creative passions – far from being the self-absorbed obsessions of a pedant – were first and foremost an act of reaching out, the means through which he sought to communicate with others, a “love affair with the world”. As a man of 30, dallying with powerlifting, Sacks routinely bragged to his parents about his weight, how much he could lift, the amount he ate – “I love to shake the pavement as I walk, to part crowds like the prow of a ship.” At Mount Zion, special scrubs had to be made to accommodate his bulk, and he found himself in disfavour with his superiors for stealing patients’ food.

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