On the Move: A Life
2015 • 397 pages
Ratings11
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings11
Average rating3.8
An impassioned, tender, and joyous memoir by the author of Musicophilia and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
When Oliver Sacks was twelve years old, a perceptive schoolmaster wrote in his report: "Sacks will go far, if he does not go too far." It is now abundantly clear that Sacks has never stopped going. From its opening pages on his youthful obsession with motorcycles and speed, On the Move is infused with his restless energy. As he recounts his experiences as a young neurologist in the early 1960s, first in California, where he struggled with drug addiction and then in New York, where he discovered a long-forgotten illness in the back wards of a chronic hospital, we see how his engagement with patients comes to define his life.
With unbridled honesty and humor, Sacks shows us that the same energy that drives his physical passions--weight lifting and swimming--also drives his cerebral passions. He writes about his love affairs, both romantic and intellectual; his guilt over leaving his family to come to America; his bond with his schizophrenic brother; and the writers and scientists--Thom Gunn, A. R. Luria, W. H. Auden, Gerald M. Edelman, Francis Crick--who influenced him. On the Move is the story of a brilliantly unconventional physician and writer--and of the man who has illuminated the many ways that the brain makes us human.
Series
2 primary booksOliver Sacks' memoirs is a 2-book series with 2 primary works first released in 2001 with contributions by Oliver Sacks.
Reviews with the most likes.
My love for Oliver Sacks is well-documented, and I am happy to report that his second memoir (covering much of his adult life, as his first focused on his childhood) is wonderful. He recounts his struggles to live his life fully as a gay man, his love for motorcycles, living his life in the United States while never becoming a citizen, weightlifting, and professional difficulties in practicing medicine which ultimately culminated in his extraordinary writing career. I loved it.
I must say I found the stories from Sacks' younger years quite astounding. The latter half though is profound, heartwarming and sad at times. In a different lifetime Sacks would probably have been a novelist.
This took me completely by surprise: it was not at all how I had imagined him. In his earlier books I always envisioned him as patient, kindly, avuncular. His case studies show great empathy and humor. What I hadn't expected was that he was a highly driven adrenaline junkie, living a fast intense life, the kind that exhausts me simply to read about. It has been both challenging and rewarding to alter my understanding of his life and work, to realize that there are many paths to compassion. I'm thankful to him for teaching me so much throughout my life.
Rounding down to three stars because the final third felt so disjointed; lacking cohesion or unity. It felt rushed. Understandable, of course.
