A book about the overthrow of the human mind, a right book that kept my curiosity at high levels until the last page. I thought the book doctor in Oliver Sacks, The man who confused his wife with a hat, reprint the Humanitas in 2011 (and translated to us too late, considering that in 1985 already appear in bookshops in London and New York)
I like books that, between the lines, risking some empty space for me, just to give me satisfaction and I write them myself. I like books that have confidence in my reader and subtlety that I do my whim to overlook those absurdities that plunge from time to time, pulling for me all come in their pages. Well, the man who confused his wife with a hat I had so much freedom of movement, that led me to wonder whether the much put in my sentences. However, I did not even replace the ambition of one who tells me stories. That the narrator recognized wholly in British-born neurologist and psychologist, established in America, Oliver Sacks (the folding picture book is explained by the authenticity of content, announced in the preface even the author), you probably know it the covers of books and Muzicofilia and awakening to life.
Mentioned above some "stories", well, it's a word enthusiast, such as "studies" are looks resigned to clear the nature of this book, which approximates the location and style between the technical-scientific and belletristic.
Structurally, the book combines four parts: losses, excesses, Transport and the poor in spirit world, bringing together analog situations of people who have unwittingly derived reality, and if to escape something politically incorrect normality. Sick people, in fact patients of the doctor Sacks real characters, usually without scenery, which the book does not seek to invent tolerance of social integration (they are usually self-sufficient or times unable to understand their neurological deviations and thus unaffected in a disturbing degree of it), but plans to ensure their innocence to be different. And if Sacks is far from being moralistic concerns, if not allies of Extrasensory rhetoric, what he succeeds brilliantly in return is to induce (important: not through language) prohibition to entertain us at the expense of patients, the they terrify us, for you see, in fine, as Sacks's mad goofy.
The first interaction with the title of this book, I could not help but let him call me metaphorically. The man who confused his wife with a hat and could only vaguely intriguing and hiding, of course, who had pondered depths. When I arrived in the middle of the homonymous story (though for my taste too eager located right in the first pages of the book) I found myself reading about a man who literally distinguished from an accessory image of a woman and that her foot entangled with the shoe. In fact, he could not understand the whole idea of ​​collective, entering the world through isolated features, inferring a more than a direct sensing. "Visually, it was lost in a world of inanimate abstractions" lost his reason any basic skill to handle issues, concrete. Lived, however, flawless music. Suffered agnozie (disorder manifested by inability to recognize people and objects). But the story remains somewhat disappointing suspended, it feels like a state and less as a narrative pace (and I refer to issues related to end of tail divagatiile over and artistic, a little shy).
Less noted was possessed Sacks in (this time stopped in excesses). Syndrome (super) Tourette makes a woman look distorted receiver of all gestures, grimaces belonging to others. Scene (for it is one) is even more impressive, with both runs in the street, away from peace interpretive neurologist's office. "As everyone, she loses her own self, becoming one". And when, after all imitation, was filled with others' regurgitation erupted in a vast, pantomime, the identity of the last 50 people guzzle a posedasera have popped out ".
Not an exercise of imagination is required to break even chance that the whole reality of the breast, the talc is not life, is life itself. And that goes for all the 24 cases collected by Sacks. We found real source of meaning, sometimes exploited enough. I felt creep Sacks, be wary of momentum in the literature is a mandatory, generally preferring to stay in the capsule explicabilului by science, and if it goes indrazneli impression and feeling usually happens speaking on behalf of other people account of universal culture (certain people). Basically, Sacks show shyness to become a fictional being, and that's a shame because it's the last bit of the book needs to look full. The truth is that he improvizieaza too much, and that vigilance is it not fantasy. Plus, eventually it's hard to believe he wants to teach me medicine and hence its reserves. I learned some interesting things and relatively accessible neuroscience field, I know now that Korsakoff's syndrome, which is afemia, proprioceptiunea so I did a "Postscript" compared with other patients in most chapters, but something makes me think that the point Sacks's not just to reproduce reality and that they keep some reserves for itself that I would be able to enjoy myself.
Twins who communicate through numbers, the woman can not feel your own body or that he heard music radio whenever the head tilts, the man who has removed several decades of life, people who have lost all capacity to understand written or spoken words, but perfectly able to understand the message of gestures - they believe all excuses. But as I said at the beginning, as readers, I give a little more recovery work. "Metaphors not only for the condition of modern medicine, but modern man," as New York Magazine says. I agree. And yet ... could be more.