An Anthropologist on Mars : Paradoxical Tales

Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary; a work of genius
Review: These are true tales from a clinical neurologist's notebook, but this isn't just any neurologist. Oliver Sacks, author of the justly celebrated, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1986) and Awakenings (1973), which was later made into a movie starring Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams, and other works, is a gifted writer with a fine sense of story and an even finer sense of humanity. He has a style, how shall I say, both affecting and fascinating, yet studiously objective, a style laced with footnotes and clinical observations, historical comparisons and wisdom. Part of the power of these tales, and of all of Sacks's work, is his ability to be totally engaged and to identify with the subject while part of him is off to the side observing with scientific impartiality. This makes for a compelling read. If you've never read Sacks before, you are in for a very special treat.

These tales are paradoxical because "Defects, disorders, diseases" can bring out "latent powers, developments, evolutions, forms of life, that might never be seen or even be imaginable, in their absence." It is this "<creative> potential, that forms the central theme of this book" (from Sacks's Preface, page xvi).

The first tale, "The Case of the Colorblind Painter" is about a successful artist who worked in color all his life only to became colorblind at age sixty-five, and the effect this had on his life and work. The second, "The Last Hippie" is about an amnesiac man with a frontal lobe tumor that left him stranded in the sixties. Sacks tells this sad, pathetic story with vivid detail, and characteristically ends it with a footnote, a footnote of such warmth and genuine identification that we are moved to tears. (Don't skip the footnotes!)

The third tale, "A Surgeon's Life," is an amazing account of a Canadian surgeon with Tourette's syndrome. It is here that we begin to see the central theme of this book in brilliant illumination. Dr. Carl Bennett, riddled with the bizarre tics characteristic of the disorder, compulsions that cause him to throw things, to touch things again and again in a ritualistic manner, to flail, jump and jerk about, nonetheless became a very successful (and beloved) doctor of surgery. Sacks scrubs up with Dr. Bennett and goes into surgery with him, during which, miraculously, the tics disappear for however long it takes to complete the surgery. Sacks visits him at home and meets his wife and two children, sees the dents in the refrigerator and on the walls, and comes away with a sense of how astounding the human potential to overcome adversity can be.

The fourth tale, "To See and Not See," is about partially restored sight and how it was not a blessing. This sad story illustrates how sight is learned from infancy and is largely a constructive and interpretive function of the brain. This tale also lets us see how the world of the sightless can be rich and fulfilling beyond our imagination.

In the fifth tale, "The Landscape of His Dreams, we meet a gifted artist, Franco Magnani, who from memory alone recreates his home town of Pontito, Italy through his paintings. He has a nearly photographic, three-dimensional memory, but because of a strange illness that befell him when he was thirty-one, he cares only to re-create his Pontito, not the people or events, but the houses, the masonry, the stones, and he does so continually with microscopic and affecting detail.

The chapter "Prodigies," focuses on an autistic artist, Stephen Wiltshire, whom Sacks is determined to befriend and understand. In this tale, and the concluding tale, "An Anthropologist on Mars," Sacks helps us to penetrate the world of the autistic and see it (at least in my interpretation) as an alternate view of reality, a view with its own strengths and weaknesses, a world that is just as true and valid as the "normal" one. Of course severe autism is debilitating in the extreme, and even modest autism can permanently scar and alienate the autistic from society. Yet, perhaps that is society's loss. I even got the sense, in reading these concluding stories about autism, that perhaps theirs is an evolutionary "strategy" trying to emerge, that is, a different way of seeing and dealing with the world that also might work. I would not be shocked to discover some day that the autistic, with their sometimes extraordinary gifts of memory and concentration, are melded more completely and seamlessly into our usual consciousness, and that humankind is the better for it. Incidentally, the last tale about Temple Grandin, who is a professor of animal studies at Colorado State University, is remarkable because it is about an autistic who is completely integrated into the society, yet remains autistic. She is the one who says she sometimes feels, because of her different perspective, like "an anthropologist on Mars" when she views "normal" people. Sacks allows us to see why.

Bottom line: this is an extraordinary book of insight and scholarship about the human condition, written with grace and a deep sense of humanity, not to be missed.

Rating:
Summary: powerfull book
Review: this books proves that when certain parts in a person mind may back lacking other my be more than other pepoles.this was a great book the essays are very moving and really make you feel for there subjects.i espically enjoyed the two autism articles.

Rating:
Summary: Words don't express how good this book is, seriously.
Review: This is one of my top three favorite books of all time (and I'm a huge reader). It's amazing; the stories are true, but they are so far-out that the book title couldn't be more perfect. Neurological disorders create some of most fascinating situations & persons I've ever read about (including fiction!). Highly entertaining, educational, funny, & absolutely fascinating. Obviously I can't suggest this book highly enough. I have to keep re-buying it because I give it away all the time. It's the favorite book of a friend of mine as well- two reviews in one here. Oliver Sacks has terrific stories to share. His intelligent, witty & thoughtful writing is a bonus.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, puzzling, and poignant
Review: This is the first Oliver Sacks book I've read and I found it fascinating and informative. Once I started a case history I was hard-put to stop reading until I found out the end result. I particularly enjoyed the stories about the amnesiac Greg and the colorblind artist. Sacks puts a human face on insights about how our brains work in an intellectually stimulating yet emotionally touching way. I found the story about Virgil, the blind man who gets his sight back and must learn how to see in his 50s particularly heart-wrenching. The only story I bailed out on was about an autistic woman who works in a cattle slaughterhouse. (I could not handle the graphic nature of the story.) I definitely recommend this book if you appreciate shows like Nova or if you watch Discovery television. Anyone who wants to know more about the mysteries of our human brains will be enriched by this book.

Rating:
Summary: A unique view of what it means to be human.
Review: We all have wondered how our brains work, but this book explores the subject in a novel and compelling way. Through case studies of the more interesting of his neurology subjects over the years, Dr. Sacks speculates on the need for language, our perceptions of the world, and how we think. Stimulating and intriguing, I enjoyed this book and look forward to more from Dr. Sacks.

Rating:
Summary: The state-of-the-art in science & poetry based neurology
Review: We see and interact with this world the way our central nervous system allows us to. And this form may be completely altered or shattered by a neurologic disease. In "An Anthropologist on Mars", sensitive Oliver Sacks shows us seven of his patients, with different illnesses, who gained a new world, a new adaptation, provided by alterations on their brain. More than showing physiopathologic aspects, Sacks' incredible sense of style and knowledge transmit the world the way THEIR PATIENTS see it, and so creates the concept of "creative disease", the productive side of a disease. Also included are congenital entities, such as autism, and even its aspects on the patient's life and the way it influenced its work is seen with profound humanity. Pleasant, informative and "eye-opening" is what I'd call this great book. Andre Troiano ([e-mail]), Florianopolis, Brasil.

Rating:
Summary: Color blindness and autism
Review: What if a painter is color blind. Absolute color blindness is a rare condition. Sacks encountered a painter who had been injured. The color blindness experienced meant to the painter that everything appeared wrong. He particularly missed the colors of spring. Things were leaden. The artist did derive pleasure from looking at drawings. He did start painting again, black and white paintings. As time passed there was evidenced in the painting a lessening of fear and depression.

Sacks describes a a surgeon with Tourette's syndrome. Writers on temporal lobe epilepsy have spoken of the doubling of consciousness. One of the subjects of the essays, Franco, has a prodigious memory and a gift for painting. He paints the town of his boyhood incessantly. His Pontito is minutely accurate. Returning to the town was not the intense experience Franco expected. Everything seemed small.

Sacks writes of the savant syndrome in a child called Stephen, an accomplished artist. He has extraordinary powers of visual perception. Savant talents seem to have a more autonomous even automatic quality than normal ones.

The anthropologist on Mars is Temple Grandin. Her work devising cattle chutes is described. She is constantly trying to understand her own autism.

Oliver Sack's medical stories are sui generis. Running into them is always a delight.

Rating:
Summary: Color blindness and autism
Review: What if a painter is color blind. Absolute color blindness is a rare condition. Sacks encountered a painter who had been injured. The color blindness experienced meant to the painter that everythin appeared wrong. He particularly missed the colors of spring. Things were leaden. The artist did derive pleasure from looking at drawings. He did start painting again, black and white paintings. As time passed there was evidenced in the painting a lessening of fear and depression.

Sacks describes a a surgeon with Tourette's syndrome. Writers on temporal lobe epilepsy have spoken of the doubling of consciousness. One of the subjects of the essays, Franco, has a prodigious memory and a gift for painting. He paints the town of his boyhood incessantly. His Pontito is minutely accurate. Returning to the town was not the intense experience Franco expected. Everything seemed small.

Sacks writes of the savant syndrome in a child called Stephen, an accomplished artist. He has extraordinary powers of visual perception. Savant talents seem to have a more autonomous even automatic quality than normal ones.

The anthropologist on Mars is Temple Grandin. Her work devising cattle chutes is described. She is constantly trying to understand her own autism.

Oliver Sack's medical stories are sui generis. Running into them is always a delight.

Rating:
Summary: Who else but Oliver Sacks can make neurology this readable?
Review: What intricacies lie in the minds of men? Only Oliver Sacks, in this new attempt at bringing the principals and studies of neurology to the common reader by sharing with us these case stories in anecdotal form, can provide such an enlightening answer, leaving us 'neurotic' and waiting for more

Rating:
Summary: Headache? Just read about these poor folks
Review: With the format and style of the earlier "The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat", each chapter describing a patient suffering from a particularly unusual and often spectacular neurological disorder, Sacks successfully shows how poor our understanding of the functioning of our own minds really is. More than ever his primary focus is the human aspect of mental affliction, the emotional trauma involved, presumably so he can appeal to a wider audience. I feel that the earlier book actually has the best material and is certainly a better choice if picking one title. Though the cases in "The Anthropologist" are hardly dull, it does seem a little long winded and repetitive in places - is he paid by the page? Perhaps others would disagree, but I would prefer to see more of the clinical speculation and brain-function theorizing. This is my only criticism for what is for the most part provocative and illuminating reading.