In an early letter, the 27-year-old Sacks recounts hiking in remote Canada and coming upon a man struggling with a leg injury. "I'm a doctor, can I help?" Sacks recalls asking him. "So am I," said another man approaching from a different trail. A fantastic coincidence, Oliver writes to his parents..." The letter goes on to note that both doctors were good Jewish boys, and then luxuriates in a description of the landscape, the hikes to come...
Over a lifetime, Sacks would journey far—from gay, bohemian California to a monastic life in New York. He also traveled from academic neuropathology to engaging and popular clinical tales about eccentric patients that revealed their humanity and ours as readers. Writing would be his way of seeking recognition, of staying connected with friends and family—and with his own experience.
In the past two decades, we have learned much about Sacks, the doctor and the man. In 2001, he published a charming memoir of his boyhood fascination with science, Uncle Tungsten, and then, shortly before he died of cancer in 2015, he brought out his autobiography, On the Move.
Around that time, he finally gave his friend Lawrence Weschler permission to reveal Sacks's homosexuality in an authorized biography; And How Are You, Dr. Sacks was released in 2019. And now we have Letters, grace...
Sacks's letters shared diverse insights about his personal experiences and relations, which helped him connect with his identity as a cherished figure in neurology.
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