va­ni­ty­fair.com: Oli­ver Sacks, Be­fo­re the Neu­ro­lo­gist’s Can­cer and New York Times Op-Ed   #

law­rence we­sch­ler über oli­ver sacks. an­läss­lich der in kür­ze ver­öf­fent­lich­ten au­to­bio­gra­fie von oli­ver sacks, ver­öf­fent­licht law­rence we­sch­ler auch ein paar no­ti­zen sei­ner frü­hen ge­sprä­che mit ihm:

He re­spects facts, he tells me, and he has a sci­en­tist’s pas­si­on for pre­cis­i­on. But facts, he in­sists, must be em­bedded in sto­ries. Sto­ries—peo­p­le’s sto­ries—are what re­al­ly have him hoo­ked.

Sacks has no ro­man­tic love of the ir­ra­tio­nal, nor does he wor­ship the ra­tio­nal. He speaks of their in­ter-pe­ne­tra­ti­on, as of a gar­den—de­li­ri­um, boun­ded and ta­med back just en­ough to al­low for hu­ma­ne li­ving. The ir­ra­tio­nal needs to be mas­te­red into per­so­na­li­ty. But at the same time, tho­se who have been vi­si­ted by the­se ir­ra­tio­nal fires­torms, and sur­moun­ted them, are so­mehow deeper hu­man beings, more pro­found per­sons, for the ex­pe­ri­ence.

“Part of this time I spent in Ca­li­for­nia, do­ing my re­si­den­cy at U.C.L.A. I li­ved on Ve­nice Beach, dis­gu­i­sed to mys­elf as a mus­cle buil­der at the open-air jungle gym. I was quite sui­ci­dal: I took every drug, my only prin­ci­ple be­ing 'E­very dose an over­do­se.’ I used to race mo­tor­cy­cles in the San­ta Mo­ni­ca Moun­ta­ins. Ap­par­ent­ly I crea­ted so­me­thing of a ruckus at the U.C.L.A. hos­pi­tal: I would take some of the pa­ti­ents, the M.S. vic­tims and the pa­ra­ple­gics who hadn’t mo­ved in ye­ars—they’d ask me and I’d take them out, strap­ped to my back, mo­tor­cy­cling in the moun­ta­ins.

Olga, who has Par­kin­son’s, gets whee­led in. Oli­ver asks her to stand up, and she has a ter­ri­ble time, strugg­ling to rise up from her wheel­chair—but then Oli­ver has her sit down, and he holds out two hands, a sin­gle ex­ten­ded fin­ger pro­tru­ding from each, and she clut­ches the fin­gers and gets up ef­fort­less­ly. “See: you share your ac­tion with them,” he comm­ents to me.

als ich sacks bü­cher zum ers­ten mal las, wa­ren sie eine of­fen­ba­rung. eine of­fen­ba­rung wie man men­schen be­trach­ten und ver­ste­hen kann und was man al­les über men­schen ver­ste­hen kann, wenn man em­pa­thie, ver­ständ­nis und zu­nei­gung zu ih­nen hat.

die­ser ar­ti­kel von law­rence we­sch­ler ist wie al­les von und über oli­ver sacks sehr le­sens­wert.