The Island of the Colorblind by Oliver Sacks

The Island of the Colorblind
by Oliver Sacks
Alfred A Knopf, 1997
298 pages

There is something about the way that Oliver Sacks writes that I find both enchanting and vaguely uncomfortable. His narrative is always intensely personal in a way that can be delightful -- accessible, charming, and incredibly smart -- but also slightly uncomfortable, because, as he admits himself, he can be querulous and anxiety-prone, and the reader can't help but pick up on that sometimes. His writing reveals a rather intimate portrait. It's not annoying, but it's the sort of thing that we're conditioned to politely look away from, I think? But Sacks always lays it all out there on the line, without drawing undue attention to his neuroses. I suspect, being a neurologist, he's more aware than most of his own tendencies.

Island of the Colorblind is a travel journal, more like Oaxaca Journal than The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, which is rather the opposite of what I was expecting. Unlike Oaxaca Journal, though, the purpose of Sacks' travel in this case was based in his job as a neurologist. It's split into two parts, the first being a chronicle of his journey to the titular island, a tiny atoll called Pingelap, and the second being a chronicle of his unrelated journey to Guam. The thread holding the two together is very thin indeed, but could be identified as his interest in islands and the biological consequences of isolation. In both cases, he made his journey to investigate a neurological phenomenon present in abnormally high numbers on their respective islands: on Pingelap, achromatopia, a complete colourblindness; on Guam, lytico-bodig, a serious and extremely complicated neurodegenerative disease showing remarkable likenesses to his post-encephalitic patients back in New York. However, don't let the fact that he's there as a neurologist fool you; Oliver Sacks is in love with plants, so we get plenty of information and exposure to the botanical life on the islands as well. Overall, it's a fascinating melding of neuroscience, botany, history, and culture that makes for really interesting reading.

Interesting, but not always comfortable. The first chapter, "Island Hopping," sounds like it might be a relatively pleasant way to start the book, but it was easily the most depressing chapter. It's not Sacks' fault, as he's working with the material he's given: specifically, a rather arduous airplane journey through the Marshall Islands before they get to Pingelap, in the Carolines. These were inhabited at one point, many of them, pre-American nuclear testing. Some of the experiences Sacks has on his way to tiny Pingelap are harrowing (from a damaged plane to an enforced landing on a brutally military island) and the brief notes he makes about some of the islands are extremely unsettling. Throughout the book there are often small hints of bleakness; discussing the diet of the islanders and its reliance on Spam, melancholy notes about environmental degradation, comments on the historical treatment of the island cultures by various colonial powers.

And when I say notes, I also mean endnotes; some of the bleakest stuff has been relegated to the [wonderfully eclectic and comprehensive] endnotes. I usually prefer footnotes, but some of these are so long as to be completely unmanageable. I tended to read the full chapter, then read the notes for the chapter second; they were almost a full chapter in themselves. None of them are, by definition, integral to the narrative or the understanding of the book, but they make the reading a richer experience.

Interesting to think that this was published nearly twenty years ago now, with the trips themselves being earlier; many of the people Sacks met are likely dead or retired, and many of the environments he saw are likely changed beyond recognition; one wonders, for example, if Pingelap can survive a sea-level rise? A sobering thought amongst several sobering thoughts brought to light by this book.

Sacks is especially good when he gets talking about his passions. The entire last chapter of the book, "Rota," is basically about cycads. Along with ferns, these are a particular passion and fascination of Sacks', and in this chapter he is both whimsical and whip-smart, so incredibly learned that he talks well above this reader's head, but I didn't mind. His enthusiasm carried me along. He takes much knowledge on the reader's part for granted, without making one feel stupid if one didn't follow exactly what he was talking about. In fact, it got this reader more excited about looking things up than frustrated with my lack of knowledge. I'm more excited than ever, too, about reading Darwin, which I have been meaning to do for ages. Leading a reader to want to learn more, in a passionate and immediate way, is a special gift that some nonfiction writers have, and some don't. Sacks has it in spades.

Not just for the topics, either, but also for words themselves. Sacks has a remarkable vocabulary and he's not afraid to use it. My favourite word from the book, favourite enough that it has entered my functional vocabulary, is "horripilation" -- synonymous with, but so much more delicious and specific than, goose bumps, and obscure enough that I haven't found a spellchecker familiar with it yet.

"At one point," he added, "people wondered if the lytico might be caused by some similar kind of fish poisoning -- but we've never found any evidence of this."

Thinking of the delectable sushi I had looked forward to all day, I was conscious of a horripilation rippling up my spine. "I'll have chicken teriyaki, maybe an avocado roll -- no fish today," I said.

It is interesting to me that overall the sections on botany and culture made far more of an impression on me than the neuroscience parts of the book did. I think the second part, set on Guam, is a stronger piece overall than the first, set on Pingelap; the first seemed a bit more rambling and less focused, and also one gets the faint impression that Sacks, while he enjoyed himself, wasn't quite as engaged. On Guam, however, he unfolds the mystery of lytico-bodig disease for the reader with careful precision, making connections and sharing his admiration for his host. And the final chapter, as mentioned above, deals with lytico-bodig not at all, but with cycads, which Sacks clearly loves and thinks are utterly worthy of everyone's attention, interest, and respect.

I don't think this is the best Sacks I've ever read, but it was thoroughly enjoyable, and I'm very glad I read it. Chewy without being intimidating, and very very readable, as Sacks always is. Recommended for popular science junkies, people with an interest in islands, armchair travelers, and anyone who is open to learning something new.

Oaxaca Journal by Oliver Sacks

Before we went to Cuba, I had been intending to read Oliver Sacks' Oaxaca Journal. I had it sitting on my desk for an unreasonably long amount of time. I brought it with me with the vague idea that I might read it, and it turned out to be an excellent choice. It's not very long and it is, like anything I have ever read by Sacks, a very engaging read. The man is brilliant at both observation and at making his observations accessible to the masses in writing.

On the third page, this stuck out for me, as I was enjoying the rarefied atmosphere of an all-inclusive, five-star resort:

How crucial it is to see other cultures, to see how special, how local they are, how un-universal one's own is.

We stayed at a resort, but the last time I was in Cuba I didn't. And this time we did get out to see a [surprisingly] large portion of the countryside for a day. I always have this uncomfortable feeling about traveling as a tourist anywhere. Especially Cuba, because I frankly adore the ideal of the place (there is food, shelter, education and medical care for every single Cuban, and what a necessary thing) but I also recognize that there are significant major problems with the way the system actually works. I dislike what the American government has done to Cuba, but I'm not sure that as a Canadian tourist I'm all that much better, coming to gawk at the wonderful old buildings and romanticize Castro's Revolution. I don't know how to feel about a place where everyone has the basics for a good life but they don't have the freedom to travel the way I do, or read the way I do, or express their own views the way I do. I don't know the answers, and it does trouble me. Especially because I do love Cuba so much, and the time I spent there this time didn't lessen that (I have an acute case of wanting to be in Cuba all the time now). It adds tension to what would otherwise be a really lovely, relaxing vacation. But I'm glad I have that tension.

All of that said, Cuban culture is completely, completely different from Canadian culture and there's a lot to be said for it, and how is it my place to condemn a way of life that I have very limited understanding of? And that is what the quote above reminded me to be aware of, that obnoxious colonial tendency to try to evaluate and "fix" cultures that are different from our own.

Mexico has different problems, the main being the massive amounts of poverty and governmental corruption. Sacks doesn't dwell on this but he does give it a mention. And it's nice to see the same sort of ambiguity I have about traveling to places as a relatively wealthy tourist, just expressed from a different angle and much more eloquently than I could. It was somewhat comforting to read, not because it resolved any of my thoughts but because it did clarify them somewhat, and made me relax a little knowing that I'm not alone.

All right, that's probably enough angst. On to the book itself:

The things Sacks has to say about Oaxaca are fascinating, and now I would very much like to go to that area myself (tourist-guilt aside). We get glimpses of his travel companions, and the novelty of traveling with a group of naturalists. Make no mistake -- it's a novelty. I really enjoy it, myself. There is something great about being able to shout excitement about a bird to a bus full of people and have them scramble all over eachother to get to the windows to see for themselves. In any other case, your fellow passengers would stare at their books or their shoes in embarrassment for you and hope for your sake that you keep quiet next time. But Sacks captures the thrilled naturalist-tourists quite well.

The journal is, as I suppose I should have expected, even more personal than his memoir. There were points where I was occasionally even a little uncomfortable with how personal it was, because I don't like to pry into other living people's thoughts (despite what some of my readers might think). It's not that he says anything specifically -- it's just that put all together, and probably because I have also recently read Uncle Tungsten, one gets a much fuller picture of Sacks than I was expecting, and sometimes it make me wonder if he realized quite how much of himself he was exposing.

Overall, a highly recommended book, for anyone at all because it's so quick and easy to read. But especially for anyone who is traveling to Mexico or Latin America, or anyone interested in ferns, nature or culture. I'm curious now to see about some of the others in the National Geographic's literary writers on travel series, of which Oaxaca Journal is part.

Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks

In some ways I don't feel fit to review this book. I could never do it justice, which I suppose says something in itself. It is enormous, in some ways as large as the entire history of chemistry itself. It is also a portrait of one man's very difficult, lonely, eccentric and also wonderful childhood, and in places is almost frighteningly intimate. It's a bit of a paradox, because in some ways it seems so huge, and in others it seems so inadequately small, and the reader gradually becomes aware of just what could have been written, and how large that is. I think that's a fitting feeling for a memoir to have.

It's not that the book aspires to be grand, or that it is pretentious in any way. It's tremendously humble. It's also somewhat painfully incomplete without its Afterword, and I think the Acknowledgements finish the book better than the last chapter did. The "ending" is as abrupt as a surprise brick wall.

Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood is a thick, chewy book that despite its thickness and its chewiness is an infinitely easy read. The writing is eminently accessible. It offers only glimpses into what must have been a truly remarkable family, and reads like a tribute to many of the Sacks and the Landaus as much as a memoir. The book itself is somewhat fragmentary, sewn together with a long and meandering thread of the history of chemistry and sometimes, but mostly not, seems like more of a history of chemistry itself than an autobiographical piece by a neurologist. But it was a history of chemistry that was accessible enough that I began to remember how fascinating I used to find chemistry myself, before school killed it for me. It makes me sad that the home chemistry lab is basically a relic of the past. I think it's probably wrong that I secretly think the kid who recently blew off his fingers trying to make a rocket in his garage is awesome. Most parents wouldn't let their kids anywhere near anything that might possibly be a little bit dangerous -- Sacks, on the other hand, had uranium compounds in his lab as a boy of twelve.

There are parts of this book that are heartbreaking. Sacks touches on -- though never dwells on -- the abuse he suffered at a residential school during WWII, and the abuse and bullying that apparently literally drove his older brother mad. Though understated, the reader gets the deep sense of how dreadfully lonely Sacks must have been at points in his childhood, battered by circumstances beyond his control. But for Sacks, as a boy, there were also supportive, caring, highly intelligent adults and siblings. And there was chemistry. There was the history of chemistry and the giants of discovery (an entire chapter is devoted to Humphrey Davy, for example, who I had only vaguely heard of before), and there are also the actual elements and experiments and apparatuses themselves, each described in enthusiastic, awe-filled detail. The book reads like a love letter to chemistry.

The fact that I did enjoy it as much as I did is a testament to Oliver Sacks as a talented and very human writer. I haven't decided which of Oaxaca Journals, The Island of the Colorblind, An Anthropologist on Mars, or Musicophilia I should read next. Or any of his others. Probably the first I get my hands on.