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Neurologist Oliver Sacks may be best known as a chronicler of his patients and their fascinating conditions, but his first love in life was chemistry. The author of such poignant case studies as Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat shares his enthusiasm for the subject in his new book, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood (Alfred A. Knopf, $25), which went on sale Oct. 16.
A delightful, bittersweet memoir, Uncle Tungsten combines Sacks's memories of growing up the youngest son of two doctors in war-torn London with his childhood forays in chemistry. It was a passion that was to sustain him through four years of abuse as an evacuee living apart from his parents in rural England, and one that still lingers in his imagination to this day.
BusinessWeek Associate Editor Diane Brady recently met with Sacks, a 36-year Manhattan resident, to discuss the book and his thoughts about his adopted hometown in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.
Q: What made you decide to write about yourself?
A: It wasn't intended. Four years ago, I was about to start another book on aging. Then I got diverted, partly by a parcel that came from a chemist friend. It contained various things, including this little bar of tungsten. So I thought I'd write a couple of pages on Uncle Dave [his mother's brother, who manufactured lightbulbs at a company called Tungstalite]. He was known as Uncle Tungsten. That became a couple of million words.
Q: A couple of million words?
A: Yes...95% was not used. I've never had such a high throw-out rate.... I'm very fond of the rare earth elements, as it happens, and I had a few chapters on that.... I had a whole chapter on beer.
Q: You're a big proponent of "street neurology," or analyzing people as they go about their lives. Tell me what you've seen around New York since September 11.
A: I was down on the site of Ground Zero on [Oct. 13] and spent all night there. I still have a cough. I didn't wear my gas mask for the first two hours, and I should have because of all the benzene and sulfuric acid and the smoke and asbestos and God knows what.
I was away when it happened, teaching at Cornell. When I came back 10 days later, I sensed the change instantly, in seconds. It was the way people would look you in the eye -- somehow searching, reaching, indicating that we were all in this together. And I walked around the shrines and the pictures and the walls of memories. One senses a changed New York -- especially down at Ground Zero, where I was talking to firemen and policemen and sanitation workers and everyone else.
Q: What did you talk about?
A: Just about the event and the work they were doing, and the immense sense of camaraderie and unity among the people. There were a lot of people from Canada, funnily enough. If anything like this has a good side, it's the pulling together.
Q: How has the city changed?
A: There's more of a unity -- a rather scared unity, and a rather suspicious, nervy one now. One is concerned about the Arabs and Sikhs who might get attacked. I have a patient from Kuwait who is scared to go outside now.
Q: Do you see any analogies with London during the war?
A: When I saw the fireball on television, I recoiled on my chair. It reminded me very much of what I'd seen in London. And, again, when I went to the huge, Babylonian ruins at Ground Zero, I was reminded sometimes of the East End of the city, converted to rubble. But nothing was on this scale. The difference is that in the war, morale was high, and the enemy was clear.
Q: I was struck in your book by your description of America -- "the idyllic ease and sweetness of life" in Cannery Row, the self-confidence of the soldiers, the bigger-than-life spontaneity. Do you think some of that is now lost?
A: Certainly, when I came in 1960, there was a love affair with America. I think it was partly the physical features -- the mountains, the desert, the oceans, the vegetation. It was partly the appeal of a classless society. In England, you are categorized the moment you open your mouth. On Saturday, my accent was no bar to talking with the firemen or the policemen. It's a shame that it's more difficult in England.
The third thing that attracted me was the excitement of the early Kennedy years. My visions as a boy in the 1940s came from the pages of Life. Has it changed? I suspect things will be different for the whole world.
Q: Do you feel any differently about New York?
A: I feel fonder of the city. I feel closer to being a New Yorker. I wish I'd been here when it happened. I've been here for 36 years, although I'm still formally a resident alien. I sort of like the feeling of being a visitor. It may go with some of the sense of not belonging, although I'm not sure that I feel terribly English or terribly Jewish or terribly anything.
Q: Has the surge of patriotism following the recent attacks made you nervous?
A: In general, I'm worried about patriotism and gun-toting. Gun-toting is particularly unintelligible to a European. The right to bear arms sounds mad to me. But I think it's very reasonable right now to clutch the flag. I don't do so myself because I'm not a flag-clutcher, and it's not my flag.
Q: Have the recent bioterrorism scares fascinated you in any way?
A: I have a friend who was a boy bacteriologist in the same way that I was a boy chemist. As a boy in Boston, he could order up all sorts of lethal things from biological houses.
If I had been malicious or careless as a boy, I could have done a great deal of harm -- even with my things.... I don't think [children] today could have a chemical lab like the one I had. You know, when I tried [recently] to get some elements for my research from a chemical company, I got a phone call saying, "What is this. Who are you? Are you attached to any institution? Who gave you this catalog?" I said, "My chemical friend, Roald Hoffman." They said, "He's a bona fide chemist?" I said, "Well, he won a Nobel prize in chemistry." They still wouldn't send me anything.
Q: But isn't it heartening to know that others can't get their hands on these dangerous materials either?
A: It certainly isn't that easy to get anthrax into the right form. This is not kitchen chemistry. The real horror would be if someone reintroduces smallpox. That spreads very quickly, and we're all unvaccinated now. But if smallpox were released, it would be as likely to wipe out Islam as anything else.
Q: What is your next project?
A: This little book on Mexico -- The Oaxaca Journal -- is done. We're all distracted and find it hard to compose ourselves after what happened. But I think the next big thing will be a book on aging and/or a book of raw clinical notes. I've kept all of them for the past 35 years, and I think they give a sense of the immediate encounter between the patient and the doctor. I have no idea how I would organize this.
There are some other things -- a wonderful case history of a patient I'm seeing, a musician...who codes things according to color and position and location. After my holiday in autobiographies and Mexico and botany, it will be back to case histories for me.
Edited by Patricia O'Connell
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