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Kind regards, The Sacks Team |
Dear readers,
Happy July 9th (the 86th anniversary of Oliver Sacks’s birth)! We are very excited to announce that Laura J. Snyder has begun working on the definitive biography of Oliver Sacks! Follow her on Twitter for progress updates. With exclusive access to Dr. Sacks’s vast archive of manuscripts, journals, correspondence, and photographs, Dr. Snyder has already unearthed some interesting surprises, including OWS’s notebook from his expedition to the Marine Research Station at Millport, Scotland in April-May 1950, when he was at St. Paul’s School. It could be considered his first “professional” field notebook.
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Oliver greatly admired Laura Snyder’s books, calling her “a masterly scholar and a powerful storyteller.” Her most recent book, Eye of the Beholder, explored how artists and scientists in seventeenth-century Holland changed the way we see the world. We suspect she will also have many fascinating new perspectives on how Oliver Sacks interacted with the science and culture of his own times.
We invite you to add your own stories and reflections to our archive: How did Oliver Sacks and his work affect your life? Did you know Dr. Sacks personally, or correspond with him?
We’d love to hear your stories and reflections. You can reply to this email, or write to biography@oliversacks.com.
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Did you know that Oliver Sacks once bought a house during a swim around New York’s City Island? He lived there for over twenty years.
In his upcoming essay collection Everything In Its Place, Dr. Sacks recalls, “I had stopped about halfway around to look at a charming gazebo by the water’s edge, got out and strolled up the street, saw a little red house for sale, was shown round it (still dripping) by the puzzled owners, walked along to the real estate agent and convinced her of my interest (she was not used to customers in swim trunks), reentered the water on the other side of the island, and swam back to Orchard Beach, having acquired a house in midswim.”
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Kind regards,
The Sacks Team
Please consider supporting the nonprofit Oliver Sacks Foundation. Thank you.
Everything in Its Place, the final collection of essays by Oliver Sacks, will be available on April 23, 2019.
Publishers Weekly calls it “a treat for the chronically curious.”
They write: “In this lovely collection of previously unpublished essays, the late, celebrated author and neurologist Oliver Sacks muses on his career, his youth, the mental health field, and much more. . . .”
“Sacks’s gentle, ruminative voice is a salve when investigating difficult subject matter, but there are plenty of lighter moments as well. . . . Piercingly insightful and delightfully strange, Sacks’ final collection is a treat for the chronically curious.”
An early excerpt from the book, in which Dr. Sacks writes about the neurological effects of our digital devices, appears in The New Yorker’s February 11, 2019 issue. Another excerpt, about Alzheimer’s and identity, will be in the New Yorker’s March 4 issue (available February 25).
We’ve been finding lots of intriguing journals, photos, and letters in Dr. Sacks’s huge archive, and we will be sharing some of these with you on our social media, including our new Instagram account. Follow us for updates on new projects, photos from the archive, and more.
Dr. Sacks was recently the subject of a BBC Great Lives program. Hear his partner, Bill Hayes, and neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan sharing stories of his life and work.
The Oliver Sacks Foundation is dedicated to honoring and continuing the legacy of Dr. Oliver Sacks and reducing the stigma of mental and neurological illness. We thank you for your support.
Best wishes from The Sacks Team!