My Book Pick: On the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks

Aichi Insurance Physicians’ Newspaper

April 5, 2016

Oliver Sacks

Vintage

2016 | $20.00

Kotaro Takamura's famous poem Michi ("The Road") proclaims, "There is no road before me; the road is made behind me." The title of this autobiography, On the Move, evokes that same spirit of forging one's own path. It is the memoir of neurologist and celebrated author Oliver Sacks, best known for Awakenings, which inspired the film of the same name depicting the L-DOPA treatment of patients with encephalitis lethargica.

Born into a family of physicians in Britain, where virtually all of his siblings also became doctors, Sacks seemed destined to enter medicine. Yet he reveals that his true dream was to become a scientist. After moving to the United States, he pursued that ambition but eventually abandoned it, choosing instead the path of clinical medicine.

Sacks also candidly comes out as gay, describing his sexuality with striking honesty and occasionally explicit detail. Such openness must have required considerable courage, although, facing the end of his life without close family responsibilities, he may have felt freer to tell his story. At the same time, he recalls his youth as an intensely masculine man, devoted to weightlifting and motorcycle riding. Weightlifting symbolizes raw physical strength, while motorcycles evoke the twentieth-century cowboy spirit. Although same-sex relationships have existed in many closed communities—such as Kabuki theater, the Takarazuka Revue, the world of sumo, the military, and prisons—Sacks's experiences belonged to ordinary society, underscoring that his homosexuality was not a product of circumstance.

Few physicians have achieved worldwide fame as writers. Oliver Sacks, Michael Crichton, and A. J. Cronin are among the rare exceptions. When I once remarked to an acquaintance, "Sacks's book is fascinating because he openly discusses being gay," the response was, "Do you mean he was a virgin?"—a joke based on a Japanese homophone. It reminded me how difficult genuine understanding of sexual minorities can still be.

This autobiography may be described as the story of a man with an unusually strong sense of self and a willingness to expose it without reservation.

Finally, I would like to pay tribute to the superb Japanese translation by Naoko Ohta. Once regarded as the likely successor to Japan's foremost film subtitle translator, Natsuko Toda, Ohta's life ended far too soon at the age of fifty-seven—a profound loss to the world of translation.

Director, Kayukawa Clinic, Yuhei Kayukawa, M.D. >