Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge Oliver Sacks - On The Move

I've been meaning to post about this book for a while and the author's death yesterday reminded me.

Sacks is best known as an author of books about odd neurological disorders("The man who mistook his wife for a hat"). I had read some of those and a bit of his early biography("Uncle Tungsten") but I was really struck by the picture of him on the cover of his recent autobiography. I had never associated him with motorcycles and never seen him as anything other than an old whitebeard.

He was, in fact, an avid motorcyclist in his youth. He grew up in England before speed limits on the motorways riding various british bikes. He moved to the US and lived in California living in a mix of cultures as a medical doctor, a muscle beach weight lifter, and a hard core motorcyclist. He abused himself mightily with recreational and performance enhancing drugs and was a practising homosexual although mostly celibate after his young adulthood. I don't mean to denigrate his lifestyle, just to point out that it's not the usual for a renowned neurologist. In New York City he lived in a little enclave called City Island, a 2km long island in the east river off the bronx. For recreation he would swim around the island - wearing a wetsuit and protective facewear as pollution got worse.

His public life was no less extraordinary, he was played by robin williams in the movie based on his book "Awakenings". Over the years of reading his work i sometimes felt he was exploiting people with bizarre diseases but reading commentary after his death, the more charitable view is that he was celebrating the value of each person's life however strange.


This book wouldn't be to everyone's taste but I enjoyed it tremendously making notes of his bikes and activities over the years. I think it's out in paperback or probably available from any good sized public library.

To Close with a quote

Quote:

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After I moved to Los Angeles, I missed my Sunday morning rides to Stinson Beach with my motorcyclist friends, and I reverted to being a lone rider again; on weekends, I would embark on enormous solo rides. As soon as I could get away from work on Friday, I ... would set out for the Grand Canyon, five hundred miles away but a straight ride on Route 66. I would ride through the night, lying flat on the tank; the bike had only 30 horsepower, but if I lay flat, I could get it to a little over a hundred miles per hour, and crouched like this, I would hold the bike fiat out for hour after hour. Illuminated by the headlight—or, if there was one, by a full moon—the silvery road was sucked under my front wheel, and sometimes I had strange perceptual reversals and illusions. Sometimes I felt that I was inscribing a line on the surface of the earth, at other times that I was poised motionless above the ground, the whole planet rotating silently beneath me. My only stops were at gas stations, to fill the tank, to stretch my legs and exchange a few words with the gas attendant. If I held the bike at its maximum speed, I could reach the Grand Canyon in time to see the sunrise.

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Hmmm, looks like a good bio, and I especially like bio's. I might have to check into this. Thanks.

Interesting....I'm familiar with his writing, but had never realised he was a bike enthusiast.
Thanks for this
Al

" Sometimes I felt that I was inscribing a line on the surface of the earth, at other times that I was poised motionless above the ground, the whole planet rotating silently beneath me."

Bill, I felt like that heading down 416 at 130-140 today to tour back roads of Leeds Grenville. As I was going North South I guess it wasn't the rotation.

I had the book in my hand at Billings Bridge a few days ago I think now I will pick it up on your recommendation.

Or the library...

Or Value Village where I find lots of relatively new books donated by voracious readers.

Good read Bill fascinating life and body of work. Early in the book I thought I was reading a mashup of something written by Jack Keroac, Henry Miller and a little Hunter S. Thompson thrown in for good measure. Although I have never read anything written by Oliver Sacks I was aware of him and saw the movie "Awakenings" years ago which I will have to seek out and watch with much more insight.

As a footnote (which Sacks is so apt to do) I put in a request to borrow the book from the Ottawa library via electronic means, the notice arrived just before the Christmas festivities were to begin in earnest. Given the fact I had waited months for it to be available I dare not turn the book down. It is not the best way to read this book especially on a shiny iPad screen maybe a true E reader but I would think good old paper would be the preferred medium given the footnotes are all at the end of a chapter.
Thanks for the recommendation.