Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten (2001)

     Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten (2001) Jon gave me this book for Christmas, and I’m glad he did. Sacks tells us of his childhood and adolescence, when he was consumed by a rage for chemistry, in part stimulated by his uncles. Uncle Abe ran a factory that made light bulbs with tungsten filaments, hence the title. But the real focus is Sacks’ fascination with the elements, and his discovery of their properties. He read voraciously about the history of chemistry and chemists. He set up a lab in which he did experiments duplicating (as far as he could afford it) the discoveries of his heroes. That he didn’t destroy himself and the house was I think as much a matter of luck as of caution. Nowadays, such a course of study would not be possible, even in a well-equipped high school lab. Liability insurance has imposed safety regimes that make independent lab work by high school students almost impossible.
     Sacks, as in all the his books, comes across as a charming man with a lively curiosity, intellectual rigour, and the kind of imagination that can see the patterns that matter. This impression is strengthened by his TV interviews, which have the quality of conversations that we have the privilege of overhearing. Sacks spent some time at a horrible boarding school when he (along with thousands of other children) was evacuated from London during WW2. Reading was an escape; science, especially chemistry, promised stability and security. His large family gave him a diverse society, that loved him and his brothers unconditionally. These combined to heal the wounds inflicted by a sadistic headmaster (who, on the little evidence provided by Sacks, was a monster with demons of his own).
     I enjoyed this book enormously. The writing is graceful, intimate, intelligent, witty, wry, and above all vulnerable. One gets the impression that this is the authentic Oliver Sacks, a man one feels privileged to know in person. ****
     Update 26 March, 2013: My son Jon died on 19 March. He was 48 years old, but to me he was still the boy with whom I had conversations on our walk to school, about history and anything else that caught his interest.  I don't know how much of what I think I know of history I learned from him, but by now it's most of it. His choice of books for gifts was always thoughtful; he had little money to spend, and must have searched yard sales and library books ales all year long. He liked yard sales, actually, he was a great searcher-out of treasures that others didn't value. I shall miss him. Grief seizes me without warning. Obituary via etouch.ca or legacy.com.