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May 16, 2015 · May 16, 2015. When the celebrated neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks was a schoolboy, a teacher noted on his report card: “Sacks will go far, if he does not go too far.”. It was a perceptive ...
- Overview
- An ‘unexpected’ love
When neurologist Oliver Sacks died in 2015, he left behind a legacy of more than a half-century of exploration into the inner workings of the human mind.
Sacks, who was 82 when he died from metastatic cancer, wrote more than a dozen books drawn from his patients’ case histories, including “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” “Musicophilia,” and “The Mind’s Eye.” In 1973’s “Awakenings,” which was turned into a 1990 film with Robin Williams, he recounted using the amino acid L-DOPA to revive patients rendered catatonic for decades by encephalitis lethargica (also known as “sleeping sickness”).
Sacks wrote about people with amnesia, face blindness, Tourette’s syndrome and a host of other neurological conditions. He approached these subjects with equanimity and empathy, seeing their humanity first, not their disease.
But as much as Sacks had a passion for the human experience, he spent much of his life uncomfortable in his own skin: It was only a few months before his death, in his memoir “On the Move,” that he publicly disclosed his homosexuality.
Sacks’ long struggle with his sexuality — as well amphetamine addiction, recognition and love late in his life — is explored in the Ric Burns documentary “Oliver Sacks: His Own Life,” premiering Friday, April 9, at 9 p.m. ET as part of PBS’ American Masters series.
“It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me,” he wrote in a moving New York Times op-ed announcing his terminal diagnosis. “I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can.”
Sacks was 75 when he met Hayes, who was 47 and living in San Francisco. He had read Hayes’ book “The Anatomist,” about the classic medical text “Gray’s Anatomy,” and sent a letter telling him how much he enjoyed it. Despite a nearly 30-year age gap, their long-distance correspondence blossomed into a friendship, and then ultimately love. As Sacks reveals in the film, he had been celibate for almost four decades.
“It was as unexpected for me as it was for him,” Hayes said. “I was not moving to New York expecting to fall in love with Oliver Sacks.”
Like most people, Hayes didn’t know initially that Sacks was gay. But as they spent time together, “I began to understand his complex history of dealing with his own sexuality — which was really very different from mine.”
Beyond the obvious age difference, “I had been out since I was, I think, 24, so that was a bridge to cross, too,” Hayes said.
Sacks discussed Hayes in his memoir, but “His Own Life” is a bit of a love letter to their relationship.
“Some of my favorite moments in this film are just reaction shots of Billy smiling at Oliver; he's got a beautiful face,” Burns said. “You can feel their connection ... There was a deep mutual sensitivity. A real delicacy, which was really beautiful.”
- Dan Avery
May 21, 2015 · When he was 12, a schoolmaster noted: “Sacks will go far, if he does not go too far.” It’s our good fortune that he nearly did, flat out on the ride of his life, yet returned home to his notebook and pen. On the Move: a Life by Oliver Sacks is published by Picador, 399pp, £20
Sep 23, 2024 · In 1966, the London-born neurologist Oliver Sacks, then in his early thirties, started working at Beth Abraham, a hospital for the chronically ill, in the Bronx. He soon began noticing dozens of ...
May 18, 2015 · Photograph by Oliver Sacks, 1960s (Courtesy of Dr. Sacks for Brain Pickings) This experience, which left an indelible imprint of shame on young Oliver’s mind, is doubly perplexing and heartbreaking in the context of his parents’ credentials — both were prominent physicians, which would ordinarily imply the unsuperstitious critical thinking that science espouses.
Sep 21, 2020 · A new documentary, Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, chronicles the late neurologist's efforts to understand perception, memory and consciousness. Sacks spoke to Fresh Air in 2012.
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Oliver Sacks. Oliver Wolf Sacks (9 July 1933 – 30 August 2015) was a British neurologist, naturalist, historian of science, and writer. [2] Born in London, Sacks received his medical degree in 1958 from The Queen's College, Oxford, before moving to the United States, where he spent most of his career. He interned at Mount Zion Hospital in San ...
