An Anthropologist on Mars

by Oliver Sacks

Knopf

review by Peter Selgin

An artist, Mr. I., becomes colorblind after a car accident. For him red is no longer red, but "dead black." Nor does white resemble itself any longer; instead it appears "dingy" or "dirty." A rainbow appears as a "colorless semi-circle in the sky." The whole world appears not in harmless and familiar shades, but in grotesque, leaden, malevolent grays that render such things as an orange so unappetizing Mr. I. can't bear to eat one without closing his eyes.
"Ask not what disease the person has, but rather what person the disease has." The quote that opens Oliver Sacks' latest collection of neurological portraits, An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales, suggests the potential of some diseases to supplement--and oftentimes supplant--personality. Hence, the "paradox" of Sacks' subtitle.
The colorblind artist begins to reconstruct his world as well as his own identity. Color, which obsessed him as a painter, becomes less important to him. He comes to think of his condition as a "strange gift" that has "ushered him into a new state of ... being." Presented with a possible cure, he finds the suggestion "repugnant." Not only does he come to terms with his colorblindness, he embraces it.
Each of Sacks' seven biographies shows disorders that generate abilities, powers of perception, and ways of experiencing which surpass our own.
Greg F., "The Last Hippie," is frozen in the late 1960's, the time before a huge brain tumor left him bald, fat and blind. It also left him indifferent to all things but music, particularly that of the Grateful Dead, whose founding members he can expound upon as if he has seen them in concert the day before. In his memory, he has. Greg lives in a state of blissful passivity; even the death of a parent cannot break into the shrine of his memory.

A book that leaves us both grateful and longing for what we don't have.

While they close the door to normal life, neurological disorders also open windows into the mysteries of the mind. But there is a devastating price to be paid for the opening of such windows.
We encounter Virgil. Blind since early childhood, surgery grants him a second chance to see. His sightless world rendered unrecognizable by sight, Virgil becomes disoriented, disturbed, and depressed, until finally, through a combination of bad luck and subconscious desire, he goes blind again or, rather, regains his sightlessness.
Those unfamiliar with Dr. Sacks' books might question whether he is to some extent exploiting his subjects for his art and our amusement. But what comes through time and again in Sacks' writing is his devotion, not only as a writer and physician but as a friend. He makes his clients wonderful to the reader. That Sacks makes art of their tragedies is a good thing for the subjects as well as the reader. We emerge from his book understanding and appreciating their struggles both against and for their remarkable and unique diseases.
One closes Sacks' book with a tremendous appreciation for those who have provided us with glimpses through their "open windows." We wish we could, for a moment, see the world in shades of gray; or recall, with photographic accuracy, a childhood scene; or sketch, suddenly and prodigiously, a complex subject from memory. It is intriguing to think of having these diseases, not as they occur naturally, unpredictably and with devastating totality, but to experience their extraordinary effects without leaving the ordinary world behind.
In its way An Anthropologist on Mars allows us to do just that. It is a book that leaves us both grateful for and longing for what we don't have. Or, rather, what doesn't have us.

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