I was so excited to read this book (The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat) because I love hearing about weird medical disorders. It’s a weird interest of mine. I also just think it’s a morbid interest of our society. Taken a look at TLC lately? I’ve never seen so many freak medical shows on at one time. 160lbs tumor, tree man, smallest people in the world, people who are dead but not really. It’s overwhelming! So I pretty much jumped at this book by Oliver Sacks when I heard about it. I really seriously have no idea where I first heard about this book, but I’m pretty sure it was from another fellow book blogger and I feel so bad for not being able to remember but anyways. I was excited, but also kind of broke. I’m always broke. Or I always feel broke. So I felt super lucky when I came across this long heard of non-fic title in a used book store. Hurray! I get to read it! I get to hear about fabulously interesting neurological case studies. I get to read about a freaking guy who thinks his wife is a hat! Psychedelic!
Um. No. Definitely not psychedelic. And most definitely super-boring. Seriously people, where does anyone get off saying this book was ever interesting? The concept is delightful and I would have loved it had it been properly executed but alas it was not. The stories could have been charming, could have captured my heart but instead I felt like Dr. Sacks was kind of a freaking ass most of the time. An ass who doesn’t really understand that he’s acting like an ass. A naive soul who thinks he’s being kind or something. There’s very little feeling of any connection with the patients Dr. Sacks tells us about. I felt pretty sad for some of them, but you never really know about their future or what happens next. It’s very empty in that sense. It’s often about the here and now. Although the last cases have more closure. I also got the feeling that he wasn’t actually doing anything for the patients. There were a few cases that were diagnosed but… then what about the cures? I just felt like I wouldn’t particularly want to be handled by these people (Dr. Sacks and those around him) should my brain go haywire.
Now beyond all of that, I have another bone to pick with Mr. Oliver. Why am I supposed to pay attention when you continue to use medical terminology (often without further explanation) and continue to refer to a huge number of dead people, whom I have no or very little knowledge of. I also hate philosophy, so damn you for referencing certain philosophes (with whom I also have some beefs).
I tried really hard to keep a firm grip on this book. I was patient – most of the time – and I ended up spending my entire week off reading this book, trying to get through those last chapters. Oh my god it was boring. I confess, I skipped a few pages of medical gibberish and diagrams that I didn’t understand.
OK. So enough bashing. What did I like? Did I like anything? Well… not really. Like isn’t the word. I thought that some of the stories were interesting, but they could’ve been recounted to me at a dinner party in a few sentences and I would’ve gasped, nodded or given whatever appropriate response and that would have saved me a lot of fucking time. Whoops, back to bashing! Oh right, there’s a story, near the end or maybe it is the last story, called ‘The Twins’ or ‘Twins’. And it’s about two creepy mathematical genius twins. They are described as such or at least that’s the image I got in my head. So since I was successfully creeped out of my bones, I can give Sacks one broken thumb up.
So please, be my guest, read it and tell me what you think.
If you’ve reviewed it, let me know!
My copy was published in 1990 but I’m pretty sure the book is older and some of the stories were previously published as articles and that’s one thing I find wrong about this book. It shows its age immensely. It’s a huge weakness. Sacks says things sometimes that are just plain ignorant. And I see absolutely no kind of… further development or further insight into the idea of the mind, or neurological science. He simply takes from the past and kind of applies it to his situations, which is why he’s always referring to dead people.
Seriously lame.
The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat
Author: Oliver Sacks
1990, 233 pages.
Rating 1/5 (1 because the twins creeped the shit out of me)
Je suis Canadienne. And I'm a student majoring in History & English Lit. I work part-time with books. I love reading, but in the last few years, school ate up my life so I wasn't reading as much. This blog is the start to a whole new chapter in my reading life. 
What things did he say that were ignorant? I read the book and thought it was pretty fascinating- although it did get really tedious sometimes and there was lots of stuff I didn’t totally understand.
Jeane: I can’t pinpoint anything specific now because I read it a little while ago and my memory sucks. But I just got this impression from him. The way he spoke about his patients, especially in the last section. He does say a few things that are important to note and that are the complete opposite of ignorant, but all the same he still has this sort of rigid ideology about his patients and also what he himself can do. I’m not very good at expressing myself. Next time I’ll highlight! :D
I’ve always wanted to read this one mostly because I enjoy the articles he writes for “The New Yorker” every once in a while. I’m sorry to hear it was boring! Earlier this year, I read Jerome Groopman’s excellent “How Doctors Think.” Not many weird diagnoses here, but his style was fluid, interesting, and definitely for the layman. You may try that if Sacks hasn’t completely burned you on books written by doctors. :)
I feel kind of bad for not liking it because it’s so popular. But I just reallyyyy hated it.
I will definitely try that out. I’ve read other stuff that is scientific or whatnot, but his writing voice/tone grated on my nerves I guess.
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Hi Steph,
I haven’t read this book, so I can’t speak to any of your specific problems with it or the author. However, one thing that is probably worth nothing (though it might not make you feel any better) is that when it comes to “weird” brain disorders, there often aren’t ways to cure them, because while we know a lot about the brain, there’s a lot more that we don’t know. It’s really hard to put the brain through something akin to rehab or physiotherapy – generally it uses its own innate plasticity to compensate for lost functions in other parts of the brain (such as in the case of stroke or seizure, etc.,), but the older you are, the less function one can normally recover. In essence, if you’re mistaking your wife for a hat, you probably have something called visual agnosia, in which individuals just can’t consciously recognize objects (although interestingly, they may still be able to interact with them appropriately. There’s also something like the opposite disorder due to damage in a different part of the brain, in which patients can recognize objects, but not manipulate/interact with them effectively.). There’s really nothing you can do about this. I mean, you could label everything in a person’s home or something in order to give them an effective coping strategy, but there’s no way to fix the problem at the actual level of the brain.
Again, not having read the book, I don’t know what other types of disorders he talks about, so I can’t say whether any of them do have any known treatments, but I thought I’d just share what I do know about the title problem!
Steph
P.S. I’m a grad student in cognitive neuroscience, so I’ve studied the brain a lot! If you think books at the mainstream market are boring, you should check out some of the articles I have to read… ;)
stephandtony:
Thanks for that explanation :) He does talk a bit about visual agnosia in the book but really… his explanations boggled my mind.
I think my huge problem was that I really felt no compassion in his (the narrator’s) voice and tone.
I just generally felt unfulfilled by the book. Kind of hard to explain though! hehe
But yeah, also when I speak of him rarely actually ‘treating’ people or talking about ‘treatments’, I also meant to include coping strategies and just general care of the patients after diagnosis, which wasn’t really referred to at all in the book and that made me sort of disappointed. The patients felt like specimens in a lab, the way he described them.
And wow I can imagine the boring stuff you have to read, although I’m sure you must find some of it interesting!
I just couldn’t wrap my head around some of the terms he used. I’m sure it would be far more interesting for a grad student who’s studying cognitive neuroscience :)