Oliver Sacks – “My Periodic Table”. From the Division of Medical Humanities Newsletter: A moving essay from the great Oliver Sacks serves as a primer for ...
Oliver Sacks: Under the Influence - Science Friday
Jan 27, 2016 - Oliver Sacks was wealthy in friends, mentors, and other inspiring .... For Sacks, Luria's approach to scientific narrative was an epiphany. “Luria's ...
Apr 1, 2002 - The Fully Immersive Mind of Oliver Sacks ..... When Sacks first paged through AleksandrLuria's The Mind of a Mnemonist, he thought it was a ...
The Man with a Shattered World — A. R. Luria | Harvard University Press
Luria presents a compelling portrait of a man's heroic struggle to regain his mental faculties. A soldier named Zasetsky, ... Foreword by Oliver Sacks · Add to Cart ...
1961年生於美國明尼蘇達州,作家、攝影家。著作包括《解剖學家》(Anatomist)、《五夸脫》(Five Quarts)及《睡魔》(Sleep Demons)。他是古根漢獎(Guggenheim Fellowship)非小說類得獎人(2013-14),也是羅馬美國學院駐院作家。作品屢見《紐約時報》(The New York Times),同時也刊載於《紐約書評》(New York Review of Books)、《沙龍》(Salon)及其他刊物。攝影作品見於《浮華世界》(Vanity Fair)、《紐約時報》及《紐約客》(The New Yorker),第一本攝影集《傷心紐約》(How New York Breaks Yor Heart)於2018年問世。現居紐約。網站網址:billhayes.com
海耶斯長期受失眠所苦,第一本著作《睡魔》即以此為主題而生。他長年服務於愛滋病基金會,接觸患者的病、死歷程。居住在舊金山期間曾有過一位交往十六年的同性伴侶,伴侶死於心臟病突發後,海耶斯轉往紐約展開新生活,並遇見奧立佛‧薩克斯(Oliver Sacks),兩人相伴至薩克斯過世。種種經歷,讓海耶斯形容自己的生命彷彿是「被死亡染色」(Colored by death)。
第一次讀這本書時,其實是蠻震驚的。我雖然對薩克斯這樣的神奇人物景仰已久,直至最近,對他的生平幾乎一無瞭解。攬書才知道傳聞上說薩克斯的同志傾向,果然是真的。由此再回頭細讀兩年前他剛過世時出版的《薩克斯自傳》(On the Move: A Life,原書名:《勇往直前》),在感佩他的活力、生機、才氣、毅力及他對世人──尤其是罹病之人──的關懷與接納之餘,更爲他坎坷崎嶇的一生而悲憐、動容。他的生涯看似平順,其實充滿了驚濤駭浪。他終能克服重重難關,成就一番事業,更是讓人欽佩。
Amazon's Best Biographies and Memoirs of 2017 List A moving celebration of what Bill Hayes calls "the evanescent, the eavesdropped, the unexpected" of life in New York City, and an intimate glimpse of his relationship with the late Oliver Sacks. "A beautifully written once-in-a-lifetime book, about love, about life, soul, and the wonderful loving genius Oliver Sacks, and New York, and laughter and all of creation."--Anne Lamott Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city's incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera.
And he unexpectedly fell in love again, with his friend and neighbor, the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose exuberance--"I don't so much fear death as I do wasting life," he tells Hayes early on--is captured in funny and touching vignettes throughout. What emerges is a portrait of Sacks at his most personal and endearing, from falling in love for the first time at age seventy-five to facing illness and death (Sacks died of cancer in August 2015). Insomniac City is both a meditation on grief and a celebration of life. Filled with Hayes's distinctive street photos of everyday New Yorkers, the book is a love song to the city and to all who have felt the particular magic and solace it offers.
Reviews
“[A] loving tribute to Sacks and to New York . . . Read just 50 pages, and you'll see easily enough how Hayes is Sacks's logical complement. Though possessed of different temperaments, both are alive to difference, variety, the possibilities of our rangy humanity; both are avid chroniclers of our species . . . Frank, beautiful, bewitching-[Hayes's photographs] unmask their subjects' best and truest selves.” – Jennifer Senior, New York Times
“This touching memoir of the late neurologist Oliver Sacks, by a photographer and writer with whom he fell in love near the end of his life, turns a story of death into a celebration.” – The New Yorker
“[Insomniac City] seems written in heightened states of feeling that infuse every detail with meaning and transient beauty.” – Our Best Adult Books of 2017 - Nonfiction, Shelf Awareness
“Remarkably poignant. Readers will find themselves wishing the two men had more time, but as Hayes makes clear, they wasted none of the time they had.” – Publishers Weekly
“A unique and exuberant celebration of life and love.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Like Patti Smith's haunting M Train, Hayes' book weaves seemingly disparate threads of memory into a kind of sanctuary--a secret place where one can shake off the treasured relics of past lives and prepare to be reborn anew.” – San Francisco Chronicle
“Hayes captures both the frenetic, exhilarating pace of New York City as well as the whimsy, fun and romance of the years he spent with Sacks.” – New York Post
“Insomniac City is resoundingly about life--about being wide awake to possibility, to the beauty of every fleeting moment.” – Oprah.com
“Buy a box of tissues and pray for snow: This is the perfect weekend February read, and will have you alternately bawling and giddily clapping your hands for the lovers that may not have had the time they deserved, but certainly made the best with the time that they had.” – Newsweek, "The Best New Book Releases"
“Hayes beautifully depicts the life and night light in a city which never sleeps. As you read this beautifully written book, you feel as if you are walking through the streets of New York and living this insomniac city's night life. This is an extremely enjoyable read for those who never stop fancying New York.” – Washington Independent Review of Books
“As eloquent in its silences and visuals as it is in its telling of the secrets of the heart . . . The brilliance of Insomniac City is that almost Tolstoy-an directness and concretion of observation, both down-to-earth and downright visionary.” – Bay Area Reporter
“Poetic and profound . . . What emerges from this dual love letter is a lyrical reminder that happiness and heartache are inseparably entwined . . . Insomniac City is an ineffably splendid read in its entirety, a mighty packet of pure aliveness.” – Brainpickings
“That life permeates every page of Insomniac City, a dual love story of a powerful relationship that will shortly end but, also, of a city that is constantly reinventing itself.” – Counterpunch
“Breathtaking . . . It's the kind of book that makes you stay up late without regret . . . Hayes' precise and affectionate observations of his newly adopted city, its denizens, subways, bodegas, and landmarks allow the reader to experience it through fresh eyes.” – Palette Magazine
“Insomniac City is a beautiful memoir in which Oliver Sacks comes wonderfully to life--a double portrait that also provides a vivid picture of New York City's neighborhoods and people. The ending is exquisitely wrought, heartrending and joyous.” – Joyce Carol Oates,
“Like New York, the city he celebrates so poignantly in this book, Bill Hayes mixes 'memory with desire' to create a heartbreakingly gorgeous story of love, loss, and renewal.” – Azar Nafisi, author of READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN,
“Hayes turns out to be that particular kind of big-city denizen, the irrepressible soul who treats the pavement like a cocktail party.” – Peter Lewis, Barnes & Noble
“Insomniac City is a love story to New York and the people we cherish, for Bill Hayes, the late Oliver Sacks. With prescience and tenderness, written with a sharp eye and a camera attuned to life on the streets, Hayes has composed a gorgeous memoir on why place matters to the soul of our humanity. I loved every single sentence in this quiet night-book, erotic and evocative, at once.” – Terry Tempest Williams, author of THE HOUR OF LAND,
“A lyrical love letter to his partner of six years, Dr Oliver Sacks, and to New York City itself. Through a series of tender vignettes, we meet the characters from the streets of Manhattan, and we are brought into the cocoon of Oliver Sacks' apartment.” – Irish Times
“No lack of tenderness in Insomniac City, Bill Hayes's memoir of his life in New York with the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks.” – Guardian
“A love letter to Sacks, but also to New York . . . Overheard remarks, curious reflections by Sacks, poetic observations keep the narrative moving.” – Edmund White, Guardian