Letters by Oliver Sacks review – valuable insight into a curious mind
Given his vast letter writing volumes that the one to me doesn’t make it is not a surprise.
As he says in Uncle Tungsten he’s had a dream about a scandium hamburger. He, at one point, ended up at a company that processed the scandium I provided them with. Where he was served a scandium hamburger. I then wrote and said where that Sc came from, how the supply chain worked. Given what the real Uncle Tungsten did for a living I thought this would interest him. Back came a very nice letter thanking, chatting about the supply chain etc. As others who have received letters from him point out it’s typewritten – he didn’t use a computer, not for letters at least – and the errata are corrected in fountain pen. Nicely archaic.
Anyway, my brush with glory.
It’s only in very recent years that I’ve realised something else. In those years of metals trading I did some work with Gerry Wise. He being the UK expert in germanium (among other things) and owning, I’m pretty sure, a small refinery. The thing is, Gerry was part of that very same North London Jewish small company network as Uncle Tungsten. Of perhaps Sack’s generation rather than Uncle’s. But wholly the same milieu. A lot of the country’s weird metals business was in those hands. I’m sure Wise and Uncle Tungsten would have known each other – that’s the way with networks – but of course now it’s far too late to ask.
No worries. Just leave a note for your executor that when they come to publish your letters, the correspondence to Sacks is included.
Well Timmy, if you didn’t send the editors your letter it’s not a surprise that it wasn’t published.
Um, no. The book was compiled from his files of his correspondence.
Competitive boasting about tenuous connections to literary figures, eh?
Well I own Thomas Carlyle’s smoking cap, so there!
(Please don’t turn me in to HMRC: I don’t want to have Inheritance Tax exacted on it.)