The Mind of a Mnemonist

"This book created the entire genre of humanistic clinical histories. Without Luria, there could be no Oliver Sacks, the British neurologist who wrote Awakenings . For 30 years, Luria studied a journalist called Solomon Shereshevsky or simply ‘S’. Supposedly, S had a vacuum cleaner memory. He could remember anything. Luria is a terrific writer, but he didn’t document S’s skills with the kind of detail that is required to compare S with people who live today. Luria is so concerned with telling a good story that he doesn’t rigorously describe S’s abilities. We don’t have any other records of S, this seemingly singular character in the history of psychology. As a result, it’s hard to draw too many conclusions from this book. S seemed to remember too well. He was ineffectual as a journalist and ultimately couldn’t make a living as anything other than a stage performer — a memory freak. I think that points to something profound. Forgetting is an important part of learning; it teaches us to abstract. Because S remembered too much, he couldn’t process what he witnessed, and as a result, he couldn’t make his way in the world. When I was four or five, my overzealous older brother sat me down with a map of the United States and the mission of memorising the capitals of every state. That was my earliest feat of memorisation. I don’t remember anything from that period. Except the state capitals. What stuck in my mind most about the whole experience is not the contest, the training, or even winning the trophy. It’s a guy I met who had no memory whatsoever. His brain was attacked by a virus that cored it like an apple — it wiped out his ability to remember anything that happened since about 1950, as well as his ability to form new memories. He was an incredible window into how our memories make us who we are. Even though he couldn’t remember me for more than five minutes, I’ll never forget him."