Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain - Oliver Sacks

General info: Non-fiction collection of case studies, published in 20007

Storytelling: 6 – This book wasn’t quite what I expected to be. I picked this one up at the library, eager to read a book devoted to music that delved a little bit more into the science of how music works and affects our brains. Instead this book is literally a collection of stories, each devoted to a mental disorder that sometimes has a little bit to do with music and other times is completely about it. It’s mostly about science and unsurprisingly was written by a doctor who happens to be a musician and music-lover. Although there were some interesting parts and I learned a fair bit about mental disorders, I struggled to slog through this book and felt it was lacking a central theme or resolution. It read more like a collection of case studies and less like a unified book.
You’ve got to have some considerable smarts to be a professor of neurology at Columbia, and Sacks has obviously seen and done a lot. This book is chock full of interesting disorders that I would guess most people don’t know about. There are people out there who literally cannot get recurring songs out of their heads, others who can’t stand the sound of music and find it to be mere noise, and children with crippling genetic disorders who also seem to display an unworldly knack for music. Most interesting to me was the portion on absolute pitch and the studies done to see the correlation between musical study at a young age and the likelihood that a person develops perfect pitch. I also love anything and everything having to do with synesthesia, considering I am largely jealous of everyone who has it. (I mean, it’s really the coolest thing ever.) Sacks references some amazing pieces of classical music and it is apparent that he has wonderful respect for professional musicians. He is well connected and has a large amount of material, so it’s no wonder he was able to compile a book like this.
However, what irked me the most was how dry and impersonal the narrative was. Sacks attempts to express compassion for his patients, but it isn’t delivered correctly and I feel that he’s looking at all these individuals simply as walking science experiments. He’d offer a sentence or two on their personalities and preferences and then he’d spend paragraphs discussing the complex workings of their brains. This book could have done with more critical editing, but I feel like Sacks has developed such a name for himself that his editors probably let him go on automatic. He also only ever seems to discuss classical music, or classical musicians who’ve been affected, and there also seems to be a lot of name dropping. I would have enjoyed more variety and a great deal more feeling, or perhaps I just do not have a scientific enough mind to truly appreciate what Sacks was getting at here.

Writing: 6 – Sacks is obviously an enormously intelligent man, and I can’t imagine that most doctors are as well-written as he is. This is likely the reason he has carved out a fun little niche for himself in the non-fiction world and has had so much success. So, for this I give him major points. I don’t believe I’ve ever read a book written by a doctor, so Sacks gets major points from me for being able to effectively create so much with both sides of his brain.
But, as I mentioned earlier, for the most part I wasn’t captivated or moved by what Sacks was writing. There were a few shining moments in the text where he captures the feelings one feels when they hear a really amazing musician in their element, or when one witnesses someone transcending their crippling illness by performing or focusing on an amazing piece. These moments were moving and heart-rending, but they were also few and far between. There would be a fleeting glimpse and then, boom, back to some gibber-gabber on the parietal lobe. The narrative also felt really chopped up and didn’t flow well. Again, some effective editing would have done wonders here.

Characters: 5 – I loved the various patients that Sacks discusses throughout this book, but I never really felt like I could effectively get to know them! Sacks would mention someone, go over their affliction, maybe mention the course of treatment, and then he’d be on to the next subject. I would have much more preferred that he select a few studies, or a few patients, and really go in depth. There were so many names and mental afflictions that by the end of the book, my head was spinning.
I felt like Sacks did incorporate enough detail in two places: when discussing Clive with severe amnesia and with Louis who suffers from a rare form of dementia. I felt with these two cases he spent a sufficient amount of time discussing their daily lives and how their ailments affect them and are aided or expressed by music. I enjoyed these sections and felt like I could understand Louis and Clive’s lives and get into their heads a little bit (frighteningly), but these were only two small sections of a rather large book. I was left feeling a little strange for having learned so much about their illnesses without knowing any more about them as people.

Best part: I really did enjoy the section about synesthesia. Stack mentions a few people who are “affected” with this disorder and he asks them to explain which color they see when music is played in a certain key. No two people are the same, and they all have different explanations why D major is blue or G-sharp minor has a different flavor to it. Some people also affiliate flavors with intervals, and others see different colors for days of the week. The variety and specificity of all these experiences amazes me.

Recommend to: Scientists who enjoy music. I’m not sure I’d recommend this to musicians who enjoy science; they might have the same reaction I did.

Reminded me of: Again, having never read a book written by a doctor and having not read much non-fiction about music, I really can’t liken this book to anything else.

How I would murder the main character: Since there isn’t a main character, I’ll just decide on a good murder plot for the author, which would probably mean forcing him to listen to some pop music and then making him read a Danielle Steele novel. That would likely make his head explode.

Sexy parts: No sexiness in this book, but I was moved by the devoted spouses who stick with their increasingly ill loved ones. Very sweet.

To sum it up: An interesting but fairly tedious collection of case studies examining the impact of music on the brain.

Overall: 5.5

Beatrice and Virgil - Yann Martel

General info: Novella, published in 2010

Storytelling: 5 – I, as well as the rest of Western society, absolutely loved Life of Pi, so it was only a matter of time before I picked up Martel’s next book. A monkey and a donkey? That sounds pretty interesting and refreshing to me, particularly because I’m such an avid animal lover.
Oh dear Lord I was so off.
This book was similar to watching a horrific car accident. I’m not afraid to admit that I can sometimes take interest in some pretty weird things, and I think people truly are drawn to the morbid and macabre. (My sister and I both know way more about serial killers than most people would, and I’m proud of the way we own up to this sick fascination.) I mean, look at how popular horror movies are. Anyway, I digress, but my point is that this book is like a horror movie that you truly don’t see coming and is wrapped up in an artistic facade….if that makes any sense. I couldn’t decide if I kind of liked it or if I absolutely loathed it, and it was a book that left me completely bewildered. I will warn you, read no further if you plan to read this book, because I’m totally going to ruin it (as I do in all my reviews I suppose).
Martel tells the story of Henry, an author struggling after the success of his first book and trying to duplicate it with his second. The first half of the novella drags significantly as Henry writes a book about the Holocaust that gets ripped apart by his team who refuses to publish it. Lost and confused, he gives up writing and moves off to some unknown city, where he meets a particularly unfriendly and quirky taxidermist who elicits his help with a play he’s writing. Henry, weirdly, takes to this taxidermist (ALSO named Henry), becomes fascinated with his play, and agrees to help him a little bit. This play is about a monkey, Virgil, and a donkey, Beatrice, and they are starving, afraid, and alone while wandering the mostly deserted landscape of a gigantic shirt. Yes, a shirt.
…what?
Originality goes a long way with me, and I love Martel’s quirky use of animals, so I stuck with this bit. As the story develops we realize that Beatrice and Virgil are on the run from unspeakable horrors and stand witness to some remarkably awful things. Henry gets very confused and then finally it clicks for him: this play is about the Holocaust! And lo and behold, the old taxidermist is a murderous awful Nazi who’s been in hiding all these years, and as soon as Henry makes it clear to him that he knows, he gets stabbed! As Henry runs bleeding from the shop, the taxidermist sets the shop on fire and perishes in the flames!
…what?!?
I have a lot of issues with this story. First and foremost, it’s unnecessarily graphic and really disturbing. There are some images from this book that I’ll never be able to get out of my mind. This might be because I am a huge animal lover and any harm done to animals stirs up weird feelings in me, much moreso than harm done to humans even. But I think Martel just really misses the mark in many ways. It’s only sort of about the Holocaust, and I think instead of making a statement, it just makes you feel really dirty. This content was so random and off base that I just found myself getting increasingly angry at Martel. Most offensive of all, he includes a list of game cards (purportedly “played” by Virgil in Beatrice) that are not game-like at all and propose awful decisions that one might make during the Holocaust. Ugh. Why torment your readers so much?
However, the “what-ifs” are really what grab you and make you think that maybe this book isn’t completely a loss. For example, the genius stroke of naming both characters Henry. What if it was in fact the same person, and Henry 1 was just imagining all of this the whole time? (Martel did something similar to his readers in Life of Pi) What was the taxidermist really aiming at stabbing Henry and then committing a fiery suicide? Was it to get his story told in a different way? Was the use of a story within a story master trickery or just Martel being a little lazy? What was this story really about?
All-in-all, I just feel tremendously confused about this whole experience. Not a good way to come off a book, even if it is a new sensation.

Writing: 7 – Overall I really treasure Martel as a writer, and I think the first word that comes to mind regarding his prose is ‘fresh’. I typically gravitate to flowery, slightly overwrought writing, but Martel is succinct and charming, which I don’t think you find with many other people. It’s easy to digest and relatable, and since his ideas are so deep, the juxtaposition turns out to be purely magical. There is a scene in the play where Virgil is describing a pear to Beatrice, who has never had one. This happens to be the first scene that Henry reads of the play, and there is no double why he is immediately hooked; this writing is poetic mastery and I had to go back and read it a handful of times, just to enjoy it again and again.
However, in this story Martel got pretty off-base in a few places. He seems to jump around a fair bit, and I found some of his paragraphs a little difficult to follow. The content is easy enough, but I think Martel truly was artistically a little lost during this book. Additionally, he keeps referencing other texts ad nauseum. In a way this makes sense since the main character is an author, but after awhile it just gets exhausting. I get that he’s trying to hint at other larger themes of these works, but how much work do you expect your reader to do? I can’t go out and read all of this other stuff you are suggesting on every other page.

Characters: 8 – I do truly love Martel’s use of animals, and I’ve heard him explain that he uses animals because we are less cynical about them than we are about humans, which I absolutely agree with. In this story Martel not only uses animals in the context of Beatrice and Virgil, but there is an interesting development when Henry’s dog gets infected with rabies and attacks their cat. Both animals have to be put down in a truly heartbreaking way (allegory, anyone?) and I found myself equal parts horrified and compelled by this twist. Sure, animals complement almost all other writing, but Martel let’s them take center stage here (as with Life of Pi). I don’t know any other authors who really effectively do this for an adult audience, so I applaud Martel for his originality.
Additionally, I enjoyed the usage of the two Henrys. The taxidermist is quite a gruff jerk with almost no manners to speak of, but why is Henry so compelled by him? Don’t we all have a little bit of a soft spot for people who can be real jerks to us? Why is this? Do we think that we can somehow change them? I think Martel was really striking at something here. Overall, although he slipped up a few times with his very odd usage of all characters involved, he crafted them in a very interesting and new way.

Best part: Although I truly loved reading the pear scene for the first time, the end also completely floored me. (I think at that point I texted my boyfriend “Babe! What the hell is going on in my book?!”.) I loved the pear scene between Virgil and Beatrice for its artistic beauty and the finale for its shock value.

Recommend to: People who have a strong stomach for graphic violence and can appreciate an odd tale.

Reminded me of: A dark disturbing version of Wizard of Oz.

How I would murder the main character: I would infect him with rabies and smother him with his own shirt.

Sexy parts: There was absolutely nothing even remotely sexy about this story. Henry’s wife is pregnant, which suggests passion (obviously) but this part of the plot didn’t even really make much sense to me.

To sum it up: A distressing tale about the Holocaust told in an inventive but overly graphic way.

Overall: 7