Insomniac City New York, Oliver, and me

THE BRITISH NEUROLOGIST Oliver Sacks transformed the medical case study into a new literary form. In books like "Awakenings," "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" and "An Anthropologist on Mars" he presented not just clinical facts but recognizable human beings, people we could identify with despite their otherness. He enabled us to see the world through the eyes of men and women with autism, Tourette's syndrome or memory loss: those who experienced reality differently and expanded our conceptions of emotion, time and space. His stories read like metaphysical fairy tales. Shortly before he died of cancer in 2015, Sacks turned his attention on himself in an autobiography, "On the Move," followed by a frank set of articles in The New York Times later published as "Gratitude." He shared not only his thoughts about life and death but, for the first time, his sexuality and how he had recently found love with a fellow writer, Bill Hayes. Hayes has now written his own memoir, "Insomniac City." The reader goes to it hoping that he will do for Sacks something like what Sacks did for his subjects, painting a portrait that mixes intimacy with intellectual understanding. But this is a different kind of book, a loose, impressionistic collection of prose snapshots, street photographs and journal entries. And Sacks isn't Hayes's only focus. His other subjects are New York City and himself. Hayes moved from San Francisco after the death of his partner from a heart attack. Sacks contacted Hayes after reading his book "The Anatomist," about the classic 19th-century medical text Gray's Anatomy. Hayes didn't suspect Sacks was gay, but they eventually connected, and by the end of 2009 they were lovers. Hayes was 49, Sacks 76. Sacks had not had sex in 35 years; this was his first sustained physical relationship. The author is very good about the day-to-day life of the couple, giving us their routines of food, music, affection and sleep. The best details are from his journal, where Sacks is called 0. We learn that 0 enjoyed pot, which he always referred to as "cannabis"; that in this age of laptops he continued to write with a fountain pen; and that he was initially very nervous about going out in public with Hayes. They visited Iceland and had lunch with Björk - Sacks didn't know her work, but she was a great fan of his. One Fourth of July he went into raptures when the fireworks triggered some lovely hallucinations. He stood on their rooftop crying out: "The primary cortex! The genius of the primary cortex!" Hayes was present when Sacks heard the terrible news from the cancer doctor; he watched Sacks examine the CT scan of his own liver. Sacks decided to forgo chemotherapy and not prolong life "just for the sake of prolonging life." He wanted to enjoy as best he could the six to 18 months left to him. THROUGHOUT THE BOOK, Hayes includes portraits of New York strangers: skateboarders, cabdrivers, people met on the subway, the dealer at their local newsstand. There's an innocent "gee whiz" quality to his writing here that some readers will find charming, but these characters are pale distractions in comparison with Sacks; a little of them goes a long way. We end the book hungry to know more about the good doctor. His death is still recent, and Hayes probably needed more time to bring his memories of the man into sharper focus. What's gained in immediacy is lost in weight. Sacks comes across as a gentle, learned, highly eccentric academic, but he was so much more. If you haven't read any of his books, you would never know what an extraordinary talent he was: cerebral, tender, alien, mysterious. And there always was something mysterious about Dr. Sacks. This anthropologist on earth was wonderfully articulate when he wrote about others, but when he wrote about himself, in "A Leg to Stand On" and "Uncle Tungsten," even in "On the Move" with its glimpses of his early life as a weight lifter and motorcyclist, he became abstract, disassociated, dry; he could not bring himself to emotional life. The silence was not just over his homosexuality. It was more like a shyness so deep it resembled a form of Asperger's syndrome. But this lack, a "deficit" much like those he describes in his patients, helped him to connect with those patients. Taking nothing for granted, he used an intense intellectual curiosity in place of empathy to put himself in their minds. Hayes tries to use love to get inside this literary magician's head, but love by itself isn't enough. ? CHRISTOPHER BRAM is the author of the novel "Gods and Monsters." His most recent book is "The Art of History." He teaches at the Gallatin School of New York University. Sacks watched fireworks from their rooftop crying out, 'The genius of the primary cortex!'

Hayes (The Anatomist, 2007) had recently lost his longtime partner when he decided to leave San Francisco for New York in 2009, at age 48. There, he reunited with the writer Oliver Sacks, having met him once before when Sacks reached out to praise his book. The two bonded quickly, though to what end Hayes wasn't immediately sure. Soon though, they were together all the time, and Hayes' tender encapsulations of his lover are gold on the page: Sacks' wallet held a tiny periodic table in the slot where a driver's license would go. Sacks popped his first bottle of champagne in his late seventies wearing protective goggles. He warned Hayes, more than once, of the imminent danger of death, should he happen to swallow too many fireflies. They stayed together until Sacks died in 2015, and this book is Hayes' letter of love for Sacks and New York City. Alongside journal entries, many of them conversations between the author and O, are Hayes' essays about the people, poetry, and rhythms of his adopted city, as well as his photographs.--Bostrom, Annie Copyright 2017 Booklist

Hayes's tender memoir is a love letter-to New York City and to renowned science writer Oliver Sacks. Devastated by the sudden death of a longtime partner, Hayes (The Anatomist) relocated from San Francisco to Manhattan, where he became enamored with the strange rituals and brusque charm of the locals. At roughly the same time, he entered a relationship with Sacks, whose magisterial prose and celebrity concealed the fact that he'd been celibate for 35 years and never had a serious romantic attachment. Hayes explores his fascination with his new home and growing intimacy with the unworldly, brilliant man three decades his senior who was experiencing true love for the first time. In a mélange of journal entries, photos, scenes, and meditations, Hayes reconstructs his immersion in New York and the flowering of his involvement with Sacks, a romance cut short by the fatal return of Sacks's cancer. Hayes's stylistic approach provides immediacy to his recollections, imbuing conversations with cab drivers and the clerk at the local bodega with significance that resonates past the superficial mundanity. Sacks wrote until the very end, and his public examination of his impending death and sexual orientation help to make Hayes's understated descriptions of their life together 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. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.