Another glimpse inside the mind of Oliver Sacks

There’s a nifty word, “paracuses,” for those mishearings that occur with the advance of deafness. The fact that Oliver Sacks recorded his paracuses in a little red notebook suggests the curious and lively mind at work in “The River of Consciousness,” the essay collection Sacks was working on at the time of his death in 2015 at 82, only months after the publication of his autobiography, “On the Move.”

Sacks recorded his paracuses in red, and he wrote in green, on the opposite page, what was actually said; in purple, he added reactions to his mishearings. He came to see that “these instantaneous inventions” have “a sort of style or wit — a ‘dash’ ” reflecting the personal interests of the mis-hearer. Thus Sacks mishears “tarot cards” as “pteropods”; “the biography of cancer” as “a biography of Cantor,” a favorite mathematician; and, “all-or-none-ness” as “oral numbness.” My favorite: He receives the sad news that “a big-time cuttlefish” has been diagnosed with ALS. He writes: “Cephalopods have elaborate nervous systems, it is true, and perhaps, I thought for a splitsecond, a cuttlefish could have ALS. But the idea of a ‘big-time’ cuttlefish was ridiculous. (It turned out to be ‘a big-time publicist.’)”

The essay occurs a little more than midway through the volume of 10 essays, half of which were previously published in The New York Review of Books. By then the reader is in thrall to Sacks’ ability to braid wide reading, research and experience with his neurology patients to reach original and subtle conclusions.

“What is extraordinary, first, is that they present themselves as clearly articulated words or phrases, not as jumbles of sounds,” Sacks writes. “One rather than just fails to hear.” A big-time cuttlefish with ALS is the brain’s translation from “often meager and ambiguous sensory data,” stamped with the preoccupations of the hearer.

What becomes clear in this book is how much of the brain’s work is characterized by such ad hoc innovations, repeated demonstrations of plasticity and adaptability that explain not just amusing paracuses but accidental plagiarism, false memories and the acrobatics of ingenuity and creativity.

Sacks uncovers his own false memory, unwittingly recorded in his 2001 memoir of childhood, “Uncle Tungsten.” In it he recalls in great detail an incendiary bomb landing behind his boyhood home during World War II.

Only later did he learn that he had been miles away at boarding school when the bomb landed, sent with his older brother Michael for their protection at the beginning of the war. Another brother, Michael reminded him, had written them a vivid letter about the incident. In this vein, Sacks mentions instances of accidental self-plagiarism, repeating previously written phrases and sentences as though they were new.

Such instances suggest the dynamic state of memory described by Sigmund Freud, where recollection is in a constant state of “retranscription.” Such retranscription has been frequently demonstrated via studies in which researchers easily induce people to recall experiences they never had. So durable are these false memories that the experimental subjects are reluctant to give them up even when told of the fiction at work.

Sacks sees in these foibles a source of human creativity.

“Indifference to source allows us to assimilate what we read, what we are told, what others say, and think and write and paint, as intensely and richly as if they were primary experiences. It allows us to see and hear with other eyes and ears, to enter other minds, to assimilate the art and science and religion of the whole culture, to enter into and contribute to the common mind, the general commonwealth of knowledge.”

Sacks himself is the expression of just this mental agility, a mind at play in the world, capable of profound insights into the pain of his patients as well as the possibilities inherent in a big-time cuttlefish.