A rich, fascinating portrait of extraordinary sensory awareness.
A Boston neurologist reflects on his remarkable ability to experience the same physical sensations as those found in his patients.
Harvard-trained clinical researcher Salinas explains his experiences as a polysynesthete and how this uncanny sensory-overlapping capability continues to affect his patient care practice. This kind of extrasensory awareness is most commonly found in artists, the author writes, and encompasses many different incarnations, such as grapheme-color, ordinal linguistic personification, and mirror-touch synesthesia. “I can perceive motion as sound, music as color, taste as shape as well as a wide variety of other exotic manifestations,” he writes. Salinas notes that he can also detect sensations even when not facing a living person—e.g., muscle tension in his neck or arm strain when looking at the statue of David or Lady Liberty. His book, however, focuses mainly on how the “living labor” of this neurologic phenomenon both directly enhances and personally distracts him in his personal life and medical practice. Salinas nimbly retraces his history back to a Miami childhood in which vivid colors appeared on random images, like “memories of color, firework trails in the tight spaces between the solid lines,” and even things like getting dressed for school became a tactile challenge. Intensive research on synesthesia, connections with others like him, and the eventual acceptance of his abilities opened the door for romantic relationships and an unparalleled and riveting learning experience throughout medical school, even though he continued to physically feel the pain of his patients. Following a chronicle of his challenging psychiatry residency in Massachusetts, Salinas presents remarkable medical cases that reflect the humanity and sensitivity his condition engenders, particularly through ordeals with an autistic child and a stroke victim. Vicarious and enthralling, Salinas’ memoir draws on a trove of intimate personal (both triumphant and heartbreaking) memories and thoughtful patient care experiences to effectively explain his life as a complex, sense-heightened man.
A rich, fascinating portrait of extraordinary sensory awareness.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-245866-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
PROFILES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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