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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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