Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
Product Description
“The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” is populated by a cast as strange as that of the most fantastic fiction. The subject of this strange and wonderful book is what happens when things go wrong with parts of the brain most of us don’t know exist …Dr Sacks shows the awesome powers of our mind and just how delicately balanced they have to be’ – “Sunday Times”. ‘Who is this book for? Who is it not for? It is for everybody who has felt from time to time that certain twinge of self-identity and sensed how easily, at any moment, one might lose it’ – “The Times”. ‘This is, in the best sense, a serious book. It is, indeed, a wonderful book, by which I mean not only that it is excellent (which it is) but also that it is full of wonder, wonders and wondering. He brings to these often unhappy people understanding, sympathy and respect. Sacks is always learning from his patients, marvelling at them, widening his own understanding and ours’ – “Punch”…. More >>
Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
The one star does not refer to the text, which I have only partially read. The one star is for the retarded publishers at Picador.
When publishing a work of any genre, there are universal guidelines that publishers and editors MUST follow. These give the reading public a sense of cohesion and makes them able to pick-up and read any text by any publisher. If all publishers had vastly different systems of layout, style and protocol, then reading would become increasingly difficult and tiresome. Point in contention, titles.
On the upper portion of a page there are one of four basic options:
i) author’s name (not recommended),
ii) book title (also, not recommended),
iii) chapter (recommended),
iv) sub-group, such as single story title in a collection of short stories (necessary).
Whichever of these you pick, the left and right pages need to contain DIFFERENT information so that the reader can find, re-find or locate their place in the book – the last page they were reading if they put the text down. So, that established, the upper titles act as form of navigation for the reader, a universally adhered to rule (unless you are David Carson et al.). So then, editors at Picador, why did you in your ultimate wisdom (can you sense my sarcasm there) decide to put the SAME chapter title on BOTH the left AND the right page? Pray tell, what inspired such divergence from the established protocol? Especially when all it serves to do is disorientate the reader and render navigation redundant. E.g., I am reading the first story and the title piece to the book, and I look up to see the information on the upper page, and what does it say? NOTHING! It simply tells me TWICE, the title of this chapter! not the title of the story I am reading!
When I noticed this I was quite taken aback at the utter stupidity of the publishers in allowing this decision to pass numerous committee stages, and for what ultimate purpose was it agreed? Does in add to my reading experience? No! Does it give me extra information? No! Does it aid me in any way, shape or form? NO! Does it annoy me? Yes! Does it detract from the enjoyment of reading? Yes! Does it make navigation difficult? YES!
My advice to any potential reader is to buy another imprint, there are lots out there. Choose one my a publishing house that follows publishing protocol and etiquette, and not one that wants to re-write the rules because they appear to have nothing better to do with their time.
Brilliant. Everyone living should read this boo
God save you if you were mentally ill and your doctor turned out to be Sacks. Clearly these people amuse him… well they are not actually people, per se, just malfunctioning brain mechanisms. Disgustingly evil managerie of circus animals he parades in front of the reader. Hard to read if you feel sympathy for these unfortunate human beings who depend on Sacks for care.
My neurologist indicated this book to me with a lot of good accolades and I was pretty much anxious about reading it asap. What a disapointment!!
True, the author is a pretty much well-known specialist on brain disorders and pretty much devoted to dismmiss a lot of prejudice one has against people with severe brain disorders, deserving all the accolades my neurologist has put on him, but it seems that (at least in the Portuguese edition I have read) the lackluster style of the texts do a lot of harm to the intensiveness of the narrative, which goes trough the lives of brain impaired people as if they were fictional characters and not real persons.
I hope next time, the author will be more successfull in portraying situations like the ones presented in the book, which he surely knows a lot, but which he is not so much efficient to convey to readers like myself.
I don’t know… things seem a little too tidy with Dr. Sachs’ stories. His characters are always “charming” persons, with “delightful” senses of humor. The title character is such a person who also happens to be a brilliant musician and painter, whose paintings, by golly, morph with time to trace the onset of his disease. His second subject, a man who cannot form new memories (like the protagonist in a later Hollywood film, Memento) nonetheless finds himself getting bored solving old puzzles. (If you can’t remember anything, how does boredom set in?) In another account, he assigns super-human powers of discernement to a room full of otherwise incapcitated patients as they laugh at a broadcast of a political figure that Sachs obviously doesn’t like. Be careful how seriously you take these stories, nothing jazzes up a tall tale like a claim of authenticity.