~Post by Jenn S.
In my other life as an academic, most of what I read—fiction, criticism, philosophy, theory—has one thing in common: it isn’t trying to make itself too terribly clear. Just clear enough, maybe, if you work very hard as a reader, or not quite clear at all, when it comes to some critics I know.
And so, over the last year or so, I have come to rejoice in the clarity and forthrightness of nonfiction writing. At last, engaging books that let me relax. Books that will totally change the way I understand the world and my everyday life, books that I will talk about over dinner and drinks and coffee and to strangers on the bus, books like Moonwalking with Einstein (not to mention Quiet and You Are Not A Gadget, plus essays like Joan Didion’s, John McPhee’s, Geoff Dyer’s). My brain eats this stuff up.
Josh Foer immerses the reader in an unexplored subculture in Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art & Science of Remembering Everything. It turns out there are people out there who devote all their free time to expanding their brains’ own power of memory. Using techniques that have been around, if not widely used, since ancient Greece, mentalists can remember and recite thousands of digits, hundreds of pages of text, facts, even playing cards. Once you know how to do it, you can train your mind to remember any amount of information. And the astonishing thing that Foer, who’s generally pretty forgetful, investigates firsthand in the book is that anybody can do this. At least in theory. (I gave it a short-lived try myself, but I didn’t get very far…let me know how you do.)
Putting his own memory to the test, Foer learns to build memory palaces in his mind—elaborate imaginary houses with many rooms filled with whatever data he’s trying to store. Another technique has him associating playing cards with odd pairings of cultural paraphernalia. This is the origin of the book’s title. And of images like Dom DeLuise (five of clubs) hocking a loogie (nine of clubs) on Albert Einstein’s thick white mane (three of diamonds). The trick is to choose the most outrageous and strange elements in combination to store with each number.
Foer takes us inside the world of mental athletes, training with them and eventually competing against them. From there, the book explores other fascinating extremes of human memory, including amnesia patients and savants.
Tell me more. That’s the feeling I have when I read a really good nonfiction book, whether it’s pop-psychology, pop-technology, or pop-sociology. I refuse to be a snob about it, which is more than can be said for me on most accounts. Part Oliver Saks, part memoir, part plain old self-help guide, Moonwalking with Einstein is a piece of new nonfiction I won’t be forgetting anytime soon.
Joshua Foer will be here at BookPeople to speak about & sign Moonwalking with Einstein on Thursday, March 8, 7p.
BookPeople 