alt Hacker NewsSubtitle
> The scientist was famous for linking healing with storytelling. Sometimes that meant reshaping patients’ reality.
TLDR
> after her grandmother’s death...she becomes decisive, joining a theatre group.... in the transcripts... [she] never joins a theatre group or emerges from her despair.
AFAICT the quote above is the only thing directly relevant to the title.
From what I read, skimming through the article, it paints Sacks as being a delusion driven emotional romantic and was practicing some sort of cult medicine, but I can't tell how much of that is reality and how much is NYT's ridiculously flowery embellishing of everything.
Replies
I agree that its a hard read, and seemingly never got to the point of the title of the article. I started reading it and by about the eighth or nineth paragraph the article was still ruminating on his gay love affair so I just skimmed the rest and I couldn't make heads or tails of the rest of it either.
Its shocking how bad some writers are these days.
A responsible journalist can't say directly that Sacks was a confabulist but they can point out facts and allow the reader to infer. That's what the article does. There are many facts in the article that are relevant to the title in this sense (the prime number twins, the journal entries about Hat, etc.).
I also don't agree with your interpretation of what the article is trying to paint Sacks as, though of course you are entitled to it.
I think the the point of the article is to articulate what Sacks himself said:
> "As Sacks aged, he felt as if he were gazing at people from the outside. But he also noticed a new kind of affection for humans—“homo sap.” “They’re quite complex (little) creatures (I say to myself),” he wrote in his journal. “They suffer, authentically, a good deal. Gifted, too. Brave, resourceful, challenging.”"
As a general rule, neurologists are an odd bunch. I'm married to one; I've met lots of them at her conferences.
Just a nit but it's the New Yorker, not the NYT.