On the Move: A Life

On the Move: A Life is the second autobiographical work by Oliver Sacks, and was published in 2015. It follows his first memoir, Uncle Tungsten, which told of his early childhood, his family’s background in medicine, and his burgeoning love of science. The London-born Sacks moved to New York City when he was in his thirties. In addition to being a writer, Sacks was a doctor and professor of neurology. He has been referred to by The New York Times as the “poet laureate of medicine,” and is best known for his books The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings. In 2008, Sacks was made a Commander of the British Empire for his service to medicine.

In On the Move, Sacks talks of his passion for writing, saying that even after publishing a dozen books, it is an activity that he still enjoys and that has the power to obscure everything else when he is engaged in it. Early in 2015, the year that saw the release of On the Move, Sacks wrote an essay for The New York Times in which he shared that he was terminally ill, giving his final memoir a sense of finality. As he chronicles his early life, he talks of lacking confidence when he was a young boy attending boarding school in England. He adds that he felt powerless. Having completed a semester at Oxford, he visits Paris with his brother David. There, after seeing the traditional attractions, his brother takes him to visit a prostitute. The prostitute sees that Oliver is nervous and simply drinks tea with him.

The author goes on to tell of the first time he fell in love. It is 1953 and he meets a man who is a poet and a Rhodes Scholar. They develop a strong friendship. The man is heterosexual and does not return Oliver’s romantic interest in him. He later dies of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Sacks then embarks on a quest of sorts to lose his virginity. He ends up in Amsterdam when he is twenty-two and has sex with a man he meets in a bar. This is just the first in a string of encounters amid a life of shyness and, in many ways, of self-isolation. He mentions an affair he has around his fortieth birthday. After this, he does not have sex for the next thirty-five years. It is not until 2009 that he meets the person he considers the love of his life.



Sacks also discusses his decision to leave England when he was twenty-seven years old. Once of the reasons he left was because of his brother Michael, whose schizophrenia resulted in violence towards Sacks and their family. From this point on, Sacks spent his life studying the human mind, even though he did not feel able to do so around his brother. He also wanted to get away from his mother, whom he loved, but who could not accept his homosexuality. After leaving England, he settles in San Francisco and into what he presents as a happy life. He has an internship at a hospital, works out frequently at a gym, and discovers California by motorcycle. He talks of meeting a poet named Thom Gunn, whose work he greatly enjoyed; in other parts of his memoir, he also mentions meeting other prominent names like W.H. Auden and Robin Williams. His time in San Francisco includes experimenting with LSD and becoming addicted to amphetamines for a period of several years. He is able to overcome his addition with therapy and the help of friends, but also credits writing with playing a role in his recovery.

Given the significance he places on writing in his life, it is not surprising that Sacks gives attention to the incidents that inspired many of his books. Periods of depression sometimes block his writing efforts and projects often take different directions from what he had planned. He makes it clear that in all areas of his life, he always tried to remain open to deeper learning and understanding. This is a mindset he used with the patients he worked with and the interests in his life such as photography and swimming. His books are said to make the human mind more accessible to the average reader.

Kirkus Reviews said of On the Move, “Despite impressionistic chronology, which occasionally causes confusion and repetition, this is an engaging memoir by a consummate storyteller.” The Los Angeles Times, meanwhile, said of the book, “On the Move is filled with both wonder and wonderments-beginning with its cover photograph of a buff, leather-clad young Sacks astride a powerful motorcycle. Sacks' discursive, revealing memoir chronicles his surprising route to becoming the bard of brain disorders. Pit stops along the way include his biker days (in which he went by his middle name, Wolf), avid weightlifting, experimentation with psychotropic drugs leading to amphetamine addiction, numerous brushes with death, lifelong passion for long-distance swims, and so many carelessly lost manuscripts you can't help but wonder about Freudian slips.”