I have the Memory of a Vegetable (or a Mineral)

November 24, 2008

Undisclosed Office Location  / Portland, OR: This morning I read a review of a book by Sue Halpern titled Can’t Remember What I Forgot: The Good News from the Front Lines of Memory Research.

(Parenthetical Note: Halpern has written one of those books that totally geeks up my curiosity. What happens: I’ll enthusiastically put it on my Goodreads “To Read” list along with a bunch of others – for example, Vladamir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory is referenced in the first paragraph of the review; later on so is Elegy for Iris, John Bayley’s really wonderful memoir of his marriage to the novelist Iris Murdoch, who suffered from Alzheimer’s later in life. I have every intention of actually to-reading them instead of just optimistically to-reading them, which is what will probably happen. I blame my job. Anyhow.)

The review I read originally appeared in the New York Review of Books (or, the Nerb); it was written by Michael Greenberg, a contributor to the Times Literary Supplement; and it has all the key qualities of a great book review, the most important being it has provoked the desire to put together a reading list on an esoteric topic (memory, for example). Since I haven’t yet read Sue Halpern’s book, I’ll have to quote from Greenberg’s review, which includes the following anecdote about…

…an experiment in which members of the Cambridge Psychological Society were asked to reconstruct a meeting of the society that had taken place two weeks before. The average person was barely able to recall 8 percent of what had happened, and almost half of this was incorrect, peppered with the recollection of events that had never occurred or that had occurred elsewhere.

This is distressing, particularly because what I think of as my Self is in large part held together by memories of my past. But it also explains why, a mere two weeks afterward, I can’t remember anything from Barbara Kingsolver’s excellent (I’m pretty sure) book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle except for the “fact” that it confirmed my desire to live on a farm, grow my own food, and learn how to make cheeses. I also remember liking her reading voice, but who knows anymore. My faulty but totally explainable memory notwithstanding, AVM is really good. You should read it and be inspired. And then you should, please, tell me about it.