NEXT STORY
The piano is important once more in my life
RELATED STORIES
Video URL
Reception to Musicophilia
Oliver Sacks
Scientist
|
Views | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 311. 'Take the eye if you must, but leave the rest of me alone' | 201 | 06:58 | |
| 312. The profoundest case of amnesia ever seen | 1 | 852 | 02:40 |
| 313. How Musicophilia expanded | 165 | 02:51 | |
| 314. The two pieces from 'Musicophilia' in the 'New Yorker' | 147 | 01:55 | |
| 315. Reception to Musicophilia | 134 | 01:33 | |
| 316. The piano is important once more in my life | 1 | 694 | 03:08 |
| 317. 'I have no excuse not to practise the piano!' | 453 | 02:11 | |
| 318. The events that led up to The Mind's Eye | 148 | 04:52 | |
| 319. Pulling together all the stories for The Mind's Eye | 121 | 03:20 | |
| 320. The final compilation for The Mind's Eye | 120 | 02:35 |
-
- 1
- ...
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- ...
- 36
-
Comments
(0)
Please sign in or
register to add comments
I was immediately inundated with letters. The book did very well. It became a... a big best seller, in its way, even bigger than the Hat book, which surprised me, because it was a very big book. It was close to 100,000 words, but then everyone is interested in music, virtually everyone. Unlike the Overlords, whom Arthur Clarke describes.
In particular, many of the letters said: I’ve read your book and I was fascinated, but I have some musical experiences or some musical problems, which you haven’t touched on, as follows… and I would often read these letters, and I would write back and say: You’re quite right, and I think I made... I’ve never heard of what you told me, but now you tell me I would like perhaps to include this in a future edition, and can I... can I quote you, with due identification, or concealment of identity? And, in fact, when the paperback came out it was 40 pages longer, which was perhaps 20,000... 15,000 or 20,000 words longer than the hardback, entirely as a consequence of receiving letters from readers who mentioned new musical problems. So that fat paperback came out in 2008.
Oliver Sacks (1933-2015) was born in England. Having obtained his medical degree at Oxford University, he moved to the USA. There he worked as a consultant neurologist at Beth Abraham Hospital where in 1966, he encountered a group of survivors of the global sleepy sickness of 1916-1927. Sacks treated these patients with the then-experimental drug L-Dopa producing astounding results which he described in his book Awakenings. Further cases of neurological disorders were described by Sacks with exceptional sympathy in another major book entitled The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat which became an instant best seller on its publication in 1985. His other books drew on his rich experiences as a neurologist gleaned over almost five decades of professional practice. Sacks's work was recognized by prestigious institutions which awarded him numerous honours and prizes. These included the Lewis Thomas Prize given by Rockefeller University, which recognizes the scientist as poet. He was an honorary fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and held honorary degrees from many universities, including Oxford, the Karolinska Institute, Georgetown, Bard, Gallaudet, Tufts, and the Catholic University of Peru.
Title: Reception to "Musicophilia"
Listeners: Kate Edgar
Kate Edgar, previously Managing Editor at the Summit Books division of Simon and Schuster, began working with Oliver Sacks in 1983. She has served as editor and researcher on all of his books, and has been closely involved with various films and adaptations based on his work. As friend, assistant, and collaborator, she has accompanied Dr Sacks on many adventures around the world, clinical and otherwise.
Tags: The Man Who, Childhood’s End, Musicophilia, Arthur C Clarke
Duration: 1 minute, 33 seconds
Date story recorded: September 2011
Date story went live: 02 October 2012
