So, I just finished reading Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer. My friend A had recommended it to me, and said it was one of those books that really changed the way you think about things. It was a very interesting read.
As described on its book jacket, Moonwalking with Einstein "draws on cutting edge research, a surprising cultural history of memory, and venerable tricks of the mentalist's trade to transform our understanding of human remembering. ". Foer, who is Jonathan Safran Foer's brother, embarks on a massive study of the importance of memory in our culture, but he also undergoes his own private experiment. Over the course of a single year, he goes from being someone who he and others describe as having a fully average memory, to winning the US Memory Championship.* His experiment proves what most of the memory champions say--anyone could do this, if they trained for it. Memory isn't just something that some people have and some people don't (though of course we all know anecdotally that some people seem to have much better access to their memories than others), rather it is something that you can cultivate and train much in the same way you go to the gym and use the elliptical.
So, as he trains, we as readers learn a few things. For one, we learn some of the techniques he uses to train. They are pretty interesting, much more creative than what you might think, and things that I think might help my kids tremendously when studying for history exams! To give you a totally random example, in one chapter he describes the process for remembering a random list of items. It was supposed to be a list of things someone had to do before they left town. I won't tell you the system, but I will type the list from memory here**
1. Pickled Garlic
2. Cottage Cheese
3. Salmon, pref. peat smoked
4. 6 Bottles White Wine
5. Socks x3
6. 3 Hula Hoops
7. Snorkel
8. Dry Ice Machine
9. Email Sophia
10. Skin colored Cat suit
11. Find Paul Newman film--Someone up there likes me
12. Elk Sausage
13. Director's Chair and Megaphone
14. Climbing Rope and Harness
15. Barometer.
And, though I have a pretty good memory, this was a totally different way of memorizing, and one, that the memory experts predicts "sticks", meaning I should be able to come up with that list, in that order, in a year, or two, or five. We'll see.
In addition to learning how to train his own memory, Foer explores the role of memory throughout human history, and also lots of case studies on people who are amnesiac or have extraordinary memories. Really interesting stuff. One of my favorite quotes from the whole book, however, was this bit on some early written languages:
"In Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates describes how the Egyptian God Theuth, inventor of writing, came to Thamus, the king of Egypt, and offered to bestow his wonderful invention upon the Egyptian people. 'Here is a branch of learning that will...improve their memories,' Theuth said to the Egyptian king. 'My discovery provides a recipe for both memory and wisdom.' But Thamus was reluctant to accept the gift. 'If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls." he told the god. 'They will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminding. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them anything, you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they will know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the coneeit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellow-men.'
Socrates goes onto disparage the idea of passing on his own knowledge through writing, saying it would be 'singularly simple-minded to believe that written words can do anything more than remind one of what one already knows.' Writing, for Socrates, could never be anything more than a cue for memory-- a way of calling to mind information already in one's head. Socrates feared that writing would lead the culture down a treacherous path toward intellectual and moral decay, because even while the quantity of knowledge available to people might increase, they themselves would come to resemble empty vessels. "
Um, hello? Remind anyone of people's concerns about our reliance on technology, the internet and the iphone???
Fascinating, right?
There are definitely some moments when the book seems a little slow, but for the most part this a thought provoking read that is well worth it.
AZ
*No, I didn't know this existed either.
**You'll have to take my word for it. :)