Nick Pateras | Moonwalking with Einstein
BOOK REVIEW
Moonwalking with Einstein – Joshua Foer
Impeccable concoction of entertainment and context as Foer illuminates the power of human memory
In my mind, Moonwalking with Einstein is a true testament to the practice of participatory journalism, which in this case brilliantly elucidates the little-understood field of the human memory. The book dances between two areas of interest: the first tells of how Foer, a science journalist, takes up the practice of memory training in rather off-the-cuff fashion and within one year finds himself in the final of the USA National Memory Championship. While I thought this story would dominate the book, I actually found that more pages were lent to the second focal point - Foer offering context and insight about the memory and how its role has transformed in both education and professional trades. Though it may not sound it, much of this was truly fascinating. Consider the memory’s dissipation as an integral brain muscle following Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press. Or further, the evolution of elaborate memory techniques that help modern day ‘mental athletes’ memorize several decks of playing cards at a time.
"To the extent that experience is the sum of our memories and wisdom the sum of our experiences, having a better memory would mean knowing not only more about the world, but more about myself."
Interesting as it was, I found Foer’s narrative of his training and advancement to the national championship final to be unnecessary colour on an otherwise hypnotizing monochrome. It did appropriately divorce heavier areas of the book but I would have been just as happy to read Foer’s research without it. Particularly memorable were the people he encountered: savants such as Daniel Tammet, who boasts an ability to ‘see numbers’ when answering complex math problems, and Kim Peek, who is said to have memorized over 12,000 books, have both garnered worldwide attention. However, the most captivating of all was EP, an amnesiac who may have had the worst memory in world history – he was able to recall only his very last thought. Reading about this patient had my mind racing in a way not many books have accomplished lately. Not only did this poor gentleman have the inability to remember anyone if they so much as momentarily exited his line of vision, but he couldn’t even remember that he even had a memory problem in the first place: the ultimate existential trapdoor.
Without being well versed in psychology or possessing an above-average understanding of the human brain, I still found this book terrific, both for its abundance of knowledge as well as its dry-humoured writing style. Now I just have to hope I don’t forget any of it.
-NP, June 2014