Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation. Boots! Where would we be without boos? Where would we be without good? No, Timberd. It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today, I'm very honored and thrilled because one of my very favorite people to be facing is facing me. It's Oliver Sacks. His new book

is Hallucinations. Well, you know, there used to be lists in a literary magazine called Anteus

of neglected classics of the 20th century. And I think the second of Dr. Sachs' books' Awakening's

was mentioned by all sorts of people, including W.H. Auden,

and I've been reading him ever since.

It's 13 books.

More for me important than what I've read is the fact that from the first time

I faced him, I felt his presence when he's here, which I find to be beautiful, moving,

inheartening, emboldening, because I'm a timid fellow.

And it's a pleasure to see you again, Oliver Sacks.

Well, it's a great pleasure to see you again, Michael.

Now tell me, hallucinations, these seem to be, in part, defined by their senselessness.

Unlike dreams, hallucinations tend to be in their way meaningless.

And I wondered why that seems to be the case.

Well, this is only the case for some hallucinations. In particular, the visual hallucinations,

which may especially develop when people have lost their eyesight,

but may also develop if one has blindfolded for two or three days.

Sensory deprivation releases the visual parts of the brain,

which are normally organized by the act of perception or of imagination or of dream.

And then there will be a riot or chaos, and the visual brain will put all sorts of things together in odd ways.

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