You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

For you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read?

Hi, this is Mike Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm.

Today I'm in the studio with what for me is a very special guest,

someone who I've been looking forward to meeting and speaking to for a long time.

His name is Oliver Sacks.

His most recent book from the University of California Press is seeing voices subtitled

a journey into the world of the deaf.

And his previous books are the man who mistook his wife for a hat, a leg to stand on, awakenings, and his first book, a book on migraine, which I think

was also published by the University of California, if I'm correct. These books have been,

I think, humanizing influences on their reader reader in them, I find a sense of wonder at the fact of life itself, at the mere fact that life exists, and with it coupled a sense of gratitude.

It is not surprising then to know that his early work, a book on the dreams of people who had African sleeping sickness, as it was called,

that the early work was praised by W.H. Auden.

I think it's a poetic vision which poets look to for inspiration. Every once in a while,

there'll be a book that we share mostly with poet friends.

I know that Marian Moore loved Adelbart's Stifters novella the Rock Crystal because of its

accuracy in describing minerals, and it's that sense of life going on, even at its

furthest extremes that I value in the work of Oliver Sacks. It's very nice to have you here.

It's nice to be here.

The new book, Seeing Voices, A Journey into the World of the Deaf, what led you to the

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