Want to learn the ideas in On the Move better than ever? Read the world’s #1 book summary of On the Move by Oliver Sacks here.
Read a brief 1-Page Summary or watch video summaries curated by our expert team. Note: this book guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by the publisher or author, and we always encourage you to purchase and read the full book.
Video Summaries of On the Move
We’ve scoured the Internet for the very best videos on On the Move, from high-quality videos summaries to interviews or commentary by Oliver Sacks.
1-Page Summary of On the Move
Oliver Sacks is a neurologist and writer who has authored several books. On the Move: A Life is his second autobiography, following Uncle Tungsten, which told of his childhood and family’s history in medicine. He grew up in London before moving to New York City when he was thirty years old. In addition to being a doctor and professor, Sacks writes books about science for the general public. His best-known works are The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings.
Sacks talks about his love for writing and how he has been able to do it even after publishing 12 books. He says that it is still a passion of his, and that when he writes, everything else just fades away. In 2015, Sacks wrote an essay for The New York Times in which he revealed that he was terminally ill with cancer. This gave the book a sense of finality as well as having him talk about things from the past in more detail than ever before. As a young boy who attended boarding school in England, Sacks lacked confidence and felt powerless at times. After visiting Paris with his brother David (who had previously gone to Oxford), they visit a prostitute together. She saw how nervous Oliver was so she simply drank tea while he talked to her instead of doing anything sexual with him like other prostitutes would have done at the time because they knew their clients were inexperienced sexually or uncomfortable around women due to some sort of childhood trauma or event such as being molested by someone close to them earlier on in life…
The author recalls the first time he fell in love. It is 1953 and he meets a man who is a poet and a Rhodes scholar, but not interested in Oliver’s romantic advances. The two develop an intimate friendship, which ends when the man dies of Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age twenty-eight. In his thirties, Sacks embarks on a journey to lose his virginity but it takes him years before he has sex with someone for the first time. He mentions that this was around his fortieth birthday and then doesn’t have intercourse again until 2009 when he met the person who would become his husband/partner/significant other (SOS).
Sacks also talks about how he left England when he was twenty-seven years old. One of the reasons he left was because of his brother, Michael, who had schizophrenia and would attack Sacks and their family. After leaving England, Sacks settled in San Francisco where he became a prolific writer and researcher on the human mind. He didn’t feel comfortable studying the mind around his brother due to his past experiences with him. Another reason for moving away from home is that Sacks wanted to get away from his mother because she couldn’t accept his homosexuality. In addition to these two reasons, Sacks moved out west so that he could have a new start in life as well as explore California by motorcycle (which is what happened). He mentions meeting several famous people like Thom Gunn, W H Auden and Robin Williams while living in San Francisco; this is just part of what makes up this fascinating memoir.
Sacks places a lot of importance on writing. It’s not surprising that he gives attention to the incidents and people who inspired his books, as well as the changes in direction they took. Sometimes periods of depression blocked him from writing, but he was always open to learning more about himself and others. He used this mindset with patients at his clinic and with other interests such as photography and swimming. His books are said to make the human mind more accessible for those who read them.
Kirkus Reviews said that On the Move was “engaging” and The Los Angeles Times called it a book filled with “wonder and wonderments.” It’s also filled with stories about Sacks’ life, including his biker days, weightlifting, various brushes with death, amphetamine addiction, long-distance swimming passion and many lost manuscripts.
