Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein
The tag line on the book – “The art and science of remembering everything” is misleading. There is little in the way of prescriptive material here. The book is more of a travelogue and memoir of the years that the author spent and his journey from being a journalist covering a rather nerdy subculture to becoming the somewhat unlikely Memory champion of the USA.
We join Foer as he journeys to the world memory championships and meets a variety of entertaining, eccentric and quite bizarre characters. From the ultra suave and successful memory coach Tony Buzan who runs a global memory empire and wears clothes inspired by seventeenth century sword fighters to the cane wielding English eccentric Ed Cooke who formed a secret society of memory champions whose main purpose seems drinking beer.
This is not a scientific study or a self help book. Rather it is a study of characters and of the people who spend so much time and are completely committed to a rather arcane pursuit of somewhat dubious utility. The author also goes into some detail on the techniques used by champion memorisers such as using memory palaces and associating easily remembered and recalled images to all kinds of data that needs to be memorised. The emphasis here is again on entertainment rather than instructions as we are invited to imagine Claudia Schiffer taking a luxurious bath in a giant tub of cottage cheese on the sofa of the author’s childhood home. Apparently it is easier to remember titillating images than it is to remember chaste ones (who would have thought?).
The author also takes some interesting, if anecdotal diversions into topics such as chicken sexing and an exploration of savants capable of incredible feats of memory. Foer spends time with people who can’t remember their last thought as well as those such as Kim Peek, the savant on whom Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man was based, who spends his days memorising the phone book. All of the characters are sympathetically portrayed, even those that the author is clearly ambiguous about.
The most enjoyable parts of the book are the ones where the author describes his journey towards becoming a “memory master”. The one image that I will take from this book is that of Joshua Foer sitting in the basement of his parent’s house in his underpants wearing giant industrial earmuffs and safety glasses spray painted black with tiny pinholes attempting to memorise long lists of random numbers.
Moonwalking with Einstein does come out like a mockumentary at times but it is clear that the author respects, even enjoys the company of, this strange brotherhood of unlikely athletes that he came across on his journey. I recommend this short and entertaining book to those who enjoy popular science books and as well as those who enjoy character studies and travelogues in the vein of Bill Bryson.
4 stars out of 5.
