Seeing through Sacks’ eyes
Book Review: The Island of the Colorblind and Cycad Island by Oliver Sacks
Originally published in Creative Loafing. I am reprinting some of my early writing here, which is no longer available online.
“There is a grandeur in this view of life.” — Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species
In The Island of the Colorblind, Oliver Sacks embarks upon an adventure that must have been nearly as exciting for him as Darwin’s enlightening journey to the Galapagos Islands. The famous neurologist, who also is the author of Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, and An Anthropologist on Mars, first conceived of the trip when he discovered that one of the Caroline Islands — Pingelap — held an unusually large community of achromatopes. Individuals with achromatopsia are born not only colorblind, but they also are light intolerant and unable to see fine detail.
Inspired by childhood readings of H.G. Wells (The Country of the Blind), Sacks wondered about the condition of such a uniquely individuated group of people living in isolation. He wished to explore what it meant to be colorblind and to live in a colorblind community. Sacks was joined by an American ophthalmologist named Robert Wasserman and Knut Nordby, a Norwegian…
