Joshua Foer: Moonwalking with Einstein

I finished this delightful, fun book. As I believe I mentioned in an earlier blog post, the book was condensed into a NYT Magazine article a couple of weeks ago, and I couldn't resist the book. If you've read much about memory before, I don't know that you'd learn much new. But if you agree with St. Augustine that sedi anima est in memoria ("the seat of the mind is in the memory"), then you realize that remembering is no small thing. Of course, different events or sources of information have different degrees of inherent memorability and value, so we can pick and choose to some degree. But what we are as persons is in some sense simply the sum of our history, our memory. Some of this history is genetic, some personal, what happened to me from infancy until now. Well, this books goes more to issues of remembering information, but even in this age of instant computers, having knowledge in one's head has value that we can't off-load onto computer disc. The review that I've linked to provides a fair assessment of the book, so you can determine if you'd like it.

Memorizing Poetry

I've been getting back into memorizing poetry after earlier bouts, and the linked article is a nice encouragement, plus reading Moonwalking with Einstein. I have some chunks of poetry and verse that I carry around in my head from earlier forays into this area. I think more and more it is valuable, as an older form of reading such as the lectio divina, we "chew" and contemplate the words, something that you have to do in the process of memorizing.

I also like this article because I howled in protest at the demand that we memorize the funeral oration in Julius Caesar for 10th grade English class. One classmate (who will remain unnamed, but I've kept in touch with her over the years) positively reveled in the assignment. I think I resisted because I thought it too much work. Well, another folly of my youth!

So far:
1. The opening stanza of Eliot's Four Quartets ("Time present and time past. . ..")
2. The closing stanza ("We shall not cease from exploration . . . and the fire and the rose are one")
3. Prospero's speech in the Tempest (Be cheerful sir, . . . and our little life is rounded with a sleep")
4. Macbeth's speech (already had this one)("Out, out, brief candle. . . ")

In tap: George Herbert, Gerald Manley Hopkins, more Shakespeare (of course)(some Henry V portions I know pretty well), and John Donne (the love poems, although I'll never match the voice that Richard Burton gives them).

Suggestions?

Joshua Foer on Memory

Rating: Moderately nerdy (although Iowa Guru would consider it really nerdy).

Joshua Foer published the above cited article in the NYT Magazine that heralds the publication of this book Moonwalking with Einstein, which is set to come out in a couple of days. The topic of memory and mnemonic devices has fascinated me for decades. From Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas's book to the work of Francis Yates (The Art of Memory), this intrigues me. As I sit here, I have a pretty good memory of what I've read and learned. I can recall narratives and facts for work pretty well, at least when a case is active. As for history, I think that I have a pretty good memory. Why so? I think that I like to make sense of things. One of my earliest memories (and I kid you not about this), when we lived on Pioneer Avenue (i.e., before 3rd grade), I wanted to know who came first, the Kaiser or Hitler? (Maybe this really is very nerdy.) Anyway, I think that I really have a sense of narrative as a explanatory and mnemonic device. Well, anyway, learning to memorize more has some interest, and, as I'm sure Foer discusses in his book (as well as the article, which seems a lead in for the book), it is a fascinating tale of its own. Thus, my interest. On the other hand, Iowa Guru can testify to very many instances of very bad memory!

If you want to get a further sense of Foer's project and book, Amazon has both a interview and a brief video interview. I'm looking forward to the book.