The magnificent writer and restless neurologist Oliver Sacks died on August 30 of cancer — cancer that he wrote about with his customary interrogatory grace. But his last essay for the New York Review of Books wasn’t about his own disease. The essay, Sacks’s 30th for the magazine, was about a man who after brain surgery for epileptic seizures could no longer control his sexual urges.
The article, called simply Urge, appears in the September 24 issue of the NYRB. The afflicted man, whom Sacks calls Walter B., came to see Sacks in 2006. After the brain operation his happy marriage disintegrated and his insatiable urges led him to devour Internet pornography. Despite possessing what doctors called a “superior intelligence,” Walter could not control his urges and was sentenced to 26 months in prison for possession of child pornography. Sacks’s unique will to understand everything — and his great compassion — are on perfect display in his story. Here’s a link.
