Insomniac City: New York, Oliver and Me
Bill Hayes
[Bloomsbury]
At 48, Bill Hayes moves from San Francisco to New York after the sudden death of his partner. He has few friends in his new homeplace and finds himself riding the subway regularly, fascinated by the “lottery logic that brings together a random sampling of humanity for one minute or two”. He writes about his underground peregrinations, smiles at babies and takes photographs of people with interesting faces and back stories. He cries a lot, coming to believe that “a good cry is a car wash for the soul”.
By a series of coincidences, he finds himself embarking on a love affair with the celebrated author and neurologist Oliver Sacks, 30 years his senior (“the Oliver Sacks” as people exclaim in italicised amazement throughout the narrative). Hayes and Sacks eat expensive fish together and drink expensive wine and smoke joints on the roof. They have “deaf sex” – Sacks’ hearing isn’t great so he asks Hayes to repeat any pillow-talk he can’t quite hear.
Their relationship is touching: Sacks, a Luddite and science nerd, knows very little of the modern world; Hayes, an urban flâneur, knows little of science or the natural world. Their give and take of Bach and Björk, of skateboarding and genetic science, makes for wonderful reading. Hayes’s chapters are interspersed with photos, diary entries and words of wisdom from “O”.
Finally, the book lives up to Sacks’ creed: “The most we can do is write – intelligently, creatively, critically, evocatively – about what it is like living in this world at this time”.
Words – Sam Ford
