We shall never know, for the business of adaptation—and, indeed, of life as he knew it—was suddenly cut across by a gratuitous blow of fate: an illness that, at a single stroke, deprived him of job, house, health, and independence, leaving him a gravely sick man, unable to fend for himself. For Amy, who incited the surgery in the first place, and who was so passionately invested in Virgil’s seeing, it was a “miracle” that misfired, a calamity. Virgil, for his part, maintains philosophically, “These things happen.” But he has been shattered by this blow, has given vent to outbursts of rage: rage at his helplessness and sickness; rage at … Continue reading Oliver Sacks