Recommendation

Part 1: The World We Met for the First Time
· A Question That Stings · Oliver Comes · Persistent, But Not Unusual · In the Bioluminescent Night Sea · Small Personal Victories · An Ominous Year-End · 2 Horatio Street, #3G · Stereo Number · A New Beginning · Morning Edition · Becoming an Author

Part 2: Sense and Friendship
· The Color of Words · Intermezzo I · Action, Perception, Cognition · Tungsten's Birthday · Side by Side, Illuminating Each Other · Outing · Intermezzo II · Compass Hat · Life is a Continuum of Tiresome Hardships · Creatures on the Sofa · Steel Nerves · The Return of 'Stereo Numbers' · Cesium and Barium's Birthdays · The Calculus of Friendship · Learning to Listen · Iridium's Birthday · Thoughts While Reading 'The Mind's Eye' · A Single Moment in Life · Companion Rocks

Part 3 Two Farewells
· Self-Experimentation · Interlude III · Bioelectricity · War and Peace · Therapeutic Brain Injury · Like a Father · Work and Love · Lead Birthday · A Final Farewell

Acknowledgements
Text and Image Copyright Information

It started with a letter that almost wasn't sent.
The friendship and intellectual adventures of two neuroscientists, Oliver Sacks and Susan Barry.

★ 10th Anniversary of Oliver Sacks's Passing, Includes Unpublished Handwritten Letters
★ Recommended by Dr. Namgung In, writer, and novelist Son Bo-mi

“A must-read for anyone who loves Sax’s books.

“I ended up shedding tears at the last chapter.”
- Temple Grandin (professor, zoologist, Colorado State University)

Oliver Sacks, a physician and neurologist who generously poured his genius into helping the vulnerable beings the world considered insignificant, and the world-beloved "poet of medicine,"
The last letter he left behind has arrived before us now, ten years after his death.
The recipient of the letter is neurobiologist Susan Barry, who lived with stereopsis and astigmatism for half her life before finally seeing the world in stereo at the age of forty-eight.

Susan was captivated every day by the beauty of the new three-dimensional world that unfolded before her eyes.
However, it was difficult for others to understand the experience, and it was a medical consensus that stereopsis could never develop after a certain period in infancy.
So Susan decided to keep this miraculous story a secret to herself.
Then one day, suddenly, with the hope that Oliver Sacks, a doctor who not only sympathized with but also empathized with his patients, might listen to his story as he did to his own patients, I wrote him a letter after much hesitation.
No one could have predicted that this one letter, which they had not expected much of a response to, would lead to a friendship that would last until Oliver's death, and that in the process, Susan would write a book about her story and become a writer who would help other poets and people with stereopsis.

Dear Oliver is a collection of letters between two neuroscientists who exchanged over 150 letters over a period of ten years, teaching each other to see the world differently. It is also a memoir written by one who is now alone, remembering and missing the one who has passed away.



Susan, who has gained stereoscopic vision for the first time in her life, and Oliver, who is losing his eyesight due to cancer.
The sad irony of the moment when two people's lives intersect

“If you want to know another person, you have to talk to him (…) If you don’t talk, the door to another world will never open.
Oliver Sacks was a master of this simple yet difficult act.”
―Son Bo-mi (novelist)

Oliver, a stereoscopic nerd who has always found stereopsis, which most people take for granted, a source of joy and wonder, was so excited to receive Susan's letter that he said he would come see her right away.
Based on that successful meeting and subsequent exchanges, “Stereo Sue” is Susan’s story written and published by Oliver.
Susan felt like a "monster" because she was different from others since childhood, and even after she gained stereopsis, she was afraid that people would not believe her and think she was crazy.
However, the enthusiastic response to this article gave him the confidence to finally write his own story in a book.
That book is “The Miracle of 3D,” which Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine Eric Kandel praised as “a book that is both poetry and science, and a magical book that gives us all hope.”
Meeting Oliver and writing this book transformed Susan from a patient to a subject and then to a writer.
Moreover, the relationship between two people who started out as a writer and his/her subject or a researcher and his/her research subject gradually develops into a special friendship.
But that winter, the year that Oliver responded to Susan's first letter and their relationship began, Oliver was diagnosed with ocular melanoma and began to lose his vision.
While one person opens his eyes to a new world he has never experienced before, the other person loses his familiar world.
As the vision in his right eye deteriorated, the stereoscopic vision that had delighted Oliver all his life also disappeared.
He stood in front of the mirror, trying to wipe a stain from his suit, when he realized that the stain was on the mirror surface.
Everything seemed flat and placed on the same two-dimensional plane, as if looking at a still life painting.
Now he lives in the 'hypocritical world' that Susan had once lived in, seen through her monocular vision.
Oliver, though feeling sorry for this situation, observed and recorded it meticulously with the curiosity of a doctor and writer.
As a result, the stories of two people who acquired a sense that neither of them had were included together in Oliver's book, The Mind's Eye.

Loss of sight was not the only misfortune that befell Oliver in his later years.
After undergoing back-to-back knee and spinal surgeries, he suffered from severe neuralgia that made it difficult for him to even move.
But even during that time, he never stopped reading and writing, and he never forgot to encourage and support Susan as she continued to write books.
Susan, heartbroken by the fact that she could do nothing to help Oliver, refused to be consumed by her grief and instead came up with an idea to comfort him.
Both men firmly believed in human neuroplasticity and the power of recovery, and they maintained their courage and humor until the very end.


“Last month, I discovered that my ocular melanoma had metastasized to my liver.
Metastatic cancer is not easily treatable, but some treatments can slow the progression.
“If those extra months are a good time, if I can write, meet friends, travel, and enjoy life during that time, then that’s enough for me.” (p. 360, Oliver Sacks)

“After your article was published in the New York Times, I received a sweet email from my brother.
“You may be losing someone who was like a father to you, but you still have a decent older brother you can rely on.’ Like a father, the doctor gave me my name, helped me forge a new identity, and sent me advice, encouragement, inspiration, and love.” (p. 363, Susan Barry)


True friends give each other the world
A person who teaches you how to see things differently

Oliver and Susan had so much in common that their 20-year age difference was insignificant.
He loves swimming and music, enjoys observing plants and animals, is usually shy, but delves into topics that interest him with a tenacious passion, and expresses his thoughts more clearly in writing than in speaking.
For them, letters were not only a means of communication, but also an essential element of writing that developed ideas and inspiration.
Above all, they looked at things we take for granted and pass by without a second thought with interest and affection.

Their conversation naturally spans a wide range of topics, from science and medicine to hobbies and personal lives, but at its core lies the diversity of senses, perception, and cognition.
Their vision extends to people who experience and understand the world in different ways, such as Dr. P, who could put a glove on his hand even though he could not see it with his eyes, a musician who could play a Bach fugue even though he had amnesia and forgot that he knew Bach, and an evolutionary scientist who could not see but understood the geometric structure of mollusks through his sense of touch, as well as to the various intelligent life forms that exist on Earth.
By using both the language of scientists and the vivid language of life, we explore what it means to 'see' and 'hear', and the differences between knowing with the head, feeling with the body, and knowing with action, and realize that the things we take for granted are not at all, but rather wonderful gifts and blessings.

Watching these two elderly scholars sparkle with childlike wonder and delight at even the smallest things, we can see how conversations with good friends enrich our senses, emotions, and thoughts.
As we follow the friendly letters of Dr. Sachs, who continues his intellectual voyage without losing his affection even during his illness, and Su, who sends comfort without sinking into sorrow (Dr. Namgung In, author), readers will find themselves absorbed in their curiosity, passion, and open attitude toward life.