An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales

Sacks opens with a piece of correspondence from 1862 describing the case of “Blind Tom” and identifying him as what was then termed an “idiot savant”: someone with a mental or learning disability who is extremely gifted in a particular way. Blind Tom could not speak until he was five or six years old, yet he was able to play the piano beautifully by age four. Sacks, upon reading about him, is certain that today he would be considered autistic.

Autism was described nearly simultaneously by two scientists in the 1940s: Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger. The term originates from a word meaning “alone,” describing the desire many people with autism feel to shut out others or isolate themselves. Kanner describes autism as partially “an obsessive insistence on sameness” (181), observing these individuals’ desire for repetition, rituals, routines, and their intense focus on specific interests. Asperger noted that many autistic patients were unable or unwilling to make eye contact and struggled to understand physical gestures as well as facial expressions.

Approximately 10 percent of children with autism demonstrate singular talents, and many show a remarkable memory. In the 1970s, a child with autism named Nadia showed an incredible talent for art. Studies of her and her work helped persuade scientists to study not only the neurological deficits associated with autism, but also possible abilities: “Here idiot savants provided unique opportunities, for they seemed to exhibit a large range of inborn talents—raw, pure expressions of the biological; much less dependent upon, or influenced by, environmental and cultural factors than the talents of ‘normal’ people” (186). Yet Nadia, upon gaining vocal language, eventually lost some of her extreme artistic skill.

In June 1987, Sacks receives a package from an English publisher featuring the drawings of artist Stephen Wiltshire. Sacks enjoys these drawings, which remind him of his childhood in England. He characterizes the work as “very accurate, but not in the least mechanical—on the contrary, […] full of energy, spontaneity, oddity, life” (186). He is shocked to learn that the artist, Stephen, is only 13 years old.

Sacks returns to England not long after receiving this package and mentions Stephen to his brother David, who informs him that this boy is his patient. Stephen was born in 1974 to West Indian immigrants and displayed delayed motor development as a young child. He also refused to make eye contact or listen to others, despite his ability to hear and react to noises. Stephen was devastated when his father died suddenly just before his third birthday. Despite these challenges, Stephen displayed an early talent for drawing and an affinity for shapes, colors, and shadows. By age seven, he became fascinated with drawing buildings. Chris Marris, a young special education teacher, was blown away by Stephen’s drawings; he had seemingly taught himself many drawing techniques and could draw buildings from memory in excruciating detail. Stephen had no interest in his finished work, however, often throwing his drawings away. Marris made a point to encourage Stephen, save his finished art, and give him the support to continue drawing.

At age nine, inspired by the many field trips Marris would take him on, Stephen began to speak more, often calling out the names of buildings as they passed them. Marris tried to find ways to incorporate language into Stephen’s drawings, encouraging him to draw a building for each letter of the alphabet. When autism experts examined Stephen and his work, they noted that he was one of the most talented savants they had ever seen despite his IQ score of 52.

Marris eventually submitted Stephen’s art into an exhibition for children. This earned him a prize and gained the attention of the BBC, which filmed Stephen and his work for a documentary on savants. Stephen’s work also caught the attention of publishers, and his first collection was published when he was 13. Yet despite the fame, Stephen’s life remained limited in many ways: “He could draw, with the greatest of ease, any street he had seen; but he could not, unaided, cross one by himself. He could see all London in his mind’s eye, but its human aspects were unintelligible to him” (193). Nevertheless, Marris’s continued insistence that Stephen is profoundly disabled troubles Sacks, who is not convinced that Stephen could create this artwork without an immense amount of intelligence and internal depth: “Could one be an artist without having a ‘self?’” (194).

In February 1988, Marris and Stephen fly to New York City to take part in another documentary. Sacks, knowing Stephen’s love of buildings and architecture, invites Marris and Stephen to his home on City Island, hoping Stephen will enjoy the different perspective on the city afforded by a helicopter ride. Upon meeting Stephen, Sacks notes Stephen’s physical tics, which are in keeping with those of many other children with autism, and the fact that he rarely speaks. Stephen shows Sacks his drawings of New York City so far with no sense of immodesty or self-consciousness.

Sacks asks Stephen to draw his house, and watches him get to work. Without studying the space, he draws the house from “a brief glance […] extract[ing] its essence, see[ing] every detail, [holding] it all in his memory” (195). He focuses solely on drawing the house and little else around it, though he does take some liberties with the details. Sacks views Stephen’s drawings as a reflection of his neural processes.

Marris had been a vital part of Stephen’s life until 1987, when he received a job at another secondary school, but even then he continued to make time to work with and visit Stephen. By May 1989, however, Stephen struggles to feel motivated to draw, which Sacks attributes to needing others to facilitate his work. Although Stephen does not outwardly express that he misses Marris, Sacks feels this lack of motivation to draw is a sign of Stephen’s loss; nevertheless, it remains a mystery as to whether Stephen represses emotions or if he experiences them at all.

Around this time, Stephen’s literary agent Margaret Hewson receives commissions for Stephen’s work and takes him out on the weekends to encourage his drawing. This reignites Stephen’s love of drawing, and he and Hewson work on his next book, in which he draws “floating cities” on or near bodies of water. Hewson also brings Stephen on family holidays to Amsterdam and Venice, encouraging him to draw new places.

Meanwhile, Sacks gives Stephen a series of tests, asking him to reproduce drawings by Matisse and then to draw them again from memory. While each drawing from memory is indeed different from the original, Stephen always retains the style of the first drawing. Sacks wonders whether Stephen’s talent is inseparable from his autism, but the question also unnerves him: “The tests also gave me the feeling of disquiet, as if I had spent days reducing Stephen to defects and gifts and not seeing him as a human being, as a whole” (203).

Sacks accompanies Stephen and Margaret on a trip to Moscow. Stephen draws the Red Square, and Sacks is surprised to see Stephen add onion domes to the History Museum. While accompanying Stephen, Sacks also notices just how much Stephen’s emotional and physiological state fluctuates, moving from animation and excitement to silence and withdrawal—a hallmark of autism. As he observes Stephen looking out the window on the train to Leningrad, Sacks says he views him as “a sort of train himself, a perceptual missile, traveling through life, noting, recording, but never appropriating, a sort of transmitter of all that rushed past—but himself unchanged, unfed, by the experience” (208). When they visit the Hermitage to view Russian art, Stephen has surprisingly unsophisticated takes on works of art by Picasso and other artists. Later that day, Stephen gives Sacks an “arithmetic lesson” like one Sacks had given him in London (210), perfectly mimicking Sacks’s words and mannerisms. This humbles Sacks, who writes, “It was a lesson to me, to all of us, never to underestimate him” (210).

Sacks had hoped to connect with Stephen on this trip to Russia, yet he still feels as though he does not have access to Stephen’s inner world afterwards. Whenever Sacks visits London, he tries to see Stephen and maintain a relationship with him. They bond over their love of classic car-spotting, yet Sacks still senses distance between him and Stephen. In 1991, Floating Cities is published and quickly becomes a bestseller, yet Stephen seems unfazed by this news, continuing to draw as always.

While getting to know Stephen, Sacks is reminded of an autistic savant he met in the 1980s who not only memorized operas, but fully understood their construction. Where he previously saw creative savant talents as a mere function of memory, he now realizes that these talents are based on implicit understandings of an art form. This allows people like Blind Tom or Stephen to not only replicate artwork but improvise effectively as well. Yet encountering a savant, Sacks notes, often gives the impression of “something deeply other in action” (214). Savant talents, unlike neurotypical talents, are fully formed rather than developed over time, suggesting a different neural mechanism that allows savants to learn and remember a skill faster. This may be due to the activation of a specific neuromodule by visual, musical, creative, or mathematical cues. Savant talents can also disappear when the child grows older, suggesting that this neuromodule, unlike the talents of a neurotypical child, can be “turned off.”

Sacks points out that a non-autistic person has a certain “spaciousness” within their mind that allows them to integrate memory (216), talent, and experience, whereas the autistic brain appears to be more modular and compartmentalized, often leaving out the personal, subjective experience. Sacks wonders whether Stephen can formulate his own identity or sense of self.

Sacks meets up with Stephen in San Francisco in 1991, accompanying him as he draws the many architectural sites around the city. While drawing Broderick Street, which snakes up a steep hill, Stephen can draw the street but not articulate why it might have been constructed the way it was. On this trip, Sacks learns that while Stephen understands that he is different, he does not exactly understand that he is autistic. They travel to the Grand Canyon, which Stephen views as an architectural space. Sacks and Stephen take a helicopter ride above the canyon to take in an aerial view. As they ride, Sacks attempts to remove his own intellectual understanding of the canyon as a scientific or geological place in order to understand how Stephen sees the canyon.

He and Stephen then travel throughout the Southwest, which Stephen recreates on paper in a similar fashion to his city drawings. Margaret is convinced that Stephen understands the “sacred” nature of these special places, but Sacks is not; he posits that perhaps Stephen’s emotions are more localized in a sympathetic response to his surroundings—that is, that Stephen is reacting in relation to a scene, an event, or a building rather than from his own feelings. At a hotel in Phoenix, Sacks observes Stephen “echoing,” or mimicking, the sound of different wind instruments; as a child, Stephen would often echo the people around him rather than vocalize his own ideas or feelings. Sacks and Margaret notice that Stephen, now in the midst of puberty, is far more interested in girls and how he looks than he once was, despite his naïveté and difficulty socializing.

In 1993, Margaret informs Sacks that Stephen has developed an incredible musical talent. On his next trip to London, Sacks arranges to observe Stephen at a music lesson. Stephen is able to sing with apparent feeling and few of his usual tics. This begs the question of whether Stephen actually feels what the song is conveying. Sacks is taken aback by a particularly animated performance and writes in his notebook, “AUTISM DISAPPEARS” (228).

If creativity is based both in observation and one’s sense of self, then perhaps Stephen cannot be “creative” in the way we typically conceive of it. However, Stephen’s art has helped him to achieve successes that the vast majority of those with classical autism never will. At the time of Sacks’s writing, Stephen continued to travel and attend art school. Even if he never creates a great masterpiece, this limitation can also be an advantage; he is able to see the world in concrete, direct ways separate from symbolic or abstract concepts, which allows him to show his viewers the world in a way few others can.