When I ran across a mention of Moonwalking with Einstein in an issue of the Atlantic I almost immediately forgot tthe name of the book. Fortunately I also forgot I read the article and reread it several days later and so I was able to write down the name of the book.
Moonwalking with Einstein is part mnemonic history and tips and partly an account of the author’s attempt to improve his memory with those same techniques in an attempt to make a respectable showing at the US Memory Championship.
Those who are experts in a subject are more likely to remember details as they are more readily able to quickly ascertain what is important and what is irrelevant. Having a vast bank of information that you can sort through allows you to more readily capture the pertinent information. Or as the author puts it, having a great memory isn’t just a by-product of expertise; it is the essence of expertise.
One of the techniques practiced by mnemonists is the "memory palace". The memory palace technique combines spatial memory which is very good in humans – it’s what keeps you from pitching into the walls and falling off curbs. The memory palace uses a combination of images and spaces to secure memories. You place an image that you associate with the word (the bawdier the better) in a place that you are familiar with, such as your house. Then when you need to recall the information you simply “walk” yourself through the house.
A different sort of memory palace is found in David Foster Wallace’s short story, Backbone, where a young boy becomes determined to press his lips to “every last micrometer of his own individual body.” The boy is successful at first. His body becomes both more real and less real at the same time. Once he has reached a spot, he documents it on a four-faced chart. He is moving his knowledge, his memory of self to an external source – he now only exists as locations on a chart. He is searching for a way to access all of himself.
And maybe this is also what Moonwalking is talking about – that these days with all of our options for externalizing our memories – flash drives, cameras, blogs, etc., that we are forgetting a fundamental part of what it means to be human – and that we are in essence like the little boy in David Foster Wallace’s story – able to recall any moment at the press of a button, but unable to say what it means, furiously darkening in our outlines but forgetting what it is we are to do with the interiors.
Foer reminds readers that memory once served not merely as a parlor trick, but also as a means for shaping one’s character as well as being the essence of expertise. The place of academic memorization in a way sums up the firestorm over Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, Amy Chua’s memoir about trying to (and at least partially succeeding) in imposing her strict Chinese ideals on her daughters, requiring them to forgo sleepovers and television in favor of the rote memorization that she says is undervalued in America. The roughly nine thousand comments that the article generated indicate that perhaps the rest of the US in not all in agreement with her.
Caitlin Flanagan’s article in the Atlantic, The Ivy Delusion, identifies the root cause of the division that Amy Chua’s book is about recognizing that “life is a series of choices, each with its own rewards and consequences. …[i]t’s an unwelcome reminder…that the world really doesn’t like before us like a land of dreams. At best---the very best—it can only offer us choices between two good things, and as we grasp at one, we lose the other forever.”
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