Price, Jill: The Woman Who Can't Forget
It's no surprise that Jill Price has become the go-to girl in her family for reminders about birthdays and anniversaries: she's incapable of forgetting them. Given a date from 1980 on--her memory before she was fourteen is spottier--she can rattle off a laundry list of her activities on that day and provide headline news as well, provided she was aware of the event at the time. Her memory works in reverse, too: given an event, she can tell you its date and significance in her own life. Her extraordinary memory is limited to the autobiographical, however. She is not one of those savants who can memorize long lists of prime numbers or the value of pi to hundreds of places. And in fact her aptitude for rote memorization of that sort is relatively poor, which proved problematic for her in school.
In her autobiography, Price discusses, but only superficially, memory-related scientific research in general and the tests that have been conducted on her own memory. (She was the subject of a paper published in the scientific journal Neurocase.) But mostly she tells us the story of her life with an emphasis on how her bizarre memory has kept her from living normally. The advantages of having a nearly perfect autobiographical memory are obvious: she can remember with perfect clarity, for example, the giddy joy she felt when she first met her husband. But the negatives are more numerous. Price can also remember, with perfect clarity, the conversation she had with doctors about allowing them to harvest her husband's organs once he was taken off life support. Nor can she will herself not to remember such things: Price's memories come to her unbidden, replaying in her head in apparently random order. Moreover, when Price remembers she relives the emotion of the original experience. So deaths and slights and embarrassments and childhood terror are as painful and frightening and sad as they were originally. Interestingly, the intensity of Price's relived emotion is sometimes evident on the page. In recalling painful episodes from her adolescence, Price's voice is imbued with the resentments of a teenager toward her parents.
Price collaborated on her book with a writer, Bart Davis. The resulting narrative is a quick read with a conversational tone. Unfortunately, the writing is bland and occasionally repetitive. This is a shame, because Price certainly has an interesting story to tell. Were it written in snappier prose, her book might have been--forgive me--unforgettable.
This sounds a fascinating story. I think we all have these clear memories to some extent - and I know I feel embarrassed again when I remember some incident from childhood - but to relive it completely must be close to traumatising. Poor woman!
Posted by: Clare D | July 13, 2008 at 06:16 PM
Interestingly, I kept thinking of you while reading it, Clare. Just because I had myself convinced that I'd heard of the book from you. But I think instead I saw a review in Newsweek.
Posted by: Debra Hamel | July 13, 2008 at 06:26 PM
That is very strange. My memory seems to work so that I can't remember anything from the past but my wife is always around to remind me of anything I did wrong. ;)
Posted by: Tom | July 14, 2008 at 11:47 AM
Rebecca was just talking about some incident with a dog in our front yard. Neither David nor I remember it, so we figured it's simply a lost episode that no longer matters.
Posted by: Debra Hamel | July 14, 2008 at 12:20 PM
Wow, that sounds like such a painful thing to endure. And such a narrowly-structured abnormality! It's hard to imagine.
Posted by: heather (errantdreams) | July 15, 2008 at 12:00 PM
BEST BOOKS prompt, at MEME EXPRESS
http://memeexpress.blogspot.com
Book-bloggers welcome . . especially today!
Blessings,
Linda
Posted by: Meme Express | July 15, 2008 at 03:36 PM