Amy Wallace (1955–2013)
Autore di Verso la creatività e oltre. La lezione della fabbrica dei sogni
Sull'Autore
Serie
Opere di Amy Wallace
The book of lists: the original compendium of curious information (Canadian edition) (2005) 40 copie
Opere correlate
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Nome legale
- Wallace, Amy Deborah
- Altri nomi
- Finnegan, Ellis Laura
- Data di nascita
- 1955-07-3
- Data di morte
- 2013-08-10
- Sesso
- female
- Nazionalità
- USA
- Luogo di nascita
- Los Angeles, California, USA
- Luogo di morte
- Los Angeles, California, USA
- Luogo di residenza
- Los Angeles, California, USA
- Attività lavorative
- writer
- Relazioni
- Wallace, Irving (father)
Wallace, Sylvia (mother)
Wallechinsky, David (brother)
Utenti
Recensioni
Liste
Premi e riconoscimenti
Potrebbero anche piacerti
Autori correlati
Statistiche
- Opere
- 28
- Opere correlate
- 2
- Utenti
- 4,712
- Popolarità
- #5,347
- Voto
- 4.0
- Recensioni
- 109
- ISBN
- 141
- Lingue
- 12
- Preferito da
- 2
So, how is the book. It is a chronological and sometimes thematical narrative biography of William James Sidis, a child prodigy, son of Boris Sidis, a pioneering psychologist, and Sarah Sidis, a stern mother with an unused M.D. (gotten at a time when few women even attended college), and godson of the august scholar William James. Sidis had prodigous memory skills, learned languages easily, read voraciously and precociously, and, most notedly, had tremendous mathematical skills. He graduated Harvard as a teen, lectured on the fourth dimension, and even published an obscure book on cosmological physics. And, by age twenty or so, did nothing with it. He disdained academia, he hated his mother, he never mentioned his father. He retreated into menial jobs as a comptometer operator, devolved into socialistic and anarchistic politics, lived cheek by jowl, wrote drivelous history, and, most famously, or infamously, collected and wrote about street car transfer ticket collecting (inventing a hobby and study he coined “peridromophily”). Shunning his childhood publicity and a conscientious objector, he died young and mostly alone at the tail end of the Second World War. It’s a sad but engrossing tale. As a “gifted” kid myself, I understand some of his hobbies and self-world. But his total retreat from manners, society, and the like I find inexplicable.
Nice images (more on Mahony’s site), index, but no notes or bibliography (again, the late Mahony has a sort of bibliography on his link-deathing website). Good, interesting, but could be so much better. The thrust of Wallace, and Mahony, is that the prodigy didn’t burn out and destroy his gifts, he just channelled them into unexplainable anti-social pursuits. Creeping under the surface is a non-condemnation condemnation of his odd upbringing; that Sidis’s parents raised a damaged prodigy. Let the reader decide.… (altro)