16. The Leg Book Shambles Toward Publication as Oliver Hazards a Neurology of the Soul (the First Half of 1984)
1 I had some trouble tracking down confirmation of this double characterization, so I recently wrote to Rachel Miller, who replied, “Total fabrication. Anyone called Salaman is my relation, not Jonathan’s. There were two Esther Salamans. One was my mother’s sister, a singer. The other, married to my mother’s brother, was originally Esther Polianoski, who once worked with Einstein. On Jonathan’s side, no Proust. But his mother’s family were Bergsons. They lived in Sweden, but there was some fairly close relation to Henri Bergson.” So go figure.
2 Fascinating, of course, that the specific Proust memory that occasions this insight on later-life recollection of childhood (and in turn captures Oliver’s attention) happens to be one of a traumatically ignored child’s demand for his mother’s attention. See page 31 above.
3 Edited by Rush Rhees (London: Oxford University Press, 1984), 4.
4 William James, Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: The Modern Library, 1929), 10, 14–15, 23.