2007 Early Stage Forum Keynote Speaker

1. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Sure. I’m 40 years old, a happily married father of two great kids, 10 and 4. I grew up in Cincinnati,Ohio (home of Graeter’s Ice Cream — if you haven’t yet had it, I’m sorry), went to Brown University in Rhode Island (my dream school), and now live in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. When I graduated from college almost twenty years ago,my ambition was to write literary non-fiction in the mold of John McPhee, Joan Didion,Tom Wolfe and others. I don’t pretend to write as well as those greats, but I am lucky enough to earn a living trying to follow in their footsteps. I’ve written five books, all non-fiction.

The aim behind The Forgetting, and all my books, is to export vital, specialized knowledge and ideas to a wide, general audience, and to do it with elegance and artistry. About forty years ago, Tom Wolfe and others figured out that non-fiction writing could be just as riveting and important as fiction, and that’s the ideal I pursue.

2. What motivated you to write a book about Alzheimer’s disease? Was the disease something that touched you personally as a family member or a friend?

I did not come to Alzheimer’s disease as a family member, but as true outsider. Like everyone in the world, I’d heard of it and was terrified of it. But like most others, I was doing my best not to think about it at all. That all changed for me in an instant eight years ago when I overheard a conversation about a middle-aged couple living with the disease. I was devastated and had about a hundred questions I selfishly wanted answered. Researching those questions, one thing led to another and I ended up with The Forgetting.

3. Your book, The Forgetting, is wonderful and unusual in that the narrative weaves in and out of science, history, literature, and personal stories. You also “stage” the book to match the stages of the illness. How did you decide on this unique approach to telling the story of Alzheimer’s disease?

Books are long, and take hours to read all the way through. In today’s world, there is every incentive for people to stop reading and do something more interactive, electronic, fun. I have a lot of facts and ideas that I want to convey in any book, but my main mission has to be convincing my readers to keep reading. If I can’t do that, then everything else is a waste. That means sentences and paragraphs that are a true pleasure to read, and a book structure that feels like a meaningful journey. For The Forgetting, the object was to transport readers through the history of the disease and the stages of the disease at the same time. That way, we’re sharing not just facts, but also a meaningful sense of the whole disease and its impact on humanity.

4. This year’s Early Stage Forum has as its theme, “Taking a Closer Look: Reflections on Living with Early Stage Memory Loss.” This title suggests introspection and perspective. You wrote about some very inspiring people, namely Ralph Waldo Emerson and Morris Friedell, who had a progressive dementia but tried to use the experience to understand more about life. How did their stories affect or influence you?

Both stories were very inspiring indeed—in different ways. Emerson was well aware of his slow decline and took an incredibly humble and dignified approach to it. He was fully accepting and accommodating of the apparently immovable force in his life. Morris Friedell’s attitude was (and is) much different: He wants to resist the decline, applying everything we know in the 21st century about stroke rehabilitation to Alzheimer’s. He and other early stagers around the world have been pushing the medical community to not give up on Alzheimer’s patients after diagnosis.

5. Now that you have navigated through the illness, is there any message you have for the people with early stage memory loss and caregivers, both family members and professionals, who will be attending the Early Stage Forum?

I am humbled and inspired by the patients and caregivers that I’ve met, and I look forward to sharing ideas and stories at the forum. This community can do an awful lot to help itself—sharing information on better, smarter care and support. I can do my part by helping people to understand the disease better, which can translate into smarter planning and care. Finally, I want to remind everyone in this community that we who understand the problem have a responsibility to educate others about it. We won’t see a cure for Alzheimer’s until we’ve helped more people realize what we’re up against.

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