OF A GOLDEN AGE

The New York Times reported that Kim Peek died of a heart attack a week before Christmas. Peek was a savant of nigh unprecedented abilities and the inspiration for Raymond Babbitt in the movie Rain Man:

Mr. Peek had memorized so many Shakespearean plays and musical compositions and was such a stickler for accuracy, his father said, that they had to stop attending performances because he would stand up and correct the actors or the musicians.

“He’d stand up and say: ‘Wait a minute! The trombone is two notes off,’ ” Fran Peek said.

(This is, I think, how my friends imagine I feel when I see typos or grammar errors. They’re wrong, by the way.)

The article is a lovely tribute, and the contrasts in Peek’s mental state — brilliant in some ways, completely incapable in others — create moments of dark humor:

When Kim was 6, another doctor recommended a lobotomy. By then, however, Kim had read and memorized the first eight volumes of a set of family encyclopedias, his father said.

Rain Man is one of my family’s favorite movies, something from which we quote incessantly. Raymond — the character inspired by Peek — communicates almost entirely through nonverbals, and Tom Cruise’s character must learn to read between lines that aren’t present. He undergoes a now-classic Cruise transformation from crass to humbled, from uncaring to involved.

When the economy flounders and so many talented people find themselves out of work or underemployed, I think it can be tempting to lament that we aren’t all a certain way or haven’t followed a certain path. I love Kim Peek’s story because he spent most of his adult life giving presentations and making public appearances, helping to shore up the self-perceptions and confidence of other adults who faced challenging mental circumstances.

With great brain power comes great responsibility, usually at the sacrifice of some other part of one’s life or personality: our most beloved artists, scientists, and any of those who make important waves for humankind have discovered this firsthand.

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