A life in endless replay

JILL PRICE (HEIDI METCALFE)

A man walks into a room, scratches his head, then mutters, "Now why the heck did I enter this room?" This is no joke. The poor guy is just distracted, with a lot on his mind, or he's getting on in years, and his short-term memory is shorting out.

Beyond this sort of daily nuisance, all of us wish we could remember more. We forget half the plot of that beloved novel. We're embarrassed not to remember a friend's name at a college reunion. We marvel at the memoirist blessed with detailed recall of long-ago events.

But what if we remembered everything? That's not a blessing but a curse.

Not even Dante could have fathomed the particular circle of hell inhabited by Jill Price. Since 1980, when she was 14, the author of "The Woman Who Can't Forget" has had to endure "a constant unstoppable parade" of yesterdays flashing through her mind.

Give her a date, and she can rattle off what she was doing and what major and trivial events happened. Let's say April, 26, 1986: "The nuclear reactor at Chernobyl melts down. . . . I was visiting friends in Phoenix."

That one's totally benign. But these insistent little home movies sneak up on her without prompting and, worse, are freighted with the emotions of that day, for good or ill. Imagine not merely remembering every insult, quarrel, or torment but having to suffer through the pain again. No wonder Price has felt misunderstood, an alien different from the rest of us, for whom selective forgetting is a natural part of growing up and creating a coherent sense of self.

After numerous tests in 2000 by renowned memory expert Dr. James McGaugh and his colleagues at the University of California at Irvine, Price was declared the first diagnosed case of hyperthymestic syndrome, "continuous automatic autobiographical recall." (McGaugh has since discovered at least one other case, a Wisconsin man.)

Unlike the Dustin Hoffman character in "Rain Man," able to memorize long strings of numbers or unrelated words, Price isn't considered a savant. In fact, she's not particularly good at memorizing, say, theorems or facts. Nor does she, like the Rain Man, have trouble relating to people and mastering conventional responsibilities. She's a school administrator.

Still, Price does exhibit unusual compulsions for order and memento collecting and, believe it or not, keeps a daily diary.

"The Woman Who Can't Forget" is more artifact than substantial book. It's patched together of Price's memory overload, her efforts to carve out a meaningful life despite the attendant psychological problems, and research findings on memory.

The best bits aren't really about growing up the daughter of a former June Taylor dancer and an entertainment agent-TV executive. We learn about her resistance to change, her need to cling to oceans of dolls and records and sitcom videos, her mother's ceaseless admonitions not to gain weight, her father's eight-year separation from her mother.

Aside from the cascade of memories, Price isn't all that interesting. That's true even with a made-for-Oprah ending. She's no Temple Grandin, the autistic animal-science professor, with an insider's keen perspective on neurological oddity. What Price cannot do - forget - is what makes the rest of us normal. Whenever the book veers away from her life story to educate us about this phenomenon, it becomes fascinating. Why, for example, does long-term memory not develop until about age 4? Scientists offer competing theories. Because the brain is not fully grown until then; because of the need to repress memories of birth trauma; or because young children are still developing language skills.

Once long-term memory is stabilized, it becomes not just a recorder but a shaper of identity. The spike of memories during adolescence, full of first-time experiences, starts to solidify a sense of self. Still, adult identity isn't fixed but, according to one researcher, "an anthology of stories that we constantly edit and from which we extract ever-new meanings."

The book also points readers to research on such topics as varieties of normal forgetting. That forgetful fellow I began this review with? According to Dr. Daniel Schacter's "Seven Sins of Memory," cited here, he might be merely subject to "absent-mindedness."

Which isn't such a bad thing, it turns out. The only way for the brain to remain at its best is for the organ to engage in a kind of benign house-cleaning. Clear away the chaff, and get back to essentials. Maybe going into that room wasn't really that important.

As for Jill Price, she writes, "I never find my mind wandering in this way . . . it's always crammed full of remembering." A pity.

Dan Cryer is a contributor to "Good Roots: Writers Reflect on Growing Up in Ohio."