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Daniel TammetA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
To commemorate 20 years without seizures, Tammet decided “to do something to show that my childhood experience of epilepsy had not held me back” (173-74). He decided to help raise funds for the National Society for Epilepsy by undertaking an enormous publicity stunt: setting a new European record for reciting digits of pi. Tammet offers a little bit of the history of pi (centuries of attempts to calculate it to more and more decimal places) before discussing his experience of memorizing it to more than 22,500 digits.
As with other number sequences, pi offered a particular numerical landscape in Tammet’s mind. He says that pi became “like an entire country in my mind, composed of numbers” (178). Tammet used printouts from a supercomputer in Tokyo that contained enough digits of pi for the author to study, and he began studying in his home. The big recitation came after only three months of studying, on March 14, 2004 (“Pi Day”), in Oxford, England. In the Museum of the History of Science, in front of a crowd and cameras, Tammet successfully recited 22,514 digits of pi, breaking the standing record. It took him five hours and nine minutes, during which time he hydrated and fueled to fight the fatigue and exhaustion caused by such an intense undertaking.
Though the situation was nerve-wracking, Tammet found calmness in both the numerical landscape in his mind and the support of his partner, Neil, in the audience. He calls pi “an extremely beautiful and utterly unique thing” (185). His feelings towards pi are unsurprising in light of the author’s explanations of his affinity for numerical landscapes and synesthetic response to them. More surprising is his adeptness with coping with distractions, talking to media, and staying focused for such a long time. These are things that the author knows he would not have been able to do earlier in his life.
Not long after the pi recitation, television producers in the UK approached Tammet about filming an hour-long documentary about himself and savant syndrome. He accepted the offer, saying that “it seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime” (188). Though the experience was ultimately positive, parts of it were very difficult. For example, much of the filming took place in the United States, where Tammet traveled without his partner or any friends or family. He felt anxious during the flight, and after a long day of filming in Las Vegas (during which he learned and excelled at the game Blackjack), the author burst into tears on the phone with Neil from the feeling of homesickness.
The trip improved when the crew took Tammet to Salt Lake City. He visited the enormous public library, which he calls “the enchanted palace of a fairy tale” (199). There, he met Kim Peek, who provided the real-life inspiration for the movie Rain Man. Peek’s father, his full-time caregiver, accompanied his son and spoke with Tammet about Peek’s publicity and personal life. The author was excited about “the first time in my life that I had met and spoken with another savant” (200). The two got along very well and had many things in common, although Tammet realized his own fortune in being able to be independent, whereas many other people with savant syndrome or ASD need daily assistance and care. Tammet says that one of the most important things that came from their meeting was a reminder “of the extraordinary value of friendship” (203). He further reflected that although “our lives had in many ways been very different and yet somehow we shared this special, rarefied bond” (203). Tammet says the meeting was one of the happiest experiences in his life.
The final challenge of the documentary was “to learn a new language from scratch in one week in front of the cameras” (205). The filmmakers chose Icelandic because it “is considered a very complex and difficult language to learn” (206), with an extensive vocabulary without cognates and three genders for words. The documentary team provided him with a pocket dictionary and a few reading and practice materials. He would only get to spend four days in Iceland among native speakers. In the early week he felt disheartened, but once he arrived in Iceland and began working with his Icelandic tutor, he grew more confident and started to understand the language more intuitively.
He enjoyed touring Iceland as he practiced the language. The trip culminated in a live television interview conducted entirely in Icelandic. The author navigated the conversation successfully, although he says “it was an eerie experience to sit in front of cameras and converse entirely in a language I had only been acquainted with for the past week” (210-11).
The book ends with the author’s reflection about his life and the progress he made to independence, happiness with a partner, and goals and success in the world around him. As he got more famous, he became better able to navigate social situations, travel alone, and interact in a range of settings with people he did not know well. A 2005 interview on the Late Show with David Letterman, arranged on short notice, proved to the author “that I was now able to make my way in the world, to do things for myself that most people take for granted such as travel at very short notice, stay alone at a hotel or walk a busy street without feeling overwhelmed” (215). At an earlier point in his life, he never imagined developing these abilities.
He ends by reflecting on his interpersonal relationships. He acknowledges how important his family members are in his life. He also stresses the comfort and joy of his established home routines with Neil. After a long struggle to overcome challenges, Tammet is happy.
The final section of the book largely discusses Tammet’s public adult life, which differs in so many ways from his childhood, adolescence, and even young adulthood. He became increasingly well-known for demonstrating his abilities in memorization, computation, and languages after his 2004 pi recitation in Oxford. He also participated in scientific studies, talked publicly about having savant syndrome and living on the autistic spectrum, and undertook challenges for television audiences.
The first massive public undertaking was the pi recitation. While the high stakes and public setting of the recitation were anxiety-provoking, the comfort of numbers and the presence of his partner helped Tammet succeed in his attempt to set the European record for most digits memorized and recited. The trips abroad to the United States and Iceland pushed the author even further to cope with stress and perform in public under pressure. His trip to the United States was both stressful and rewarding. He had to learn on camera how to play and win Blackjack. The demands to demonstrate his abilities grew from there; the next major endeavor he discusses was his one-week timeline to learn Icelandic from scratch. In this, too, the author was successful, despite some logistical setbacks like limited time among Icelandic speakers and an insufficient dictionary. Outside of his efforts to learn new undertakings quickly, he enjoyed aspects of travel, from his treasured experience meeting Kim Peek in Salt Lake City, Utah, to touring the geological wonders of Iceland.
More than in any other section of the book, the author reflects on his individual growth. In his young life, he could not easily connect with peers and often imagined them as existing completely separately from himself, as if in another world. As an adult, he lives independently, earns money, contributes to a fulfilling romantic relationship, travels, and participates in ongoing neurological research. He says, “the very same abilities that had set me apart from my peers as a child and adolescent […] actually helped me to connect with other people in adulthood” (211). That incredible transformation instilled a strong sense of optimism and positivity in Tammet, and he shares this outlook with readers at the end of the book, emphasizing the humanity we all share and the unconventional paths to happiness that we can take.