Moonwalk With Einstein Essay

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything is a novel about a man named Joshua Foer and his one-year journey from an average journalist to a U.S. Memory Champion. The demographic for this novel is young adults, or anybody who is interested in improving their own memory. Foer wrote the novel following his victory at the U.S. Memory Championship in 2006, when he successfully demonstrated his memory capabilities that he learned in a short period of time. This book serves to bring light to various memory techniques used throughout history, and to ultimately improve ourselves as humans through the molding of our brains. Foer wrote the book with a sophisticated yet eager tone as he recounts all the events from simply

Foer illustrates a chaotic and seemingly random event where a plethora of activities are taking place all at once. A celebrity fat man (the five of clubs) has “hacked a fat globule of spittle” (nine of clubs) into Albert Einstein’s hair (three of diamonds), and “delivered a devastating karate kick” (five of spades) to the “groin of Pope Benedict XVI” (six of diamonds). As detailed by Foer, there are an incredible number of things occurring simultaneously. Foer opened his novel in this way to excite and confuse the reader. Through the use of vivid and odd imagery such as “defecat(ing)... on a salmon burger…”. Foer conveys elementary humor which precisely supports the primary purpose of this passage. He ultimately wrote this excerpt to explain a memory technique used to quickly memorize an entire deck of cards. He explains that he painted this image in his mind as he looked at all of the cards while he was on stage at the U.S. Memory Championship of 2006. The images that he used to remember each card were so outrageous and hilarious that they were able to solidify in his mind with ease, and he was able to snag the victory. This passage is significant because it exposes the reader to a foreign concept in an entertaining way, and sets the precedent for the entirety of the