'Uncle Tungsten' is often incandescent

"Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood" (Knopf, 337 pages, $25) by Oliver Sacks.

Which three elements are called "stinkogens"? What traits do they share?

The answers: sulfur, tellurium and selenium. Their compounds form a class of stench best described as putrefaction. Their respective aromas of rotten eggs, corpses and intestinal gas were all simulated in Oliver Sacks' boyhood laboratory, which he recounts with glee in his autobiography, "Uncle Tungsten."

Beyond these childish pleasures, however, his story endeavors to connect the wonder and peril of his maturation with those of a new science. These two progressions are meant to intertwine, each giving readers a sense of discovery heightened by the other.

One track follows Sacks' youth, the context of his passionate study and experimentation. The peculiarities of a Jewish household in mid-20th-century England, filled with scientifically minded elders and uncommon access to hazardous materials, are infused with affection and sly wit.

Sacks recalls a seder service when he was 5: "When it finally broke up, another cup of wine ... would be left for 'Elijah' (he would come in the night, I was told, and drink the wine left for him). Since my own Hebrew name was Eliahu, Elijah, I decided that I was entitled to drink the wine. ... I slipped down at night and drank the whole cup. I was never questioned, and never admitted what I had done, but my hangover the next morning, and the empty cup, made any confession unnecessary."

Yet, formative events are rendered with brutal spareness. Although Sacks writes candidly about his evacuation from London to a boarding school during the Blitz of World War II, the worst effect is mentioned once, chapters later. His brother's psychosis, an apparent reaction to terrible beatings both boys suffered at the school, is discussed in only half a page.

Of course, much is told about Uncle Dave "Tungsten," first of the many aunts and uncles who inspired Sacks: "We had called him Uncle Tungsten for as long as I could remember, because he manufactured lightbulbs with filaments of fine tungsten wire. ... Uncle's hands were seamed with the black powder. ... I imagined the heavy element was in his lungs and bones, in every vessel and viscus. ... I thought of this as a wonder, not a curse -- his body invigorated and fortified by the mighty element, given a strength and enduringness almost more than human."

Uncle Tungsten delighted young Sacks with facts and history about the discovery of the elements and encouraged experiments to replicate these discoveries. Likewise, Sacks seeks to re-create these re-creations for the reader, while telling stories of the most significant advances in chemistry.

It is on this latter track that the narrative occasionally derails.

At times, the lives and work of scientists so absorb Sacks the author that he loses Sacks the boy. The technical explanations are sometimes arid and venture too far from the impact of these ideas on his mind and the way he uses them to comfort himself.

As the reader is pulled away from the stories of people in Sacks' life, the alienation mirrors his own retreat to "a refuge where I might be alone, absorb myself without interference from others, and find some sense of stability."

This is effective, but not pleasurable, for it makes the writing seem somewhat distracted from its engaging and soulful core.