Let the memory live again (that's a lyric from CATS)

Last night I read the first 130 pages of Bob Harris's Prisoner of Trebekistan. I found out about it via a mutual friend and it is fantastic. Funny, poignant and incredibly useful. The one thing that has struck me so far is his memorization system. Mnemonics, for one, of course. My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine *REDACTED*. Or the one I invented last night for biological taxonomy: King Philip's Class Ordered the "Family Genius Special". But the method that really struck me is creating fantastical image collages in one's head to remember clusters of information. For example, I can now recall instantly that E.M. Forrester wrote Howard's End, Where Angels Fear to Tread, and A Passage to India and Maurice because of a ridiculous mental image of Howard the Duck in quite a silly situation, complete with the guitar sound effect from "The Joker" (because some people call me Maurice).

Harris's system reminds me a lot of Giordano Bruno's, the Italian philosopher-priest who was burned alive for heresy by the Vatican. Bruno would create elaborate mental rooms that he could walk through, allowing him to remember vast quantities of information. His memory was so well-regarded, that he was invited (prior to forsaking his habit) by Pope Pius V to demonstrate his ability. He was given a poem in a language he did not know, memorized it in short order, and recited it for His Holiness. Then he did it again, backwards.

I think Harris would like Bruno the memorizer, Bruno the freethinker (who believed in an infinite universe, extraterrestrial life, and espoused the Copernican system well before Galileo was put on trial) as well as Bruno the incorrigible wanderer, who was never satisfied with the way he found things.