How to Develop a Super-Power Memory (Harry Lorayne, 1957)The book was published in the 50s, so it has this really gay feel-good, old-school annoying writing style, but surprisingly, it’s not too bad. It is supposed to teach you how to improve your memory, and it is basically done by association.
You have to use your imagination to think of silly things, relate them to each other, and then you won’t forget them. In brief, if you want to go shopping and want to buy eggs, then want to fix your car, then have a haircut, you make Links. You think of an egg fixing a car, and then the car having a haircut, so when you think of the egg, you get the silly image, you remember the car, and then you remember the haircut.
The other major one is the Peg system, where the author turns numbers into sounds, and makes words out of them. When you want to remember a long number, you can use the Pegs to turn them into words, and then turn them into images, and there you go, you remember them.
Most of them are for impressing your friends, but fuck my friends, they can suck balls. A lot of them don’t have real life application, but I do find the Peg system kind of fun. I’ve tried it with some phone numbers, and can finally remember them. Again, not earth shattering good, but I do find it fun and it is slightly useful. Remembering something is always better than not remembering it.
The book is written for your average reader, which does get on my nerves, because the average reader is a moron. It proudly says, Although naturally, quite a bit of research was necessary, I've discarded most of the technical ideas and thoughts be cause I found them difficult to understand and to apply myself. I am an entertainer and a memory expert, not a psychiatrist or a doctor, and I didn't think it necessary to go into an explanation of the workings of the human brain, and just how the memory actually works in terms of cells, curves, impressions, etc.” I don’t want to be bogged down by technicality, but a little bit to help me understand how something works wouldn’t kill you.
With today’s technology, we really do not need to remember everything, because we can jot them down on our phones, put reminders, schedule appointments, address books, dictionaries, and so forth, and I certainly will not say this is a bad thing. Technology should be used. But personally, I have always been slightly irritated by my shitty memory, and this is a small step to working on it. Attempting to remember is half the battle anyway.
3/5
