Harry Lorayne - The Memory Book: The Classic Guide to Improving Your Memory at Work, at School, and at Play

A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright 1974 by Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

www.ballantinebooks.com

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-96797

eISBN: 978-0-307-81406-7

v3.1

A most unusual book about memory training absorbing material to practice and use.

Los Angeles Times

Will enable you to remember anything from long-digit numbers to where you left your car keys.

Nashville Banner

Its easy, its fun it works.

The Columbus Dispatch

As a child, I had a peculiarly busy mind. I can never remember a time when my mind wasnt occupied with some sort of activity, whether it was communicating directly with someone else, or being actively involved with a mental game of my own invention.

By the time I was eight years old, I had so much nervous energy that it was hard for me to sit still. On lengthy automobile trips my constant fidgeting, tapping, and so on got on my parents nerves. It got to the point where I became used to requests from them to calm down a little.

Just after one such request, I remember looking at an oil company billboard and saying to myself, What would SHELL look like if the letters were arranged in alphabetical order? I mentally rearranged it to EHLLS, and I was hooked. Ever since then, I have memorized words alphabetically as well as normally.

Thanks to this mental habit, I could spell amazingly well as a child. If you can rearrange a word instantly and spell it in alphabetical order, you know that word very well. To give some examples: CAT becomes ACT, MEMORY becomes EMMORY, JERRY LUCAS becomes EJRRY ACLSU, and HARRY LORAYNE becomes AHRRY AELNORY! Once Ive alphabetized a word, I can remember it in that formwhen you read the chapter on how to remember English and foreign vocabulary, youll understand how I do this. I apply the same system, since an alphabetized word is like a foreign word.

I soon followed this alphabetical spelling game with various other kinds of mental games. You might think I was a bit crazy if I took the time to explain all of them, so I wont, but they did require a lot of counting, cataloging, and recall on the part of a very young boy.

As I grew older, my mental games and activities became more complex. I began to develop simple memory systems to help me with my studies in school. To me, schoolwork always seemed to be at least 90 percent memory work, and I wanted to make it easier and less time-consuming for myself. These systems worked, and I began to expand and sophisticate them. They worked well for me throughout junior high school and high school, where I was practically a straight-A student.

I would like to impress upon you that all of this mental activity was of a private nature. No living human being knew that I had the ability, for example, to alphabetize any word faster than most people could spell it normally, nor did anyone know how involved I was with other mental activities and memory systems.

An important change took place when I entered college. I read one of Harry Loraynes books and used many of his systems or ideas in areas where I thought his were better, or simpler, or easier to apply; others I adapted to my own. He became something of an idol to me, and I was soon to find out how the combination of his systems and mine would help me in my college studies.

My roommate at Ohio State University during my freshman year was John Havlicek, the great professional basketball star of the Boston Celtics. John became the first person to know about all the things that went on in my mind.

My first college class was traumatic. I entered the classroom and sat in the back row, knowing other students would be unable to see over my six-foot-eight frame. It was an American history class.

The professor spent about fifteen minutes telling us what he expected of us and how the class would be conducted. His last statement before he excused us was something to the effect that Any athlete who expects to be in my class, sit in the back row, do nothing, and get good grades is sadly mistaken. You are excused.

I told John Havlicek what had happened and shared with him my determination to use memory systems to my best advantage in this particular class.

What systems? he asked me, and it all began to flow out for the first time. I told John how I had begun to spell alphabetically as a child and I demonstrated it for him.

He couldnt really believe what he was hearing. I explained, as best I could, how my mind worked and all the mental activity I was involved in. Im sure he thought I was a little crazy, but he challenged me to spell some words of his choosing alphabetically, and when I did, he wished me well in the use of my systems.

As for my American history class, the systems worked beautifully. On the first exam, my grade was 99; the closest grade to mine was 77. Four years later, I graduated Phi Beta Kappahaving put in something like one-fourth the study time that most students used.

Many years later, after I was traded to the New York Knickerbockers basketball team, I looked up Harry Lorayne. Our first meeting lasted over eighteen hours! Obviously, we had much in common, and we later became associated in our endeavorsincluding this book. It is, in fact, a combination of some of our ideas, thoughts on, systems of, memory.

Believe me, if you read about these systems and actually apply them as you go, there is no limit to how great your memory can be.

J ERRY L UCAS

Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to receive a formal education. I didnt complete the first year of high school. My grades, during that short time, were among the highest in my class. Why was this so? My IQ was average, and my natural memory was no better or worse than most peoples. As a matter of fact, I originally was one of those many people who think they have the worst memory in the world.

I received good grades for one reasonI applied memory systems to my schoolwork. Its as simple as that.

Jerry has told you how he got hooked on alphabetizing words as a child. Well, as a very young boy my burning interest was card magic. I suppose I drove most of my friends up the wall, asking them to pick a card, any card.

One of the tricks I performed during those years wasnt really a trick at all, it was a memory stunt. It consisted of memorizing an entire shuffled deck of playing cards, in order. All the cards were called off to me once, and I would know the position of every card in the deck! I still perform this stunt today, but at the time it was the only memory trick I knew.

One day, the thought struckif I could apply a simple system to help me remember playing cards, why couldnt I do the same to help me remember anything I wanted to? That single simple thought started me on a lifetime career.

First I compiled a bibliography of all the material available on the subject of memory training. This started me thinking about and then devising my own systems. Years later, I started to perform for groups, organizations, conventions, and so on. My performance consisted of memory feats and demonstrations only. During these early years, literally thousands of people approached me after a performance to express their interest in learning how to remember.