Month: July 2020

My Life with Asperger\’s
by John Elder Robison

I found another book on my shelf written by someone on the autism spectrum. It\’s the brother of Augusten Burroughs, who wrote Running with Scissors (which I tried to read once but failed to find it interesting). Look Me in the Eye tells about growing up in a dysfunctional family- his mother had mental illness and his father was an alcoholic. As a young kid, John Elder wanted to play with other children but didn\’t know how- his odd way of talking earned him labels of being weird and difficult, and for his inability to make eye contact he was called \”shifty\” and \”up to no good\”. He more or less got pigeonholed as a bad kid. This was in the sixties, Asperger\’s wasn\’t a known diagnosis back then.

Actually, I found a lot of the book kind of hard to get through at first, because I was expecting to read about what it\’s like to live with Asperger\’s, and instead I was reading about all these crazy incidents as John Elder dropped out of school, left home and started travelling with bands- he had a genius for designing things with electronics and made special effects with sound, lights and smoke bombs for several different bands including Pink Floyd and Kiss. Hard to put down, but also really far from my usual reading interests! The author was really good at what he did, and enjoyed the creativity, but had difficulty handling the close personal interactions living in close quarters with the road crew on tour. Eventually he left that scene and started working for Milton Bradley, making the first electronic toys that used motion and sound. That was also a creative environment and it\’s fascinating to read how he and the other electronic engineers came up with solutions to problems, within tight constraints. But promotions placed him in positions where he was managing a team, not doing the creative work himself, which he didn\’t like. So he left that line of work and started his own business rebuilding specialty cars- had interest in vehicles, fixing and rebuilding engines from a young age. That is still operational.

It was only in his forties that a close friend showed the author a book which described Asperger\’s symptoms, and he realized for the first time why he was different from other people. He relates how reading Born on a Blue Day and books by Temple Grandin helped him recognize and understand himself. I found the last part of the memoir more interesting, where the author describes his thought process, looks back on his childhood with new comprehension, talks with his estranged parents about certain things, relates how he parented his own son (who isn\’t on the autism spectrum but has some of the traits) and tells how he is continually working on social skills and \”emotional intelligence\” but that has changed his ability to do the amazingly creative electronics work that highlighted his youth. In fact, he looks back on designs he made when he did sound effects for bands, and says he could think those things up nowadays, but not execute them, because he\’s a different person now and has lost that laser focus on one area of expertise. He\’s happy with it though. Fascinating. I wasn\’t sure at first, but I think this one\’s staying on my shelf.

Rating: 3/5             288 pages, 2007

more opinions:

Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant
by Daniel Tammet

Daniel is a very high-functioning autistic person with savant syndrome- he has an extraordinary ability to recall and compute large numbers- due in large part to his unique way of visualizing them as distinct shapes and colors. He has synesthesia with both numbers and words. And he suffered from epilepsy as a child. This memoir describes how he grew up, isolated in many ways yet enjoying his own sensations and obsessions (especially collecting things) and only when he was older having a desire to interact with peers learning to navigate social interactions and tasks like shopping or finding his way on bus routes. He describes difficulties in school, living in a large family (nine siblings!) and how he calms himself in stressful situations. How he volunteered to work overseas teaching English as a second language, how his aptitude for learning languages works, how he once memorized and recited 22,000 digits of the number pi to break a world record! (It took five hours to make the recitation). And finally, how he discovered that he\’s gay, fell in love, and moved in with his partner, living independently and successfully started a business creating a website to help people learn foreign languages. It\’s astounding. Most of all to me, the very different way in which he visualizes and understands the world. Last year I watched a documentary made about him and I was just blown away. Even the mental games he tells of playing as a child, with numbers, I can\’t really comprehend. Although the writing style is a bit dry, he recalls incidents with a lot of detail- even from a young age. Some of them sad, to see how peers at first shunned him, and teachers misunderstood. His story of overcoming challenges living with autism and finding his way in the world, to living independently with someone he loves and even finding religion, is very inspiring.

Rating: 3/5               226 pages, 2006

more opinions:
Booklust

The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism
by Naoki Higashida
translated by K.A. Yoshida and David Mitchell

This book was written by a Japanese boy who has autism. He couldn\’t speak, but learned to use an alphabet board and later a computer- touching one character at a time- to write out his thoughts and responses to people\’s questions. It\’s clear that in spite of his difficulty with speech and sensory input, he\’s quite intelligent and perceptive. His body just doesn\’t do what he wants it to, most of the time. I didn\’t expect the format though- it\’s not written as a narrative (except for a few very short stories) here and there- but instead a series of question-and-answer: things like why do you echo questions back at the asker?  or why do you write letters in the air? or Do you have a sense of time? and of course What\’s the reason you jump? This was interesting- very intriguing to learn some of the reasons for what seem odd behaviors to most of us, and others were honestly surprising to me. There were a few things he simply couldn\’t explain, but he was honest about it. It\’s mostly about the difference in perceptions, in how his brain processes things. It\’s also a huge plea for understanding and patience: he says more than once in the book- I know I do this over and over again, but please don\’t give up on me. Please remember that I\’m human. He speaks for himself in particular, and for autistic people in general- noting clearly the cases in which he feels differently than other autistic people. I was reminded strongly of a book I read years ago called I Raise My Eyes to Say Yes– in that both are about a person who is unable to communicate until they have a tool which gives them a voice.

The introduction written by David Mitchell is particularly thoughtful. (There\’s a very good article by Mitchell here (his son also has autism) including some excerpts from this book). I got nearly as much out of that as from the body of text itself. I also really like the illustrations by Kai and Sunny. This book was written over a decade ago, so I was immediately curious to see what else Higashida may have written since: Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8 sounds like this is more about his actual experiences so I really want to read it too.

Borrowed from a family member.

Rating: 3/5                 161 pages, 2007

More opinions:
Stuff As Dreams Are Made On
Farm Lane Books Blog
anyone else?

DISCLAIMER:

All books reviewed on this site are owned by me, or borrowed from the public library. Exceptions are a very occasional review copy sent to me by a publisher or author, as noted. Receiving a book does not influence my opinion or evaluation of it

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