Recently featured on Concocted Glimpse was the book, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” which was a book about autism. Or at least a book written from the perspective an autistic child. Or was it?
In 2003, a lady who works at a special needs school in Singapore showed [the book] to me and asked for my comment. I read two pages. The protagonist (Christopher Boone) was describing his stream of consciousness. As I read, I felt my mind spinning. I gave up trying to untangle my confusion, returned the book and thanked the lady. When she asked for my comments again, I mentioned politely that the book was not really about autism.
Years later, I figured out why. The book was written by someone pretending to be autistic. No wonder I was puzzled! It was usually autistics pretending to be “normal”, not the other way around!
The above quote is from Eric Chen, a high-functioning autist from Singapore. He writes a fascinating critique of the book on his website, iautistic.com. Of course, he is careful to point out that “Mark Haddon did not use the word autism in his book, let alone claim to portray autism accurately. Certainly, he was not at fault. I have nothing against Mark Haddon or his work. … However, … I feel that I must explain why it should not to be taken seriously when many people (including teachers and autism professionals) recommend it as reading material on autism.”
I think the book is fascinating, entertaining, and definitely worth reading—and even helps people understand a little bit better about what autism is and what it’s like. But at the same time, as Eric points out, the book is written by a person pretending to be autistic, and therefore reveals more about the non-autistic mind than the autistic mind. Eric takes the liberty of re-writing a few sections of the book; I’ll quote here one of my favorite bits. This comes from part of the book that even I, with my limited understanding of autism, noticed as being an inaccurate portrayal.
On page 84 of the book, there is a passage that goes like this:
And he said, “What’s 251 times 864?”
And I thought about this and I said: “216,864″. Because it was a really easy sum because you just multiply 864 X 1000 which is 864,000. Then you divide it by 4 which is 216,000 and that’s 250 x 864. Then you add another 864 on to it and get 251 x 864. And that’s 216,864.
The paragraph shows Christopher working logically through the sums. Although autistics often reason with logic, their logic is often of a different quality. There are many autistics who accept queer ideas and persist with them despite convincing argument. Yes, they are logical, but their logic is not necessarily of high quality. I concede that it is possible an autistic would reason as above with sufficient training, but I consider this an exception, not the rule.
Autistic savants do not use logic, because it is too slow. They tap into the parallel processing power of the brain, often using the kinesthetic and visual processors of their brain. If I could rewrite this paragraph, perhaps it might read like this:
And he said, “What’s 251 times 864?”
As Christopher heard this, in his mind appeared two green shapes that looked a lot like uneven cubes. The shapes clashed into each other and rippled with lots of tiny cubes, squares and triangles. Eventually a new shape was formed. Christopher replied: “216,864″.
He was shocked. “Wow, that’s even faster than a calculator. How did you do it?”
Christopher was puzzled and thought carefully about what he meant. Perhaps he was asking who solved the sum. “I did.”
“I mean, what trick did you use?”
It took me a while for Christopher to understand what he said. Maybe he means, tricks as in cheating. So he means if Christopher had cheated. “No.”
“I don’t get it,” he declared. And to this very day, he still could not figure out Christopher’s secrets.
As a side-note, autistic youths usually have to struggle to understand human speech, especially the context behind every word. The smooth flow of thoughts and the apparent ease of understanding human speech in the novel are highly unrealistic experiences.
I recommend reading the rest of Eric’s critique. It is even more valuable than the book itself at peering into the world of autism.
Entries (RSS)