Aspies For Freedom

A new autistic autobiography. Sounds very interesting:

From LJ:
(http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6466066.html)
Robison, John Elder. Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's. Crown. Sept. 2007. c.304p. ISBN 978-0-307-39598-6. $25.95. PSYCH

First-time writer Robison diagnosed himself with Asperger's syndrome after receiving Tony Attwood's groundbreaking work on the subject from a therapist friend ten years ago. In his well-written and fascinating memoir, the fifty-something brother of Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors) addresses the difficultly of growing up in a household with an abusive and alcoholic father, the social problems he encountered at school, and his great affinity for mechanics. It made no difference that he lacked a high school diploma—Robison's natural skills landed him work as an automobile restorer, Milton Bradley engineer, and stagehand responsible for the pyrotechnic guitars used by rock band KISS in the late 1970s. Despite these successes, the author suffered social difficulties while developing his ability to connect with and understand machines, a thread that is explored in great detail. If there is a drawback here, it is that readers do not get a strong sense of how his self-diagnosis impacted his life. But even among the growing number of books written by those diagnosed later in life, this entry is easily recommended for public and academic libraries with autism collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/07.]—Corey Seeman, Kresge Business Administration Lib., Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor

LJ talks to John Elder Robison:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6464486.html

An excerpt from the book:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/excer...-Eye_N.htm

The author's website: http://www.johnrobison.com/default.asp
The author reading an excerpt from the book: http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/mm/au...357682.mp3

Wow! Thank you so much, ken -- I can't wait to read this.

A fascinating little side note is this: the author is "the fifty-something brother of Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors)" -- and that book was such a pack of lies that the author finally had to admit it. Many of the people lied about in the book demanded that he prove his lies in court. Now it's classified as "fiction."

I trust "Look Me in the Eye" will be very different.

That's kind of funny in this context.

I think loyalty to one's brother is a nice quality.

Congratz on the advance!

and you are also in today's Boston Globe: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/...at_him_now

Here is a long video of John Elder Robison and the crowd, the night "Look Me in the Eye" went on sale: http://media.barnesandnoble.com/index.js...id=1024690

And here is a video of him on Emily Rooney's Greater Boston talk show:
http://streams.wgbh.org/online/gb/gb2007...bison2.mov

It seems that after more than twenty years of books being written by autistics, one such book is finally going mainstream!





  

Thank you for all the links. I bought the book yesterday, so I'm only half way through it but have really enjoyed it so far.

Mr. Robison - you are a lovely man. (And I hope you apologised to your little brother for all the trickery!)

John - I walked into a 'Borders' store last week and as entered the door, right in front of me on a display facing the entrance was your book. I live in NewZealand - I imagine your book is going to be an international top seller, Congratulations!!!!!!!!! WELL DONE.

I was told endlessly throughout childhood to apologise for virtually everything I did! So I suppose that I was projecting a little.

But it is funny how an apology seems to clear the air - I don't really know why, but sometimes people expect me to apologise for something without telling me that they are waiting for an apology. This can go on for YEARS! Eventually someone asks me why I didn't apologise - and I realise that I had hurt their feelings unintentionally.

Funnily enough, it seems people will expect an apology for accidental hurt feelings far more than accidental physical damage.

I finished your book on Friday. I really enjoyed it! I have recommended it to friends and will recommend it to my local Autism Society.

On the weekend I noticed this book right at the front of the shop in my local Angus and Robertson's bookshop. With that kind of promotion the book is sure to be a success. This book appears to be in book shops that didn't bother to stock Daniel Tammet's recent autobiography, so I guess it may outsell that title in my part of the world.

I also noticed that the host of the Radio National show in which Mr Robison was recently interviewed sounded very enthusiastic about the book.

I bought your book, and read it about a month ago, I liked it. --Also, the part with the Formica dust was absolutely brilliant!

I really enjoyed your book, and will recommend it to other Aspies I know.

With all due respect, I personally find the number of books written by autistics as autobiographies as somewhat tiring by now. As I have not read John's book I won't comment on it (other than the standard congratulations - getting published and heavily advertised is worthy of congratulations on its own), but I will note that many in this genre seem to not be highly insightful. A few are interesting in parts, but nothing truly groundbreaking.

I would love to see an autobiography by someone on the spectrum which did not focus on the fact that they are on the spectrum. Should I personally ever have reason to write my own autobiography, I can promise that it will not be focused on my diagnosis. This is not to say that autobiographies which focus on autism are actually bad, but they are by this point getting a bit old.

I haven't read the book yet myself, so I wont comment on this book specifically. I do think that being diagnosed late in life may be a trigger for some autists to re-visit their past and reinterpret the events of the past in the light of a new explanation. I think this is unavoidable and probably a good thing in most cases, but it may go too far.

To be honest, I think it is a pretty lame thing to be famous primarily for being autistic, but on the other hand, we do need to have our people explaining our experiences and points of view to the general public and clinicians. We've had NTs doing a bad job of explaining us to the world for too long, and this must be balanced out with authentic autobiographical accounts.

I think it would be fun to write an autobiography or a novel from the POV of an autist, but not state that the main character or author has AS or autism, and let the readers discover it for themselves (or not). I know of one author who appears to have done this.

Lili - I know that if I was to write an autobiography of myself in a few years from now i'd have some much more interesting material to use than just my diagnosis (that would only be one component). In the fiction genre I can think of many authors who almost certainly have aspie traits.