Asperger's is not a disease. It's a way of being. There is no cure, nor is there a need for one.
I've read quite a bit of Augusten Burroughs -- for the most part when his various books first came out -- so although I have a pretty good mental picture of the neglect and chaos that surrounded his childhood, I really couldn't remember that he even had an older brother. I suppose that's understandable since Burroughs and John Elder Robison, author of Look Me in the Eye, were born eight years apart and they have both written that it was as though they were raised in totally different families: When Robison was little, his parents weren't yet at war, his mother not yet descended into madness and his father not an alcoholic. Even still, Robison's early years were not happy: He has Asperger's, undiagnosed until he was forty, and what was natural behaviour for him was labelled stupid, lazy and obstinate by his parents and teachers -- and just weird by his fellow kids.
The title refers to the fact that Robison has a problem holding others' gaze while being spoken to -- "I don't really understand why it's considered normal to stare at someone's eyeballs" -- and in many other ways as he grew up, he was unable to crack the code of interacting with other people. What I found fascinating, and quite sad, was how badly he wanted that interaction -- I have very little intimate experience with Asperger's and the Autism Spectrum, but from what I think I know, aren't Aspergians supposed to prefer to be alone, to shun the company of others? For the first-hand insight that this book gives into Asperger's, this is a valuable resource. (And I should remember that Autism is a spectrum, which means, perhaps, not all Aspergians share Robison's views or desires.)
What Robison did enjoy as a youth was a near savant-like ability to understand electronics. While he learned most of what he knew from books and interacting with clubs and labs at the University where his father taught, he developed an extra sense that allowed him to visualise the phenomena for which he didn't understand the mechanics. He turned this into a gift for repairing and modifying amplifiers, eventually doing work for Pink Floyd, and when he met Ace Frehley of Kiss, he was soon hired to modify his guitars with light and smoke effects. When he grew tired of the Rock and Roll lifestyle, Robison became one of the first electronic engineers for Milton-Bradley, and when he grew tired of the corporate life, he taught himself to repair foreign cars and opened a car lot/garage (which he still owns today, apparently a great success -- not bad for a high school dropout).
In Look Me in the Eye, Robison recounts pretty much his entire life from first memories to his two marriages and the birth of his son. The biographical information alone was interesting enough -- not everyone will tour with Kiss -- but it was the inside information on Asperger's that I found the most fascinating. Robison explains that he believes in a plasticity of the brain, citing certain times in his life that were critical for its development, and as horrifying as his childhood became, he always got just enough stimulation to prevent him from withdrawing totally into himself. I was most especially intrigued when he said that as a teenager, obsessed with electronics and studying how it all worked, it was as though he were standing in front of two doors: one that would lead him out into the world to use his knowledge and the other that would lead him to becoming a recluse. It was only thanks to his family, to the madness that drove Robison away from home, that he was forced to choose the first door; to find a way to interact with society at large. With another perspective on how their dysfunctional family life was a boon for his brother, Burroughs wrote in Running With Scissors:
Sometimes I wonder if his life would have been easier if my parents had taken him to a doctor instead of just assuming he was cold and emotionally blocked. But then I remind myself that my parents had very questionable taste when it came to choosing medical professionals. With this in mind, I like to think that my brother wasn't so much overlooked as he was inadvertently protected.
Imagine that -- just when Robison needed it, his crazy home life saved him from something worse. Getting back to the idea of plasticity, Robison says that in a critical period in adulthood, when he decided to leave the world of electronics and concentrate on relationships (particularly with his first wife and child), the changes this made in his brain has left him now unable to understand the technical writings he himself had done twenty-five years earlier. Imagine that.
For the most part, I did enjoy Look Me in the Eye. I was a little disturbed by Robison's recounting of the pranks that he pulled off over the years -- and it's one thing to upset the police and fire departments by hanging a mannequin from a power tower in the woods over a burning pentagram in the middle of the night as a teenager, but it's pretty cruel to tell your young son that Santa is an alcoholic fugitive who operates a freight crane in the off season, skimming toys for a profit to support his various bad habits. Also, I understand that this book was written by a person with Asperger's and the language he chooses is a useful insight into the workings of his brain, but some things grew tiresome -- his son was hatched…at the hatchery…among the other hatchlings…or the people close to him are described as having paws and claws and fur -- I think a sensitive editor could have helped with this.
The Epilogue was surprisingly touching, though. Robison writes with emotion about the final illness and loss of his father and how they were able to reconcile before his death. That loss prompted him to write Look Me in the Eye, and after sharing the transcript with his mother, they were able to improve their relationship as well.
My overall impression is that this was interesting and informative, but maybe not a perfect book. I see that Robison has two other books (one that appears to be a how-to manual for Aspergians and one that goes further into his relationship with his hatchling) but I can't see me reading those; Look Me in the Eye covers those topics without enticing me to want to learn more. I am loathe to begin and end with Augusten Burroughs when reviewing a book by his brother, but one of the things I enjoyed the most was the light this book threw on what Burroughs has written about before. For example, Robison writes:
My father had been drinking for quite a while, but now he picked up the pace. The empty bottles began accumulating under the kitchen table. They lined the wall, and when we went to the dump, they filled the back of the car. They were not little bottles either; they were gallon jugs.
And in Dry, Burroughs wrote:
My apartment is my secret. It's filled with empty liquor bottles. Not five or six. More like three hundred. Three hundred one-liter bottles of scotch…And when I used to drink beer instead of scotch, the beer bottles would collect. I counted the beer bottles once: one thousand, four hundred and fifty-two.
So that habit didn't come out of thin air…
Asperger's is not a disease. It's a way of being. There is no cure, nor is there a need for one.
Yes, I'm repeating that quote from the beginning because it reminded me of something and because I wonder what Robison would have to say to the Jenny McCarthy notion of curing Autism with vitamins and diet and whatever other holistic mumbo jumbo she thinks she has discovered.
My related story:
When Mallory was born, the chiropractor friend of my sister-in-law gave me some pamphlets, asking me to consider not vaccinating my baby. These pamphlets were American and mostly talked about how vaccines are not only unsafe (risk of Autism, etc.) but they're also a scam -- doctors promote them because they're in the pocket of Big Pharma. But this is Canada -- vaccines are covered under our health care and I don't see how the administrating doctors could be lining their pockets with kickbacks. And because I love my children, and think chiropractic medicine is mostly quackery, I thanked the friend and got my baby vaccinated.
Fast forward to this past month, and the chiropractor, now the mother of a lovely four year old daughter of her own, Emily, was getting ready to go to Fiji for a wedding (no one ever said chiropractors don't make good money...) and Emily came down with a terrible cough. Likely Whooping Cough. When I heard that, I figured Emily had never been immunised and that's not the worst thing I suppose -- with herd immunity most of these diseases are nearly wiped out and she's old enough now to fight things off. But here is the worst thing: Before they could get a clear diagnosis as to whether it really was Whooping Cough or not, they went to Fiji, bringing along a coughing kid -- not only on a 20-something hour plane ride with captive and unsuspecting fellow passengers but to a country where I'm assuming the general populace isn't immunised against Whooping Cough. The arrogance of that just blew me away -- I can't prevent you from putting your own child at risk, but leave the rest of ours alone!
Here's the other thing this book made me think about:
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Something about that quote makes me think of family unhappiness as a competition; like as though, since the Robison family was so incredibly dysfunctional, I should just suck up my own unhappy memories and be thankful that although we may have been terrified, we weren't exactly terrorized. How strange that whenever I hear about someone with an unhappier childhood I feel worse instead of better because they have "won" the competition. John Elder Robison describes being routinely whipped in his bed at night by his drunken, violent father and fantasising about rolling over and jamming a knife into him "right to the hilt. Right in the belly." And what stopped him? He was afraid he'd fail -- he might miss or it might not kill his father right away. Our father wasn't a drunk or violent without "cause", and I don't think even my brothers have ever dreamed of killing him, but we still lived every day in fear, walking on eggshells, afraid that something would set him off and something would get thrown or an arm would get grabbed and lead to a shaking or we'd have to hear him roaring. Knowing other people have it worse doesn't make me feel any better.
And then the Epilogue made me feel even sorrier for myself (I know, I need to get over myself). Robison visited his father in the hospital and asked, "Did we ever have any fun when I was a kid?" and his father reminded him of the times they went to the Philadelphia museum to look at the trains. The memories came rushing back and Robison was able to forgive his father for the bad years. Here's the thing: I can rack my brain for as long as I like, but I know we never had fun with my father. So few outings (and what there were were fraught with the anxiety of "Is he okay with this?"), no vacations other than over to visit our grandparents while we still lived on the East Coast (and those were never meant to be fun visits...), no movies (I do remember going to the drive-in twice as a family, but that was a fairly neutral experience -- does that count as fun?), no regular trips to restaurants (there was a disastrous Mother's Day at Swiss Chalet, and I do remember getting yelled at the only time we ever went to Wendy's because I took too much time looking at the menu -- Chili? Frosters? What would these be like?) ... we kids spent all our time just tiptoeing around, trying not to get yelled at. And I don't know if I have it in me to go to my father's bedside when the time comes and clutch his hand and tell him I love him and hope to hear those words back -- I don't think I have forgiveness in me because I don't think he believes there's anything to forgive. I guess we'll see.
Here's the good news: Also in the Epilogue, Robison offered to bring his father's beloved farm tractor around so he could see it one last time. As it was buried under snow, Robison and his son had an adventure digging it out and transporting it, full of companionship and laughs -- and that's where our families are now. I can totally imagine both of my brothers having an adventure like this with their kids, as I can imagine me having with my own girls, so if abuse (or even just neglect and disinterest) is passed down through the generations, it has stopped with us.
I'll end on a more neutral note. Here's another interesting part of Look Me in the Eye that didn't have a place in the book review proper:
Robison is currently married to a woman who has two sisters and he says that as a logical-minded Aspergian, he has to wonder if he picked the right sister to be his mate and compares them as though they are three models of the same make. He then says that anyone who says he (or she) doesn't do this kind of comparing is lying. Huh. I have no sisters, so I don't need to wonder if my husband is evaluating me in this way, and Dave doesn't have any brothers -- in fact, I never had a boyfriend with a brother I've met -- so I've never done this kind of comparison myself.
So I broadened the scope and thought about my brothers: Would their wives be wondering if they chose the right brother? I'm certain that if it ever crossed either of their minds, they would have to answer yes -- as long suffering as they are, I can't imagine either Christine or Laura would swap husbands. Then I thought about my brothers themselves: They each married a woman with a sister, and there's no way either would prefer his wife's sister. As a matter of fact, as I thought about everyone I know, I can't think of a single instance in which a married person might be better suited to their spouse's sibling -- how strange! Now, when my own girls get married, I just know I'm going to be looking at their husbands and wondering what they're wondering about...
