Autism is Not a Mental Aberration
I am more than looking forward to reading Up High in the Trees (and here is chapter 1), the recently published novel by Kiara Brinkman. It has been suggested that tha 8-year-old narrator, Sebby, is on the autism spectrum: Brinkman’s webpage describes him as an “unusual little boy” and novelist Cristina Garcia refers to him as “autistic” and, too, as a “Little Prince for our times” on the jacket blurb. Writer Madison Smartt Bell notes this in his New York Times review of Up High in the Trees, and also discusses the novel in comparison to Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, in which the first-person narrator, Christopher, is clearly noted to have Asperger’s Syndrome.
Bell rather refers to the character Sebby’s mental health: Sebby, and Haddon’s Christopher, are compared to Benjy in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury as the “voice of mental impairment.” Sebby is said to have a “mental aberration” that he “suffers” from. Sebby’s mother has died; after Sebby bites the shoulder of another girl, Sebby’s father takes him to the family’s summer house. The father, perhaps more “mentally fragile than the children,” himself exhibits what Bell refers to as “classic autistic behavior”:
“….rocking, curling up under his bed with a stray cat the two of them have adopted, injuring his hand by striking the table — to the point that he has to be hospitalized.”
These are symptoms that can signify autism, but are only the beginning of the story.
Of course, Bell’s comments on autism are in the context of a book review; his praise for the lyrical sensitivity of Up High in the Trees is clearly articulated, and only increase my interest in Brinkman’s novel. What Sebby’s “diagnosis” is can be said to be a secondary concern in reading the novel. Nonetheless, as Bell refers explicitly to Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and to Christopher’s having Asperger’s syndrome, the mentions of Sebby as suffering from a “mental aberration” suggest a certain, and limited, and even inaccurate, view of autism.
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POSTED IN: Autism Lit, Books, Psychology
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