| |||||
American Normal
Books: Travel: Asheville: Item 8
|
American Normalby Lawrence Osborne
|
15 of 22 people found the following review helpful: A Lively View of a Strange Disorder, February 20, 2003 Reviewer:R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - One of the syndromes medical students learn about is Medical Student's Disease: one thinks one has the particular malady being taught about. Symptoms are diverse, as all of us have some sort of ache or pain now and then; and certainly all of us have mental symptoms, too, whether these be just ups and downs, occasionally hearing ourselves being called when no one is calling, obsessive interest in an oddity that turns into a hobby, bursts of energy or self-esteem, and so on. Lawrence Osborne has taken on the task of reporting about Asperger Syndrome in _American Normal: The Hidden World of Asperger Syndrome_ (Copernicus Books) and has filled it with his own symptoms tending toward the condition: he is fixated on the television program _Iron Chef_, for instance, and he is fond of lingering in airports, and as a child he was nuts about playing the lute. He is willing to call these "Aspergerish" (and he has met people with the diagnosis that share this sort of trait), but he wisely withholds the diagnosis from himself. He gets along far too well; like so many other diagnoses, Asperger's can't apply if one is unimpaired socially or occupationally, and Osborne shows he can get along socially even with some very peculiar people, and he can write with wonderful clarity and vigor. His book goes a long way to illustrating the condition, even if the illness, and the philosophy behind diagnosing it, remain largely unexplained. The illness is specific, with a definition of check-off symptoms in psychiatry's standard diagnostic manual. It is probably a high-functioning form of autism, but not as crippling. People with Asperger's are often highly intelligent, and although they are frequently preoccupied with one area of restricted interest in which they have sometimes astounding intellectual capacity, they can blend into society with bumbling facility. However, they can't do things that the rest of us take for granted, like looking at a human face and knowing what emotions are being shown. Osborne gets to interview or research patients who have, for instance, memorized all of _Babylon 5_, or every fact about hotels in their state, or about vacuum cleaners. It might be that Thomas Jefferson had the illness, and maybe Albert Einstein and Bla Bartk. The main Asperger poster boy is the famous pianist Glenn Gould, who gets a chapter here. Gould certainly had the concentration on a limited sphere of interest; his recordings, especially of Bach, are among the most famous of any classical records. Gould displayed (or perhaps harnessed) the social inability of Asperger patients in an unusual way; retiring from the concert hall, he tirelessly argued for the virtues of electronically recorded performances. This is not a book of firsthand experience with the illness, although Osborne wisely lets us in on enough of his own idiosyncrasies to show how close to normal Asperger people are. And it is not a book by a medical expert or specialist. Osborne is simply a curious person and a gifted writer who had an opportunity to investigate something that took his fancy, an interesting illness, and was able to interview some interesting people who suffer, or who thrive, from it. (One of them told him, "Normalcy is highly overrated, you know.") _American Normal_ is mostly his personal observations, and it is very entertaining, as well as sympathetic and informative.
From Library Journal
This collection of portraits has that admirable goal of seeking to illuminate what it's like to live with Asperger Syndrome (AS), one of the Autistic Spectrum Disorders, but it falters on many counts. First, Osborne, a medical writer for the New York Times Magazine, devotes too much space to historical figures who were never diagnosed with AS and probably did not know about the condition (e.g., Thomas Jefferson, pianist Glenn Gould). Second, he wrongly identifies inventor and educator Temple Grandin as someone with AS. Since she lacked speech until she was seven years old, she is always counted among those with moderate to severe autism despite her current success. Third, his interest in famous people who may have AS lacks clear value besides creating an Asperger "hall of fame." By sometimes trivializing the experience of the people featured, this book will not help those looking to assist someone with AS. Though little is written in this field, a better title would be Liane Holliday Willey's Pretending To Be Normal: Living with Asperger's Syndrome. Not recommended owing to its inaccuracies and muddled definition of AS.
Corey Seeman, Univ. of Toledo Libs., OH
Copyright 2002 Reed business Information, Inc.
Mel Levine, author of A MIND AT A TIME
AMERICAN NORMAL can and should have a major impact on the ways in which we think about mental health.
Shop Bookstores:
Books
Resources
Most Watched Book Auctions
Asheville at Sduf
News To Peruse
More Subjects
Book Review Directory
Reviewed Authors
Reviewed Titles
Review List
Site Map
