The Curious Incident of Irresponsible Fiction

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I'm sick of people complaining about this book. I have read it many times, and I love it - not because it's about Asperger syndrome; because it's a good story. It's a work of fiction. What does it matter if it's not 100% accurate?

Something odd happened yesterday that caused me to start rethinking my first reaction to this book. My wife was considering buying a similar book by Jodi Picoult called House Rules for sons. You can read more about that book here. I'm not sure if that link explains the research she did for the character, but more can be found if you look for it. She did more than the author of the novel the OP posted, but I still sensed some of the same problems that might be found in this book.

Something occurred to me while talking this one over that hadn't occurred to me before. For those that are bothered by books like this (including me), the problem seems to be that the characters appear to have every symptom of Aspererer's in exaggerated form. Those that are bothered by this, are bothered because almost no one with AS has every symptom, and in many of us they aren't so severe. The concern is that people who read them will develop a false stereotypical view of what it is.

But my wife wanted to buy this book for our kids, who are all on the spectrum, with parents who are very familiar with the spectrum. She's hoping they might identify at least in part with the character, and be inspired to learn more about Asperger's and themselves by reading it.

That put a different twist on how I was thinking about these books. For example, the characters may have exaggerated symptoms, and more of them than my kids have, but they would know which aspects are like them and which were not, wouldn't they? Fiction is full of exaggerated characters. How many characters have we read about that were exactly like us? Probably none.

What if every book written about AS used characters that were realistic? What if each character used only had some AS traits, but not others? How many characters would have to be created before everyone on the spectrum were fairly represented?

If ONE character has every AS symptom, isn't it more likely that kids reading the book would be able to pick out characteristics with which they identify? Wouldn't that make it more likely that almost any kid with AS would be able to identify with the character? Aren't most kids, even with AS fairly able to see which parts fit them and which do not?

Our kids would also have our guidance if they have any questions about it.

Maybe there are people out there who will get wrong ideas about AS from reading books like these, but whose fault is that anyway? Is it really very smart to use fictional accounts to learn about anything?

Maybe I did jump to conclusions about this guy. Maybe the marketers are a bunch of jerks, maybe they're not (the book isn't any good to anyone if it doesn't sell now, is it?) Maybe books like this do have some value for some, and not for others.

Come to think of it, isn't that how it is for all books?

That is precisely the problem with books like this. Instead of fully developed, realistic characters, authors insist on giving their characters every single autistic trait to the most extreme degree. Nobody in real life is actually like this. No one. We're complicated individuals, and this kind of thing promotes stereotypes.

I would strongly advise against giving "House Rules" to autistic kids to read, BTW. In addition to the stereotype problem, that book has a lot of BS about how hard it is to have an autistic family member, amongst other significant problems. That kind of s**t makes "House Rules" worse than "Curious Incident" in my book.

The problem wasn't the symptoms but the perspective. It was first person perspective written by a nonautistic. Even if he managed to nail your exact list of symptoms it would still feel fake.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Rules_(novel)#Reception

... but did she? No one in this thread has mentioned the fact that Mark Haddon spent some time working with disabled children and adults. An aspect which he himself downplays, I believe, because it sounds pretentious. By comparison, 50 interviews doesn't sound like much involvement to me. It is a bit of research, but not exactly immersive.
http://literature.britishcouncil.org/mark-haddon

I guess I'll get around to reading "House Rules", eventually.

My point was that it's impossible to do the entire spectrum justice with a single character, unless the character has every symptoms. The degree to which the character might have them is debatable.

Then again, even if a character were very realistic, that would require the character NOT having certain symptoms while having others. If that's the case, there will be many more Autistics that do not identify with the character than there would be who do.

It's a kind of "damned if you do, damned if you don't," or more accurately, "damned no matter how you chose to do it "situation.

I don't even think it matters whether the Author themselves is Autistic. Just look at the flack Autistic authors get here. It's as if regardless of how any author chooses to write about the topic, they're going to get flack for it from one camp or another.

Why not have an autistic child read the book? It may not be a good idea for some, but I know my own kids are smart enough to separate fact from fiction, plus they will have our guidance as well.

I guess I'm just learning not to make snap or blanket judgements about any book being "bad" for all to read.

BTW, I'm an Autistic parent of three boys with Autism. Trust me, it IS hard to deal with. If that's part of what the book offers, I wouldn't qualify that as BS. It's TRUE. And that wouldn't phase my boys either, because each one of them has to deal with the others as well as me. They KNOW it's a pain in the ass.

Interesting. I didn't find that info on Haddon. From what your'e saying, he did more research than she did. I don't have a link to it, but she stated she has a cousin with AS, and six local families with AS children were involved with the project. Is that enough? Probably not for some, maybe so for others.

I don't know. I've reached the point of believing it wouldn't matter if you did decades of research and had AS yourself, with several members of your family having it also. There's always going to be many Aspies who think it's crap.

As a group, we're just too damned hard to please.

I can relate to any character in any story so long as they're honestly written and make sense. In film, the most relatable autistic character I found is Adam Sandler's in Punch Drunk Love, which never mentions autism, he's just a sensitive person in a realistic story. Turn your characters into totems and they serve no one.

Wouldn't it be better for them to read good books about people than bad books about autistic people?

It depends on what you mean by "bad." I have a bit of a problem with the word for that reason. Everybody means something different by it.

Besides, the only "good" books I've read so far are way beyond my kid's level of reading. They're very dry reading and some are far to technical. They wouldn't read them. Not to mention even out of the plethora of "good" books, many of them are panned as "bad" by certain schools of thinking Autistics. It wouldn't matter what I had them read, someone in the community is bound not to like it, and maybe even criticize me for it.

I guess what I'm saying is each of us has to make our own choices, and quit relying (if we have been) on what anyone else thinks about it.

I've always taught my kids to glean the value from the dross. Not to "throw the baby out with the bath water." They're not always good at it, but they have been learning. Maybe I would find both books to be utter garbage. It is possible to learn SOMETHING (even from reading crap). If all we learn is how wrong thinking can happen, that's at least of some value in and of itself.

I'm also saying that maybe I shouldn't judge anything based solely on what others have told me. I haven't read either book. I don't think I should have judged either of them based on what little information I had at the time. I'm giving the benefit of the doubt until I read them myself, which may or may not ever happen anyway.

It's a good book for sure. I've read it twice. Besides, the book is a work of fiction, not a case study on Asperger Syndrome. What are people going to complain about next? The fact that the dog isn't the Taco Bell dog?

Excellent classic. Firefighters who burn books, with 451 degrees being the point at which books burn. Haven't read that book since high school.

What irritated me about the book (among other things) is that it promotes an untrue stereotype of those on the spectrum and gives NTs the wrong idea about about what having ASD is really like.

As I said in another post, I read the book because several people suggested I read it, the reasoning being: "the protagonist has autism; you have autism; therefore you will identify with the character and like the book".

Umm, no. I wouldn't go around suggesting that NTs read certain books because the main characters are NT; why should I be interested in a book because the main character is supposed to have ASD? I don't need to read a book to know what it's about - I live it every day of my life.

Now, on the other hand, if someone recommended a good factual book about ASD I might be interested.

What you mean is that it was untrue for you.

Well, so that's suspect reasoning. It says nothing about the book - just that the people who suggested it didn't know what they were talking about.,

Yes - you live your version of it. I'd be surprised if that matched precisely with my version.

My first book was Pretending to be Normal by Liane Holliday Willey

I've never read the book, so I can't speak to whether or not it's accurate. And, I agree that works of fiction don't have to be accurate. But, what frustrates me is that I've seen professionals recommend it to people to help them learn about autism. There are so many good first-person accounts of what it's actually like to have autism that I don't understand why someone would go to a fictional account written by a non-autistic to learn about autism instead? Maybe they might make the argument that Haddon's book is engaging, but Temple Grandin and John Elder Robison's books are engaging, too.

Yes, I'd be inclined to agree.

When I read a book, I want to be (1) educated, (2) entertained and / or (3) informed. (Yes, I have totally stolen that from the BBC's mandate.)

The novel in question did not educate me - I am on the spectrum and know what it's like, so there was no insight or larger truth about life there. It did not entertain me - I found it slow and neither the plot nor the main character very engaging or intriguing. I found the main character's figuring out how to get to London irritating, as a schoolboy in England in a state school one would expect him to have been exposed to computers and the Internet. Finally, it did not inform me of anything (see the first comment).

Whether or not it a 'good' book is a different matter and is one best to left to professional literary critics to debate. For me, as a reader, it did not tick any of the boxes I expect in a book.

Additionally, the waters seem to be muddied about whether or not Haddon meant to portray the protagonist as being on the spectrum. Knowing this, whatever mildly positive opinion I might have once had about the book has disappeared.

Edit: I have just looked at the wikipedia page for this book and I see that one of the criticisms of the book is that it doesn't accurately represent an autistic person's thought processes. This mirrors what I had originally said about the book.

Last edited by DreamSofa on 27 Dec 2011, 6:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

Jodi Picoult's writing is pretty bad...like fecal matter bad. I read "Nineteen Minutes" and got a splitting headache from the constant jumping around and endless cliches.

It seems like we've gotten to a point where anything in the media dealing with Asperger's automatically offends us. I don't see why. Again, I tend to relate to cases of Autism that offend people the most. And whatever flaws The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time had, I did find it a dark emotional and interesting read. I laughed alot whenever the narrator was acting or thinking in a way I totally would.

If you wish to discuss ideas of what would make a good but accurate portrayal of Asperger's in the media you should check out the thread I started a couple days back: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt184513.html

This is not to say that I don't get offended by Asperger's in the media at all (ex SugarMotta, really Glee? ) . Considering how sensitive we aspies are, I tend to think through these portrayals before deciding whether or not I should be offended by it. It's getting offended at every little thing featuring Asperger's that's already given us a bad rep with NTs who are grouping all us aspies as humorless jerks etc.