Famous Aspie Authors

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Are there any ?

If you read any biographies of John Steinbeck, I'm almost positive that had he lived now, he would place somewhere on the spectrum.

Kris

I'm pretty confident John Milton had AS.

I've thought about this topic for a bit and this is what I can come up with:

1. Edgar Allan Poe
2. Truman Capote
3. J.D. Salinger
4. Lewis Carroll
5. Patrica Highsmith
6. Emily Dickinson
7. George Orwell
8. Herman Melville
9. H.P. Lovecraft
10. Vladimir Nabokov

none are aspies. is this a joke? this is like a list of the best authors.

Orwell is highly suspected to have had it though. Actually, reading 1984, it seems to add up.

Salinger would seem like a credible contender

I'm with cheshirecat on this.

Many of them are probably aspies. Take for instance Lewis Carrol. He got better along with children than adults, he was very shy, he stuttered, and he died as a virgin. Emily Dickinson was a depressed loner, she never married, and eventualy the loneliness made her insane. It is also assumed that Mark Twain had Asperger's syndrome, allthough he was more high-functioning than both Lewis Carrol and Emily Dickinson.

She couldn't have AS, in childhood and early youth she seemed to be more or less normal while AS being a developmental disorder is already visible in a child.

Generally I think that AS is treated here as a kind of bag into which each deviation from a norm is put - after all, there are so many personality disorders that can give similar symptoms so we shouldn't generalize.

I would second the vote on Nabokov, just an intuitive thing from what I know of his writing. Also, the whole lepidoptery thing is to me, as close to a dead giveaway as you can ask for.

edgar allen poe, I think.

i've read that nietchze had AS...

I definitely feel a kinship to Nabokov, but I'm not sure if it's AS. Could very well be. Have you read Strong Opinions? It's a compilation of his letters, interviews, etc. If he's not on the spectrum, he's at least quite peculiar and seems to view himself as apart from other people...

Not that they are necessarily Aspies, but I think I know some of the reasoning behind the list and some names I might disagree or agree with...


1. Edgar Allan Poe -- MAYBE. His poems have characters who are overly obsessed with something, usually murder. The Cask of Amontillado, The Telltale Heart, and The Rave are examples of this.
2. Truman Capote -- NOT LIKELY. He was tested with an IQ of 220 and has an unusual high-pitched voice and an unusual demeanor. However, he was able to converse well his many subjects for In Cold Blood, and this leads me to believe he had excellent social skills.
3. J.D. Salinger -- I don't know much about him, other than that he wrote the Catcher and the Rye.
4. Lewis Carroll -- MAYBE. he was at mathematician (a stereotypical Aspie trait), good at coming up with word puns in his poems, his stories indicate an off-the-wall perspective
5. Patrica Highsmith -- I don't know anything about her
6. Emily Dickinson -- MAYBE. she was a socially anxious recluse
7. George Orwell -- NOT SURE EITHER WAY. He was an ambulance driver in the Spanish Civil War. His 1984 seemed to have a lot of dialog and figures of speech. Newspeak, the language he invented, shows some creativity, but on the other hand indicates perhaps some obsessiveness necessary for its invention. I don't think it can go either way for Orwell.
8. Herman Melville -- NOT LIKELY. Melville lived an adventuresome life from what I remember from the Wikipedia article on him. He traveled around the world, basically, as a commercial sailor. Moby Dick is based in part on these experiences. I don't think there was anything particularly Aspie-ish that I remember about him.
9. H.P. Lovecraft -- MAYBE. His macabre horror stories were written in an archaic style. He had no formal schooling but wrote voluminously and it was pretty complex and well-received work, though particularly recognized for its oddness. He supposedly held som anti-Semitic views, but he was married to a Jewish woman.
10. Vladimir Nabokov -- I don't know anything about him

Asimov, Poe, Emily Dickerson.