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    Not Even Wrong: A Father's Journey into the Lost History of Autism
    Not Even Wrong: A Father's Journey into the Lost History of Autism
    Not Even Wrong: A Father's Journey into the Lost History of Autism
    Ebook264 pages3 hours

    Not Even Wrong: A Father's Journey into the Lost History of Autism

    By Paul Collins

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    "Collins elucidates, with great compassion, what it means to be 'normal' and what it means to be human." -Los Angeles Times

    When Paul Collins's son Morgan was two years old, he could read, spell, and perform multiplication tables in his head...but not answer to his own name. A casual conversation-or any social interaction that the rest of us take for granted-will, for Morgan, always be a cryptogram that must be painstakingly decoded. He lives in a world of his own: an autistic world.

    In Not Even Wrong, Paul Collins melds a memoir of his son's autism with a journey into this realm of permanent outsiders. Examining forgotten geniuses and obscure medical archives, Collins's travels take him from an English churchyard to the Seattle labs of Microsoft, and from a Wisconsin prison cell block to the streets of Vienna. It is a story that reaches from a lonely clearing in the Black Forest into the London palace of King George I, from Defoe and Swift to the discovery of evolution; from the modern dawn of the computer revolution to, in the end, the author's own household.

    Not Even Wrong is a haunting journey into the borderlands of neurology - a meditation on what "normal" is, and how human genius comes to us in strange and wondrous forms.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury USA
    Release dateDec 11, 2008
    ISBN9781596917491
    Not Even Wrong: A Father's Journey into the Lost History of Autism

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    Reviews for Not Even Wrong

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    • 3/5
      Paul Collins probably knows that one tree does not a forest make. Unfortunately, he fails to realize that two or three are no more forest-like than one.This book about autism, but it is, I fear, a rather parochial autism. Collins knows his autistic son Morgan. He has learned from autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen. And he has studied the case of "Peter the Wild Boy," who is offered as an eighteenth century example of autism. From there -- he does on talk about autism and its manifestations as if this is all the manifestations there are.Even his starting point may be wrong. "Peter" didn't talk, but that doesn't guarantee that he was autistic; it is possible that -- like the famous modern case of "Genie" -- he simply was not talked to at the age when people learn how to talk. Anyone not given the chance to speak in those early years is just about certain to be non-verbal.As for Simon "Extreme Male Brain" Baron-Cohen, his views are very widely heard but really not widely held. Baron-Cohen has done important work, e.g. in his research on the "Sally-Ann Test" for "Theory of Mind." But -- as a person with autism -- I can guarantee you that the Extreme Male Brain hypothesis doesn't work for me, and I know plenty of other autistics for whom I don't think it works either. Similarly, while many people with autism "think in pictures" as Temple Grandin does, many do not. (Here again, I'm an example.)Nor are all people with autism scientifically inclined, nor do they always have peculiarities of speech, nor do they have anything in common except (by definition) difficulties in social communication and a tendency toward repetitive behavior. There are people with autism who are like the boy Morgan in the book. But the majority are not, and most of the descriptions Collins gives are descriptions of Morgan and his tribe, not of people with autism.Oh, and Mr. Collins, if you're going to be wrong, at least don't perpetuate stereotypes: "autistics are the ultimate introverts" (p. 189). Yes, some people with autism are hard to get out of their shells. Some don't seem to realize that other people exist. But many -- probably the large majority, if anyone bothered to measure -- want to be social; it's just that they aren't good at it, and get driven away, and eventually stop trying.It's no surprise that Collins doesn't understand the full spectrum of autism. It took me a lot of time around the local autism society to realize that I was no more typical of autism than I am typical of neurotypicals. No one is typical of autism! And anyone who takes this book and assumes it will teach you all about autism will be very, very badly deceived.If you read it with that in mind, you will learn a lot. Otherwise, it may lead you far astray.
    • 5/5
      This was a wonderful book. This was a fabulous book. This may be the best book I've ever read about autism, with the exception of Temple Grandin's [Thinking in Pictures].Paul Collins is an historian. He is also the father of a son with autism. This book is kind of hard to describe. It combines history (people of the past with autism and those who dealt with/ reacted to them), and a memoir of his experience of life with his young son with autism, and some modern-day developments in dealing with autism. It is well-written and engaging. There were moments when I laughed out loud -- not so much that the material was funny, but simply out of RECOGNITION, because I'd lived the experience with my son and it was so good to see someone putting a loving spin on what so many people recount with gloom.So many autism memoirs make me sad because I relive unhappy times, or wish I'd done things differently. This one reminded me why I love my son so much, and made me better appreciate the special view he has of life.Enthusiastically recommended to anyone even remotely interested in the topic of Autism!!!
    • 4/5
      What a wonderful book. Collins writes about autism from both a journalistic and a personal standpoint. His stories about Morgan, his autistic son, are tender and loving, while his explorations into the science of autism are incisive and simply fascinating. There are revelations here for the layperson interspersed with a very well-written memoir. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      I appreciated the twin narratives of this book. It broke up the monotony of yet another autism memoir, as I was reading quite a few at the time. The historic perspective lent by the second narrative definitely added something new to my reading and understanding of autism. It was edifying and affirming as I had immediately begun to think along the lines of Kaspar Hauser and feral children when I started this journey of trying to understand my own little wild man. It was well conceived and well written.

    Book preview

    Not Even Wrong - Paul Collins

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