The Reason I Jump from subject to subject

I just read The Reason I Jump, by Naoki Higashida.  The author is a Japanese kid who wrote the book when he was 13, and he is, by most measures, apparently somewhere around the middle of the functioning range of the autism spectrum, I guess. I'm hedging because, although he apparently doesn't speak much, it's really an amazing book.  Through an arduous process of spelling out words using a special grid, he's given the reader fairly astounding access to the inner realms of his thinking, which is by no means simple for a 13-year old.  It is articulate and well-considered.  I really recommend the book to anyone, but particularly to others who have kids or other relatives on the spectrum.  It is more direct and human than anything else I've read, including John Elder Robeson and Temple Grandin.

There's a final story in it which doesn't address any specific questions of autism, but is incredibly sweet, so don't skip it.


And, having been schooled in literary criticism during the heyday of high literary theory, or maybe soon after it, I gotta tell you this throws a big brick through the window of any theory that calls into question the representational power of language.  I mean, it ain't perfect, but it's pretty damned good, and a hell of a lot better than nothing.

Theory is/was one of those intensely seductive things.  It takes so much work, and when you're enveloped in it it feels like it gives you so much power, but then you go to talk to somebody who's not bought into it and they're looking at you like:  "what the fuck are you talking about?"  In many ways, those most seduced and caught up in theory are not unlike the Tea Party, trapped in their own little self-referential self-reinforcing world.

Which isn't to say it's all bad.  It just must be leavened and tempered with an open mind.