|
 Allowed
to be Odd
The hero of a best-selling new novel is a 15-year-old
boy with autism—but that label never appears in the book.
by David Noonan, Newsweek,
September 8, 2003
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Christopher John Francis Boone, the 15-year-old narrator of the
new novel “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,”
knows lots of stuff, including the capitals of all the countries
in the world and every prime number up to 7,057.
WHAT HE DOESN’T KNOW, as the story begins, is who killed
Wellington, his neighbor’s poodle, with a garden fork (the book
is set in England). Christopher’s determination to solve this
morbid little mystery is what drives the action of Mark Haddon’s
masterly first novel. But what makes the book so involving and
unforgettable isn’t the deft plot, it’s Christopher’s voice—the
flat, funny, deeply moving sound of a human being who simply
doesn’t know what love, or any other emotion, is.
“People think they’re not computers because they have feelings
and computers don’t have feelings,” says Christopher. “But
feelings are just having a picture on the screen in your head of
what is going to happen tomorrow or next year, or what might
have happened instead of what did happen, and if it is a happy
picture they smile and if it is a sad picture they cry.”
As new research continues to expand our understanding of autism
as a spectrum of disorders—in some cases it’s accompanied by
mental retardation, in others by a high IQ—society’s image of
autism is also shifting. Fifteen years ago Dustin Hoffman
counted matchsticks and played blackjack as a barely functional
autistic savant in “Rain Man.” Now we have something completely
new—a mesmerizing autistic storyteller.
Christopher is a math genius whose idiosyncrasies include “not
liking being touched,” “not eating food if different sorts of
food are touching each other” and “not noticing that people are
angry with me.” Simple human communication is beyond him—”I
tried to do chatting by saying ‘My age is 15 years and 3 months
and 3 days’.” He clearly has Asperger’s syndrome. But the term
never appears in the book, and neither does the word “autistic.”
If Haddon had his way, autistic wouldn’t be in the jacket copy
either, though it is. “The label doesn’t add anything to your
knowledge of anyone,” says the author, who would prefer it if
the term “odd” were to become popular again. “In the old days
you were allowed to be odd,” he says. “Too many people now who
would have been odd find themselves with a label and getting
sucked into some kind of system.”
Haddon, 40, who has worked as an aide to autistic kids, calls
himself an “interested layperson” and says he didn’t become an
Asperger’s expert to write the book. “If you think to yourself,
‘I must get the Asperger’s right,’ that suggests that there is a
right type of Asperger’s,” he says. “And people with Asperger’s
are as varied as Norwegians or trombone players.” He’s already
heard from parents thanking him for his humanizing portrait of
autism.
“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” was
published in June and is 11th on The New York Times best-seller
list, with 130,000 copies in print. “I think there’s a part in
all of us that would really like to be Christopher for a few
days,” says Haddon, trying to explain his quirky novel’s
success. “Taking other people into account is such hard work.”
Reading his book, on the other hand, is a plain joy.
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