"American Normal" by Lawrence Osborne

People with the rare condition called Asperger Syndrome can be brilliant, but they're unable to read the human face or the simplest social cue.

By Stephanie Zacharek

Jan. 6, 2003 |

The pianist Glenn Gould most likely had it; Albert Einstein, Béla Bartók and Thomas Jefferson probably did as well. And Bill Gates shows a number of the traits.

Asperger Syndrome, as Lawrence Osborne explains in his idiosyncratic, intelligent and compassionate book "American Normal: The Hidden World of Asperger Syndrome," is a specific and rare form of "high-functioning" autism. That is, although people with Asperger's are generally very intelligent and appear normal enough to blend fairly well into the society around them, they have pronounced difficulties when interacting with others. "Essentially, for reasons that are completely unknown, Asperger's people cannot read the human face or its emotions," Osborne writes. "They cannot learn social rules, nuances or metaphors. Often brilliant intellectually, they cannot read the simplest social cue or hint: instead, rigid obsessions, often numerical, dominate their inner life."

Children with Asperger's might memorize whole TV shows, which they will recite word-for-word, or learn everything there is to know about, say, vacuum cleaners. One child memorized the address, phone number and ZIP code of every member of Congress. As adults, Asperger people (Osborne notes that it's not uncommon for people who have been diagnosed with Asperger's to identify themselves as if they were the syndrome itself, by saying, for example, "I'm Asperger") might exhibit behavior like that of Darius McCollum, a semilegendary New Yorker who learned every detail of the New York City subway system, the intricacies of which he loved. ("How can I describe it?" McCollum once said. "I like the scenery. I like the schedules.") McCollum eventually received a prison sentence for first pulling a train emergency brake and then rushing to the "rescue" dressed as a transit supervisor.

McCollum's behavior may have been bizarre, but he truly meant no harm, and Osborne's assessment of his case is bracingly sympathetic. And that's where "American Normal" diverges from most books written about disorders and ailments, which tend to be written by experts or specialists or people with some sort of firsthand experience. Those books may be helpful in their way, but they can also go heavy on dull statistics and insights that aren't particularly challenging. Osborne (who has reviewed books in these pages) has written a book for the common reader; he's not a specialist, but simply a writer, and a fine one. And he's motivated by curiosity, the best spur for both writers and readers alike. "American Normal" is one of those books that's conspiratorially informative -- it makes us feel we're discovering something about a new subject alongside the writer, instead of being educated, at considerable remove, after the fact.

Osborne has done his research. He explains how Asperger's first came to light. (It's named after Hans Asperger, the Austrian doctor who pinpointed the syndrome and helped develop innovative and surprisingly advanced ways to deal with Asperger children.) He has attended conferences and support groups, and has met and spent time with people of all ages who have Asperger's. He writes about them as people, never as specimens.

"American Normal" consists largely of Osborne's thoughtful and highly personal observations; it's astonishingly readable, and often downright entertaining. One of Osborne's concerns is that, particularly in America, "problem" children are often diagnosed with this or that disorder and hustled onto some sort of medication. He worries that in some cases, at least, we may be medicating the childhood right out of children.

At an Asperger's and Autism Conference in St. Louis, for example, Osborne listens to a paper given by a woman whose son, Nicky, was diagnosed with Asperger's at age 7. His behavior included whirling around uncontrollably (when asked what he wanted to do when he grew up, he'd say, "I want to be a screwdriver!"); he also had difficulty sleeping and a tendency to throw temper tantrums.

But Nicky also loved everything to do with ships. He made his bedroom look like a ship, and he sang old sailing songs over and over again. Osborne describes seeing a picture of Nicky, "a slender fair-haired elf in a yellow hat sitting in his nautical room with a huge 'sail' suspended above him." He explains that Nicky "would spend much of his day building Lego ships, then destroying them. In all, he looked like an interesting kid, and I immediately wanted to meet him."

Next page: "The child is seen as a machine which has gone wrong"