See It Feelingly: Classic Novels, Autistic Readers, and the Schooling of a No-Good English Professor

Thought in the Act

by Ralph James Savarese

“We each have Skype accounts and use them to discuss [ Moby-Dick ] face to face. Once a week, we spread the worded whale out in front of us; we dissect its head, eyes, and bones, careful not to hurt or kill it. The Professor and I are not whale hunters. We are not letting the whale die. We are shaping it, letting it swim through the Web with a new and polished look.”—Tito Mukhopadhyay

Since the 1940s researchers have been repeating claims about autistic people's limited ability to understand language, to partake in imaginative play, and to generate the complex theory of mind necessary to appreciate literature. In See It Feelingly Ralph James Savarese, an English professor whose son is one of the first nonspeaking autistics to graduate from college, challenges this view.

Discussing fictional works over a period of years with readers from across the autism spectrum, Savarese was stunned by the readers' ability to expand his understanding of texts he knew intimately. Their startling insights emerged not only from the way their different bodies and brains lined up with a story but also from their experiences of stigma and exclusion.

For Mukhopadhyay Moby-Dick is an allegory of revenge against autism, the frantic quest for a cure. The white whale represents the autist's baffling, because wordless, immersion in the sensory. Computer programmer and cyberpunk author Dora Raymaker skewers the empathetic failings of the bounty hunters in Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Autistics, some studies suggest, offer instruction in embracing the nonhuman. Encountering a short story about a lonely marine biologist in Antarctica, Temple Grandin remembers her past with an uncharacteristic emotional intensity, and she reminds the reader of the myriad ways in which people can relate to fiction. Why must there be a norm?

Mixing memoir with current research in autism and cognitive literary studies, Savarese celebrates how literature springs to life through the contrasting responses of unique individuals, while helping people both on and off the spectrum to engage more richly with the world.

Genres: Autistic Spectrum Disorder, Nonfiction, Disability, Education, Psychology, Literature, Mental Health

296 pages, Hardcover

First published October 26, 2018

Reviews

[♑︎♑︎♑︎ ♑︎♑︎♑︎]

It was interesting, because so few people are thinking about the subject, but it's still the view of someone on the outside looking in, and in many instances I felt the author was trying to harvest the evidence to fit his thesis, rather than letting the autistic people he interviewed speak for themselves about how figurative language speaks to them. I'm still looking for the book that will explain the way autistic people relate to language, and that will do it in a way that I will say in the end: "yes, that's it, that's the way it is." Maybe I need to write it.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book. Having known the author and his son over a number of years, I was interested in the complexities of autism (with which my grandchild is also diagnosed). The book gave me a fuller appreciation of the different ways of "seeing" that are possible for many different people.

[Denise · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book touches on so many of my interests - literature, neurodiversity, education, parenting - that I really wanted it to be better. And I did enjoy meeting the autistic individuals Savarese engages with. He can be forgiven somewhat for the multisyllabic jargon that infests the pages, since prose like that is part of his job description as a college professor. He admits himself that, at least with Temple Grandin, he was trying to manipulate her into the responses he was hoping for. Discussing a story where a somewhat antisocial woman has a one-time sexual encounter with a man who then kills himself, a story that provides an image of a female penguin who returns from a foraging trip to find her mate gone and her chick dead, Grandin responds with a reference to the dog who turns up at the railroad station every day to meet its master, even after he has died. Savarese seems disappointed that Grandin doesn't produce an epiphany about her own celibate life, but her allusion to the loved one who will never get off the train feels completely on point to me.

And then in the epilogue he goes on a rant about the current administration, blindly unaware that his stereotypical assumption that people who don't share his policies must be stupid completely undercuts his call for understanding of diversity of thought among those on the autistic spectrum. Sigh.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant but fairly difficult to read, in part because it was a library book and I couldn't write in it, so I had to write down lots of great quotes and passages.

If you are interested in reading, autism, empathy, theory of mind, etc. Highly recommended.

A book to re-read. Groundwork reading for a course I'm designing: Autism, Empathy, and the Novel.

[Mills College Library]

616.85882 S265 2018

[Remy · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://youtu.be/zB2pMEe0kdw?t=3509

[Axel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing read, highly recommended.