Look Me In The Eye: My Life With Asperger's (2007) - Plot & Excerpts
The older brother of author Augusten Burroughs, John Elder Robison grew up in a dysfunctional household with an abusive, drunken father and an insane mother - and undiagnosed Asperger's. He details his life growing up and handling a conditon he didn't know he had until 1990 - several years after the condition was identified and named. Asperger's is on the spectrum of Autism.Despite higher-than-average intelligence and a liking for practical jokes, John Elder's childhood was lonely and unpleasant. His inability to look people in the eye, his problems with social interactions and saying the "right" thing, alienated him. He dropped out of school at fifteen and became a music engineer for a band, then worked on Pink Floyd's gear and ended up designing the light guitars and exploding guitars for KISS, a band he toured with for several years. Switching to Milton Bradley, the toy manufacturer, he tried fitting in and being part of the corporate ladder but finally decided it wasn't worth his unhappiness and started his own fine automobile service business. Two wives, one child and a diagnosis later, Robison is much more content with himself than he was growing up, and after the first release of his memoir, he discovered that pretty much everyone experiences similar feelings of loneliness and alienation, and don't fit in as well as they think they should.It's an amazing story and a wonderful opportunity to see inside the head of someone with Asperger's. The difference between the way an Aspergian thinks and the way non-Aspergians think comes across in the writing, which also makes it harder to read.The story jumps around a lot, and new phases of life or people's names are dropped in without introduction or priming, which makes it hard to follow at times. The funny thing about it is, Robison likes logic, but his story doesn't always follow logically. I'm very organised, and I would have liked the story to read more coherently. At the same time, I wouldn't want to mould his voice or make him write to a standard structure, because it's a memoir and we would completely lose who Robison really is. So as much as I would wish for a book that suited me, I am grateful to read Robison's story in his authentic voice, even if it did make it hard to get through.Robison has led and will probably continue to lead a very colourful life. Some of the things he got up to are surprising - like setting up fake cocaine lines in his office at MB and filming one of the top managers sneaking in to steal it. Told mostly in chronological form, it does jump back and forth a bit and it wasn't always apparent how old he was or at what stage of his life something happened in - the markers weren't always there, so it seemed like things were happening all at once. That's what I mean by making it more organised!It did give me an insight into Asperger's, though everyone's different and Robison is not a template for the condition. It's a thoughtful, personal story, musing about the human mind and society and showing just how similar we are, at the end of the day.
I am interested in the Asperger's continuum, so when I heard about this memoir - written by Augusten Burroughs's brother - I added it to my Amazon wish list. The title leads one to believe that the book is about the author's life with Asperger's, but that's a little misleading. The book is about his life in general and very little is devoted to how Asperger's influenced his life at all ages. I wanted to read a memoir about growing up within a dysfunctional family and also having a condition that makes life different, but what I read was about his experiences with sound engineering, some good stories that you can hear in any bar and, occasionally, his Asperger's. His condition seemed to be tangential, an afterthought. A selling point?I skimmed through most of the middle part of the book through the end because it just wasn't interesting, nor was it even remotely related to the story I thought he would be relating to the reader. He writes in his afterword that he "wanted to show readers what it was like to grow up feeling like a freak or a misfit." It did not. He writes that he wanted also to show what life with Asperger's was like, how those with the condition are different. He doesn't do that, either. He doesn't settle on any one part of his life long enough to explain anything, and the result is a collection of chapters and words by Augusten Burroughs's brother, not an account of life with Asperger's.One of the reviews on the back cover of the paperback book reads, "...Should be on the reading list of anyone who is interested in the human mind." As someone deeply interested in psychology, neurology, brain and behavior, I am almost offended by that statement. The book gives absolutely nothing - neither personal nor scientific - to sate any curiosity one may have of the human mind.Just because you have some decent stories doesn't mean you can write a memoir. I'm sorry I bought this book.
What do You think about Look Me In The Eye: My Life With Asperger's (2007)?
I really enjoyed this book. Several times I laughed out loud, and then was stumped how to answer my son's question, "What's so funny, Momma?""Well, son, he sent a blow up doll to his crappy teacher."Or:"You see, Sam, he shot a snake that was slithering around outside his hotel room."No, none of those would do.While I loved reading the many misadventures of Robison, I also felt a great deal of sorrow; for his troubled childhood and for how misunderstood he was as a person with Asperger's. The true value in this book is that Robison educates readers on Asperger's. How differently Aspergians (his word) view the world, and while they may seem cold and unaware, they are not.
—Books Ring Mah Bell
Before I read John Elder Robison's LOOK ME IN THE EYE: MY LIFE WITH ASPERGER'S, I knew enough about the syndrome and about my brother to mentally peel off the Asperger's label that my mother stuck on my late brother. Nevertheless, I wanted access to the interior of someone with Asperger's. Yes, I was well aware of the fact that it's not a "one-size-fits-all" syndrome and that looking at people and experiences through Robison's eyes wouldn't enable me to prove the unprovable. Having no interest in the lives of the abusive alcoholic father and certifiably crazy mother of Augusten Burroughs and John Elder Robison, no interest in KISS and the other bands that benefitted from Robison's brilliance, no interest in complex electrical engineering projects, I read LOOK ME IN THE EYE for only one reason. I wanted to compare -- call me "irrational" or something more insulting -- a man with Asperger's and my brother. I wanted to feel, from the first page of Robison's memoir to the last, that I was not reading about my brother. I unhesitatingly gave LOOK ME IN THE EYE four stars -- because I got what I wanted. One of my high school English teachers got her students to spell "weird" correctly by writing on the blackboard: WE are all a little WEird. And perhaps we are all at least a little Aspergian.
—Reese
A thoughtful and entertaining memoir of someone who has Asperger's, but he wasn't diagnosed until he was 40. Before then, John knew there was something wrong with him, but he didn't know what. When he was young he wanted to make friends and be part of a team, but he had trouble talking to other kids. He couldn't understand social cues and didn't understand when other people got mad at him for asking inappropriate questions or smiling at the wrong times. Worst of all, John would often look at the floor when someone talked to him, and grownups often yelled at him to "look me in the eye! What are you hiding?" John Elder Robison is also known for being the brother of Augusten Burroughs, who wrote "Running With Scissors." Both brothers are wonderful storytellers, and John has some great ones. After he dropped out of high school, he started working with a local band because he was good at fixing their sound equipment. One day he ran into some of the tech crew for Pink Floyd, and he was able to fix their speakers. This led to a job traveling around the country fixing sound equipment for other bands, and he also designed special effects for Ace Frehley from KISS. Later, John worked at Milton Bradley designing some early electronic games. Throughout his life, John enjoyed playing pranks on people and telling long tales. The book does a good job of showing the thought processes of someone with Asperger's. I work with some students who are on the autism spectrum, and it helped to get more insight into how they might think.
—Diane Librarian
