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

Savarese (Reasonable People), a Grinnell College professor, combines his knowledge of literature and personal experience with autism—his son is one of the first nonspeaking autistic people to graduate from college—in this challenging but worthwhile treatise. Passionately opposed to equating autism with intellectual and emotional incompetence, he describes teaching literature to five people from across the spectrum, including Temple Grandin. They also include Tito, who published his first book at age 12 and identifies with the title character in Moby-Dick, and Dora, who did not distinguish between animate and inanimate entities until high school, and compares the way autistic people are commonly viewed to how the androids are viewed in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? In working with Grandin, Savarese self-critically interrogates his preconceptions about getting her to conform to “neurotypical” norms. The book’s writing style can be hard going, full of academic lingo and digressions into etymology and literary theory, but this idealistic argument for the social value of literature and for the diversity of autism as a condition is a rewarding endeavor, nevertheless, in much the same way that a hike up steep terrain can open up to a wondrous view. (Oct.)