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Send in the Idiots: Stories from the Other Side of Autism
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Product Description
In 1982, when he was four years old, Kamran Nazeer was enrolled in a small school in New York City alongside a dozen other children diagnosed with autism. Calling themselves the Idiots, these kids received care that was at the cutting edge of developmental psychology. Twenty-three years later, the school no longer exists.
Send in the Idiots is the always candid, often surprising, and ultimately moving investigation into what happened to those children. Now a policy adviser in England, Kamran decides to visit four of his old classmates to find out the kind of lives that they are living now, how much they’ve been able to overcome—and what remains missing. A speechwriter unable to make eye contact; a messenger who gets upset if anyone touches his bicycle; a depressive suicide victim; and a computer engineer who communicates difficult emotions through the use of hand puppets: these four classmates reveal an astonishing, thought-provoking spectrum of behavior.
Bringing to life the texture of autistic lives and the pressures and limitations that the condition presents, Kamran also relates the ways in which those can be eased over time, and with the right treatment. Using his own experiences to examine such topics as the difficulties of language, conversation as performance, and the politics of civility, Send in the Idiots is also a rare and provocative exploration of the way that people—all people—learn to think and feel. Written with unmatched insight and striking personal testimony, Kamran Nazeer’s account is a stunning, invaluable, and utterly unique contribution to the literature of what makes us human.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #458214 in Books
- Published on: 2006-04-04
- Released on: 2006-04-04
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 224 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Nazeer, a successful British government policy adviser, was diagnosed early on with autism; he now seeks out the fate of four autistic classmates at his former New York City school. He first encountered the "idiots" (as one of them called the group) more than 20 years ago, in an unnamed private school that has subsequently closed. In addition to interviewing the former pupils, all but one (who committed suicide) enjoying varying degrees of success in the greater world, Nazeer also visits the school's former director and special-needs teacher to learn how teaching autistic students has evolved. Considered a neurobiological disorder, autism largely confines a child to his or her own mental world. André, for example, living in Boston with his sister, became a competent computer researcher and manages to mediate the challenges of ordinary conversation through the use of a puppet. Randall, a courier in Chicago, demonstrates how early "parallel" play led to a satisfying love relationship (developing empathy is difficult for the autistic). Craig became an accomplished speechwriter until his awkward social skills derailed him, while Elizabeth immersed herself in playing the piano before withdrawing completely. Nazeer delicately interweaves his own story of being "cured" for an enlightening journey through the unreachable mind. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The New Yorker
In the early nineteen-eighties, Nazeer was enrolled in a New York school for autistic children, and this innovative examination of autism is structured as a series of encounters with former classmates, through whose stories he sketches various aspects of the condition. Not surprisingly, those who participated are near the high-functioning end of the spectrum, but Nazeer shows that such normalcy is hard-won and precarious, as in the case of a man whose autistic communication habits make him an outstanding political speechwriter but hinder him in job interviews. Nazeer's own accomplishments—he has a Ph.D. and now works in the British civil service—have caused him to question his diagnosis. Nonetheless, his memorable writing style, humorous but stripped of all subjectivity ("Relationships are complex, not susceptible to rule governance or local coherence"), is superbly adapted to convey something of an autistic's world view.
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker
Review
"[A] touching book...these words...may in themselves ease the agony of parents and grandparents who have seen their children inexplicably skid away into a place where they seem untouchable, locked into an inscrutable world of their own."—Washington Post Book World
“[An] innovative examination of autism...[Nazeer's] memorable writing style, humorous but stripped of all subjectivity, is superbly adapted to convey something of an autistic's world view."—New Yorker
“It’s a question that everyone has asked themselves: What happened to those kids I knew in grade school? But when those kids were in an autism classroom, it’s a question you never expect to get answered...until now. This is a brilliant look inside a world of outsiders—a story not just of autistic children and their fate in the world, but of how all of us grow, grow apart, and sometimes even find our own way in the long journey from childhood to adulthood.”—Paul Collins, author of Sixpence House and Not Even Wrong
Customer Reviews
Best book I've read in months.
I really loved this book. It starts out good, and just gets better. Nazeer is a talented writer, and this is a polished work on a wide variety of fascinating topics. These topics include not only autism itself, but range from the nature of political discourse and its impact on the functioning of a healthy democracy all the way to the extent to which our tend to categorize many abilities as innate and in doing so deny the hard work that is always required to develop those abilities.
It's rare to find a book that is this easy and absorbing to read, and yet where you so often find your thinking shifting subtly over and over as you absorb the ideas presented. I highly recommend it.
Eloquent Alien
Nazeer says, "Autistic individuals find it difficult to develop intuition or empathy," and convincingly demonstrates that his experience of social interactions and certain kinds of frustration is very different from, well, my own anyway.
But, his writing is brilliant, his metaphors are fresh and apt, he's engaging...this is one of those books that's worth reading just for the writing. But in this case that gives my prejudices a puzzle: If that's not intuition and empathy, what is it? A hard-won kind, perhaps, and in many ways better than the kind I take for granted. But that upsets my ideas of what good writing comes from.
And in fact one of his chapters is about the common assumption that geniuses have it easy. The unthinking dismissal implied by saying that, he's gifted, he's smart, he's obsessed with the subject. Nazeer points out that there's still a hell of a lot of work in preparing for and executing any kind of great work. Still, looking back at Nazeer's own book, I wonder, can you create that kind of style, color, coherence and personality by... work?
In one chapter he rants against a kind of falseness common in conversations. Although I'm tempted to correct his calling it falseness, the point isn't easy to make. Often conversations float above factualness and their substance is about themes, patterns, meta concerns and a kind of shared tacit evolving conspiracy, but I'm left with the uneasy feeling that that sense of substance is "just an intuition," as if I understand it even less than Nazeer does.
Which is to say, I loved these bonus insights and paradoxes, especially when the ride to them was so comfortable and entertaining. I appreciated being allowed into the lives of these people, especially the author.
loved the insights
My son has a diagnosis on the autism spectrum and my bookshelf is overflowing with books about autism. Unlike another reviewer I did not find this book discouraging.
This book gave me a wonderful insight into how it is for my son to learn the mechanics of communication that come intuatively to neurotypical people. And many times the mechanics are much more interesting to the author than the content of the conversation. For example he was told that his teacher had been assaulted by a parent. I was waiting for him to ask and share why this assault took place and what had happend to the parent and child but instead he went on about the conversation itself. I had to laugh because clearly very different aspects of that story were interesting to us and I appreciated that as an insight.
This book reminded me of books I have read by people traveling back to their home to find their roots to explain who they are. What does it mean for him and his old classmates to have autism? What has it ment to their lives? Autism has put odds in their way but has also forced them to become deliberate and resourceful.
So I guess if you are looking for a book that makes you see people with autism as overcoming all obstacles or being doomed or savants then this might not be your book. It is not a book offering knowledge on how to raise your autistic child. It is a book about a few people with autism who struggle and succed and fail much in the same and jet a different way as all of humanity.
