Categories: journal
Date: 30 September 2009 10:42:31
I'm currently trying to read "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time", which is a curious experience. The narrator is an autistic boy, with all sorts of consequences for how the book progresses.
One of the manifestations of my autism is a lack of identity. I've often noticed a tendency in myself to adopt the mannerisms of a person I'm with. And this extends to picking up ideas of how to behave from books - with sometimes embarrassing consequences - I used to think that Gabriel Oak's slavish devotion to Bathsheba Everdene ("Far from the Madding Crowd") was an appropriate way to express romantic love ...
When the character is like me (the real me, which I've managed to conceal for so many years), I feel that I'm becoming a caricature of myself. Nowadays, I tend to read novels in small chunks, so will probably manage to finish, but it's hard going ...