Real Books: Representations of Autism in Contemporary Literature (Part Three), by Liz Barrett
This week I review Poe Ballantine’s memoir Love & Terror On The Howling Plains Of Nowhere (Hawthorne Books, 2013). It is the final post in a series discussing representations of autism in contemporary literature. My first post (which you can read here) focused on Naoki Higashida’s The Reason I Jump. While acknowledging the contribution of Higashida’s text, I noted the limitations of the singular account given the spectrum nature of autism. In my second post (which you can read here) I applied the ‘Magic 30′ theory of representation to literature, arguing that fiction should reflect social reality by including multiple representations of autism. As part of that post I reviewed Catherine Edmunds’ Bacchus Wynd, a novel which includes a number of characters who are affected by autism.
Ballantine’s book is not about autism – its presence on ‘the howling plains’ is almost incidental - and yet, or maybe because of this, it is a compelling account of the spectrum nature of autism. Although Ballantine’s account of autism is based on a single case (his son, Tom) I argue that it is offered in the spirit of ‘Magic 30′ in that it represents autism as a regular rather than an exceptional part of life. After a while, Ballantine writes: everyone begins to look autistic, everyone fits somewhere along ‘the spectrum’. In the end, though, Ballantine’s memoir is about simply being human: Tom was Tom.
To read the entire article go to Living with Autism.