Authors Electric

Do you remember those signs that used to crop up on office walls? “You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here / But it Helps.” I always suspected that they were the hallmarks of a rather aggressive sanity. There's a type of person too – happy to announce “Oh we're all quite mad , you know!” – when one knows quite well that they're not; they're just a bit loud and attention-seeking and probably SMUG. I almost lost my sense of humour when I noticed members of a writer's group cheerfully claiming to be “mad”. Mental illness is so un-funny and I've usually assumed that most of us write to remain sane, to make some sense of our experience of life – to try to keep the madness at bay. Dementia is (currently) an incurable mental illness which gradually takes away the ability to read, write and speak. Last year I read Naoki Higashida's autobiographical The Reason I Jump: One Boy's Voice from the Silence of Autism  and found unexpected insight into aspects of ...

I am one of many people currently reading The Reason I Jump: one boy's voice from the silence of autism by Naoki Higashida, translated by novelist David Mitchell and his wife Keiko Yoshida. It's a unique and beautiful piece of writing from a severely autistic thirteen year old who still (he's now aged sixteen) cannot reliably control his body or hold a spoken conversation. David Mitchell wrote an article in the Guardian   explaining his personal involvement (his son is autistic) and the book was also read on Radio 4. When I mention it to friends they say, “oh yes, I think I heard that” or “I know the one you mean”. The hardback edition stands at #2 in the Amazon top 100 books and is reprinting: the kindle edition is unobtrusively available at #103. I am already thinking of friends to whom I want to give The Reason I Jump . Not because they are parents or teachers of autistic children but because it speaks about the imperfect relationship between body and mind and the i...