[Post contains a general discussion of Jodi Picoult's House Rules, but few if any specific spoilers.]
Contrary to certain stereotypes about autistic people, I love reading fiction and always have. Some novels feel like great friends to me. House Rules is definitely not one of those. In fact, I'm not sure that House Rules is even much of a novel at all. The latter part of the book too often feels like Lengthy Exposition About Asperger's Syndrome Which Just Happens to Be Part of a Novel. It's very didactic. As someone who definitely doesn't need to be educated in this area, it's really quite tedious. If I wanted to read autism-as-pathology literature, I'd pick up any number of nonfiction books on the subject. The primary purpose of a novel is not to provide a 500-page Public Service Announcement.
And as someone with this (soon to be merged) diagnosis, I really don't want Picoult to be the one to deliver this particular Public Service Announcement. I acknowledge that she does her research pretty thoroughly. She's clearly read a number of books on the subject. I know from her acknowledgments and interviews that she's met a number of autistic kids and teens and their parents. But this does not for a fully realized representation of autistic people make. While I commend her for doing a better job than some in creating a fleshed-out autistic character, the book still reads too much like an attempt to work every single autistic trait (and stereotype) into one character. And that flaw is, in my view, fatal to Picoult's attempt to create a compelling work of fiction and a fully realized autistic character.
Typically, even the special interests and talents don't seem entirely coherent. I get that her character had to be a forensic science geek for the plot to work. Okay. But was it really necessary to give Jacob virtually every other stereotypical autistic interest and talent--ability to take apart computers, an affinity for numbers, etc.? Why couldn't fantasy novels be another one of his interests?
Picoult doesn't recognize the variability of the autistic experience. The book sets up Jacob as a prototype for Typical Asperger's Autistic Person. There isn't any acknowledgment of our diversity, not least because the only other autistic character is Henry the Deadbeat Dad of Maxine Aston's imagination. And he's just like Jacob, except for being less obviously impaired. Autism in House Rules assumes a one-size-fits-all model.
Nor does Picoult acknowledge our ability to learn. Her view of autism is very flat and mechanical, centered more than anything around these formulations:
Deviation from Plan/Sensory Trigger = severe meltdown in every instance
Figure of Speech/Metaphorical Language/Sarcasm = complete and total confusion in every instance
Attempt to Be Social = talking about special interest in every instance
Neither formulation is always true of every single autistic person. In fact, autistic people--like non-autistic people--do not have perfectly predictable behavior patterns. (In other words, we don't always react the same way to the same stimuli.) Nor do we spend the entirety of our lives in complete confusion every time someone uses an idiom. We are capable of learning skills. But Jacob doesn't seem to have changed much from childhood--except for his increased interest in socializing, thanks to the wonders of biomed. In her attempt to cast us as perpetual children, Picoult refuses to show the possibility of our character development. In her effort to make Jacob seem Really Autistic, she turns him into a caricature which doesn't resemble any real autistic person in whole.
This autistic person, for instance, is pretty good with figurative language. This meant that I didn't miss out on any of Picoult's ridiculously obvious, melodramatic metaphors--in this book or in any of her other books that I've read. How fortunate for me that I am able to see that Jacob and his brother being trapped in a boat and Jacob taking up all of the oxygen is a metaphor for their lives. (And I can even use sarcasm, too.)
More on this book will likely be forthcoming.
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12 comments:
I'm guessing she was foolish enough to think that she didn't have to worry about losing autistic readers because we supposedly don't read fiction. That's where believing nonsensical stereotypes leads.
It's all about execution and balance. It's knowing the right and wrong kinds of tropes to put on an autistic character.
I think Jodi doesn't know how to balance and ends up creating and over worn, over troped character that lacks form and realism.
Autistic people can adapt and get off routine, autistic people can have meltdowns from other triggers. Autistic people can find love, eat almost anything and enjoy being hugged.
Balance is key.
That thing about us being mechanically predictable reminds me of the upside down dog book. Where you know everything the character will do in response to any situation if you know the formula. Real people are not like that. Whether autistic or not.
Another thing I see a lot of is people writing characters who fit theories about autism. All they succeed in is dating themselves when the theories are replaced.
abfh: That's a really good point. I hope she gets letters from autistic readers who prove her wrong.
Nightstorm: Yes, that's a really good summation of the problem. It's also funny that you mention eating, because Jacob insists on having colored food days--Blue Food Day, White Food Day, etc. Every single day. Yeah, that's not very likely. (Interestingly enough, the artist Sophie Calle once did a project where she ate according to color for a week and photographed it. Yet that's considered avant garde art!)
Amanda: Yes! In this book we get a lot of the theory of mind crap, which seems to be increasingly popular, unfortunate. Basically the entire plot of the book rests on the ToM idea--even though the way Picoult does it doesn't actually make much sense.
It's also funny that you mention eating, because Jacob insists on having colored food days--Blue Food Day, White Food Day, etc. Every single day. Yeah, that's not very likely
ah yes the "Picky/Weird eater" trope. I see in most fiction with autistic characters. It seems to be the easiest trope to use for sensory issues.
Funny though that I was very voracious eater any my NT sister was the one that ate her Froot Loops according to color
"We are capable of learning skills. But Jacob doesn't seem to have changed much from childhood."
Funnily enough, this is a complete contradiction of the ever-popular claim made by curebies that you can't compare autistic children to autistic adults! And actually, weirdly enough, I have not only become "less autistic" in that I have become less adamant to talk only about my special interests and socialize more than I did when I was younger, some stereotypically autistic traits have become stronger in me. For example, I tend to eat my food according to color and taste more so than before and I have been described as being more "rigid" about routines. When I was younger, I was more skills in accepting a change in routine and could do homework in a non-structured setting. Nowadays, I feel doubleplusungood whenever I have to change my routine and can only do homework when everything is structured, such as in a school setting.
Sadderbutwisergirl: I didn't mean to imply that autistic people inevitably follow a progression from more to less autistic. I think it's more complicated than that; you're right.
About food and color: There are some foods that I won't eat because of color (as well as texture in my mouth and taste). And on my own I do tend to choose food in very neutral colors, like white or brown, due to my own pickiness and preferences. Actually, that's the reason I couldn't do Color Food Days. There just isn't enough blue or green stuff that I'll eat!
My mom was generally fairly accommodating of my picky tastes growing up, possibly because my non-spectrum dad is even pickier in that regard. But she also told us often that she's not a restaurant and she's not going to make everyone a separate meal. I can't imagine her, or really any other sensible parent, going along with Colored Food Days to the same extent as the mom in the book. I suspect that part of the point of this was to underscore how difficult it is to parent an autistic kid. When really I doubt there are very many parents who would agree to cooking in this manner--and rightfully so.
the upside down dog book.
Haha. That book was really very amusing, though I had an odd experience with a woman who claimed that a certain scene in the book (the train station) meant that the autistic protagonist could not catagorise things. I tried to tell her that what the author was trying to represent was a lack of sensory filtering, not an inability to classify. For my troubles I was informed that I am not autistic.
Even if she tried to do what she thought of as research, it doesn't gloss everything away and make it more forgivable. One of the major problems with "research" and fiction writing is that when a person has a plot idea which basically turns on a stereotypical trait allegedly possessed by everyone in a certain group, they can cherry-pick their "sample size" a lot. And see only what seems to confirm their existing prejudices, no matter what they're actually told and what they actually see.
And this is especially true when the person trying to talk about their experiences is either:
a) not regarded as capable of reliably reporting their own life and experiences, as needing everything they say to be "re-interpreted" through the filter of a "normal person's" view,
or b) stuck in that stage of identity formation where they obsess over learning what other people believe are the innate characteristics of people like them and then trying to force-fit themselves to that model in every way, and when asked to talk about themselves and their life, will launch into a long list of every way in which they fit the stereotyped model. Which ironically can make a person, during this phase, unable to give a realistic and balanced account of what their life has really been like, but not for the reasons people think make them incapable of it (e.g. that autistic people can't have insight into themselves in the first place, or whatever).
I am guessing for some reason that she interviewed mostly or only B's when it came to actual autistic people. She mentioned something about a long communication she exchanged with a young woman in college, in this article. (Apparently she interviewed only parents, children and teenagers-- no autistic adults at all.) Very often talking to a person who's in the B phase, even if it's only a temporary thing, about their life, seems to end up sounding like a rundown of Tony Attwood's Greatest Hits. (And I'm not claiming I never went through a period of being a B either, though I would never have claimed to completely lack empathy even at the height of it.)
And I'm not suggesting that this makes them "bad people"-- a lot of people simply have never been given any other way to view themselves, especially if they were indoctrinated in a medical-model view of autism/Asperger's by family/therapists/etc after diagnosis. On the other hand, there are people who have the freedom and the ability to seek out alternatives to the medical model, and still end up clinging to it-- a lot of the Token Autistics that various organizations and "experts" love to tote around seem to be like this.
(continued...)
Which still does not let authors like Picoult off the hook for creating characters who are basically Tony Attwood's Greatest Hits, obviously. If anything, it tends to provide people with ready-made excuses to go "but you bitter ungrateful person, I DID ask a real autistic person and that was what they told me!" Because interviewing parents and children and a young adult who is probably still stuck in the B thing-- in other words, the people who will readily hand you the stereotypes you want to use to your benefit and tell you it's okay to do it-- is all the research you need, naturally. Because the life experiences of a huge and diverse group of people which extends across every group of humans in existence can be summed up completely and accurately from a few months of talking to a cherry-picked sample. (And at this point it starts to remind me of some of the various debates I've seen about race and culture in speculative fiction, and authors who claim "well, you can't expect anyone to be perfect/it's just fiction/why don't YOU write it/why are you being so mean/etc," when their stereotypes are called out.)
...and tangenting off of that, I wonder if anyone has ever asked the question about whether, if the stereotype about autistics being uninterested in fiction holds true even in some cases, it might have something to do with the fact that our experiences and realities are not reflected in fiction-- we aren't given people like ourselves as real heroes and protagonists to identify with, only walking plot devices made of taped-together stereotypes. I'm not uninterested in fiction myself, though there is some that I simply can't read at all because it's written in a narrative voice that I absolutely cannot wrap my brain around. But for a long time I did feel that I was "locked out" of most fiction, fantasy in particular, because there were almost no characters I could find who experienced and perceived the world the way I did, despite a strong interest in fantastic/speculative settings. And sticking "obsession with routine" and "difficulty reading social cues" onto a character as traits do not even come remotely close to representing either the real struggles or the genuine beauty and richness in my life.
Wow. The stereotypes there seem to be pretty, well, "black and white". And that is another autistic stereotype. What do you know, maybe whoever wrote that description could be autistic herself! I will not deny that it is natural for us to think that way, but just like in metaphorical interpretation, we can learn to identify "grey" situations.
I appreciate your thoughts on this. I just finished this book, and I had mixed reactions - some of my feelings were very much like yours. I have postponed reviewing it (even though I really want to) because aspects of the way Jacob Hunt's character was presented made me sad and angry. I need time to sort through my thoughts and put together a balanced review.
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