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Defining Autism Down: ‘Create Your Own Economy’ And ‘Autism: A Very Short Introduction’
Literary Spotlight
By JEREMY LOTT, Bloomberg
Tyler Cowen’s “Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World” is the surprise book of the year, and not in a good way. Cowen is a respected economist from George Mason University and a columnist for the business section of the New York Times. His previous book, “Discover Your Inner Economist” was a quirky and entertaining addition to the pop econ genre. The new one is packaged to build on that success. The jacket says it will help us to understand aspects of our “supernetworked world” including Twitter, Facebook, and iTunes. Why, what “The Wealth of Nations” did for economics generally, “Create Your Own Economy” will do for the information age!
It’s not unusual when a book fails to live up to its own ad copy, but “Create Your Own Economy” veers off in a different, baffling direction. Its first two chapters are a brief for autistics and autism -- that’s right, autism -- and A Little Autism is Good for You is the deeply offensive literary conceit of the rest of the book.
Cowen thinks many autistics are mocked and misunderstood. Too true. Autistics often live hard lives and deserve as much sympathy and patience as the rest of us can muster. But Cowen would rather define autism as the New Normal. “Michael L. Ganz, who teaches at the Harvard School of Public Health, published an entire essay entitled ‘The Costs of Autism.’ Nowhere does he consider whether autistic individuals have brought benefits to the human race,” writes Cowen. He asks, “Can you imagine a comparable essay titled ‘The Costs of Native Americans’?”
That question is a cheap trick. It’s meant to cut off debate, not further it, and invites such intemperate replies as: No, but how about “The Costs of Fire Water”? Autism is a mental disorder that makes it very difficult for some people to speak, shake hands, or do many of the things that are part of normal social interactions.
But rather than acknowledge this brute fact and deal with it, Cowen goes on about “neurodiversity” and plays up some surface similarities between autism and the quirks that often give away extremely intelligent people. To wit, really smart people often start talking late, and so do autistics. Autistics are often obsessed with ordering things -- to the point of paralysis if something is out of place -- and, why, so are the highly numerate. After a while, the reader begins to suspect Cowen is seriously stretching. He shoehorns autistics to fit into his preferred “cosmopolitan” politics, including “pragmatism” and respect for the rule of law. It doesn’t work.
And while Cowen warns us against thinking of autistics as the Dustin Hoffman character in “Rainman,” writ large, he does them no favors with this bit of autistic-obsession romanticizing: “Is enjoying the sound of music, or appreciating the texture of a painting, such a fundamentally different enterprise than enjoying a plastic spoon?” This is simply not a serious take on autism, or economics.
If readers want a better and mercifully brief primer on the issues surrounding autism, they should peruse a copy of Uta Frith’s “Autism: A Very Short Introduction.” Frith is a researcher in autism with the University College London. In the 1960s, she was studying to become a clinical psychologist but was so intrigued with some of the autistic children she came across at London’s Maudsley Hospital that she altered the trajectory of her career.
If this slim volume is any evidence, that was a great choice. Frith does a workmanlike job of laying out what she considers “good bets about the results of still ongoing research.” She does a masterful job of showing the real obstacles that autistics are up against as well as debunking myths about autism. (People who believe vaccines caused the incidence of autism to spike will not like this book one bit; she makes the sober case against that pet theory.)
Contra Cowen, Frith is willing to seriously explore the stereotypes about autistics. For instance, she points out that for “Rainman,” Hoffman “closely observed real-life cases of autistic adults in his methodical preparation for the movie and modeled himself on them. The autistic man portrayed was very strange but also lovable. He looked and acted mentally disabled, and yet had the most amazing skills. … This was a new image of autism, one that had not been brought to the public’s notice, and it instantly won sympathy.”
And then, she adds the necessary cold water: “[N]ot all individuals with [autism] are lovable eccentrics with amazing gifts. Far from it. Many are very difficult to live with and many have additional problems. It needs to be spelled out that only 10 percent of individuals with [autism] have truly astonishing gifts. The families of the other 90 percent are rightly annoyed when strangers expect that they have a genius in their midst.”
Right now, autistics and their families deserve genuine understanding. Going forward, scientists will continue to try to figure out autism so that future generations will be able to cure it, or at least better manage it. Frith’s book will help in some small way to drive us toward both of those good ends; Cowen’s book will not.
“Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World” By Tyler Cowen (Dutton, 259 pages, $25.95)
“Autism: A Very Short Introduction” By Uta Frith (Oxford, 132 pages, $11.95)
It’s not unusual when a book fails to live up to its own ad copy, but “Create Your Own Economy” veers off in a different, baffling direction. Its first two chapters are a brief for autistics and autism -- that’s right, autism -- and A Little Autism is Good for You is the deeply offensive literary conceit of the rest of the book.
Cowen thinks many autistics are mocked and misunderstood. Too true. Autistics often live hard lives and deserve as much sympathy and patience as the rest of us can muster. But Cowen would rather define autism as the New Normal. “Michael L. Ganz, who teaches at the Harvard School of Public Health, published an entire essay entitled ‘The Costs of Autism.’ Nowhere does he consider whether autistic individuals have brought benefits to the human race,” writes Cowen. He asks, “Can you imagine a comparable essay titled ‘The Costs of Native Americans’?”
That question is a cheap trick. It’s meant to cut off debate, not further it, and invites such intemperate replies as: No, but how about “The Costs of Fire Water”? Autism is a mental disorder that makes it very difficult for some people to speak, shake hands, or do many of the things that are part of normal social interactions.
But rather than acknowledge this brute fact and deal with it, Cowen goes on about “neurodiversity” and plays up some surface similarities between autism and the quirks that often give away extremely intelligent people. To wit, really smart people often start talking late, and so do autistics. Autistics are often obsessed with ordering things -- to the point of paralysis if something is out of place -- and, why, so are the highly numerate. After a while, the reader begins to suspect Cowen is seriously stretching. He shoehorns autistics to fit into his preferred “cosmopolitan” politics, including “pragmatism” and respect for the rule of law. It doesn’t work.
And while Cowen warns us against thinking of autistics as the Dustin Hoffman character in “Rainman,” writ large, he does them no favors with this bit of autistic-obsession romanticizing: “Is enjoying the sound of music, or appreciating the texture of a painting, such a fundamentally different enterprise than enjoying a plastic spoon?” This is simply not a serious take on autism, or economics.
If readers want a better and mercifully brief primer on the issues surrounding autism, they should peruse a copy of Uta Frith’s “Autism: A Very Short Introduction.” Frith is a researcher in autism with the University College London. In the 1960s, she was studying to become a clinical psychologist but was so intrigued with some of the autistic children she came across at London’s Maudsley Hospital that she altered the trajectory of her career.
If this slim volume is any evidence, that was a great choice. Frith does a workmanlike job of laying out what she considers “good bets about the results of still ongoing research.” She does a masterful job of showing the real obstacles that autistics are up against as well as debunking myths about autism. (People who believe vaccines caused the incidence of autism to spike will not like this book one bit; she makes the sober case against that pet theory.)
Contra Cowen, Frith is willing to seriously explore the stereotypes about autistics. For instance, she points out that for “Rainman,” Hoffman “closely observed real-life cases of autistic adults in his methodical preparation for the movie and modeled himself on them. The autistic man portrayed was very strange but also lovable. He looked and acted mentally disabled, and yet had the most amazing skills. … This was a new image of autism, one that had not been brought to the public’s notice, and it instantly won sympathy.”
And then, she adds the necessary cold water: “[N]ot all individuals with [autism] are lovable eccentrics with amazing gifts. Far from it. Many are very difficult to live with and many have additional problems. It needs to be spelled out that only 10 percent of individuals with [autism] have truly astonishing gifts. The families of the other 90 percent are rightly annoyed when strangers expect that they have a genius in their midst.”
Right now, autistics and their families deserve genuine understanding. Going forward, scientists will continue to try to figure out autism so that future generations will be able to cure it, or at least better manage it. Frith’s book will help in some small way to drive us toward both of those good ends; Cowen’s book will not.
“Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World” By Tyler Cowen (Dutton, 259 pages, $25.95)
“Autism: A Very Short Introduction” By Uta Frith (Oxford, 132 pages, $11.95)
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| Parshas Vayishlach |
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JohnCounsel wrote on Nov 28, 2009 11:08 PM:
Too true. And one of the best ways to help is to get the facts right: autism is a neurological disorder, not a mental disorder. It's a hard-wiring issue, not software. "