Lewis Carroll. Hans Christian Andersen. Emily Dickinson. What do these writers have in common? They almost certainly had Asperger’s Syndrome. So did Melville, Yeats and Sherwood Anderson. Other research has identified these writers as being on the autism spectrum; Brown analyzes their writing to find common traits in style.

Brown found that writers with Asperger’s had the ability to stay focused on the writing task for long periods of time; that they frequently had a hard time physically getting the words onto paper- the authors examined all wrote before the advent of computers- because writing is a linear process and many people with autism excel in the visual/spatial realm rather than linear processes; that a lot of them used a collage process to write- rather than starting at the beginning and writing straight through til the end, they wrote bits and pieces of different scenes and then arranged them later; that they sometimes wrote by borrowing phrases and making allusions to other works; they sometimes had gaps and leaps that are understandable to them, but not to a neurotypical reader; they are better at description and detail than they are at character development; they make heavy use of symbolism; they break rules of established writing to good effect. The writers she analyzes, one per chapter, all have these characteristics. Some of them have changed the look of literature- Andersen’s fairy tales can have some very unhappy endings, Dickinson’s poems didn’t fit the established ‘ABAB’ patterns, Carroll played with words like they were shiny toys, Sherwood Anderson was the first to use the form of linked short stories to create a novel.

But, do all authors on the spectrum write this way? Well, no. Most may, but not all. I know of writers who have had an Asperger’s diagnosis who excel at character and have no problem writing about emotion fluently. Perhaps these authors are not as far along the spectrum as Brown’s examples are; perhaps there is just as much variation between people on the spectrum as there is between neurotypicals.

A fascinating book that may change how you look at books and the people who write them. ( )