By Linda Lovely
I've listened sympathetically to friends discuss the difficulties
in dealing with autistic family members. However, my ability to relate to the
challenges of grandparents, parents, and teachers who interact daily with
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) sufferers is limited by my lack of personal
experience. It's hard to understand what we haven't encountered in our own
narrow lives.
Providing insights into
the minds and hearts of people we may not meet in our day-to-day existence is
one of the great gifts of literature and movies. In my case, a 1988 classic
movie, Rain Man, and a 2013 novel, Memoirs of an
Imaginary Friend, have helped me better fathom the triumphs and fears
and joys and frustrations of both autistic individuals and the people who love
and care for them.
What is ASD? The term
groups together a wide range of development disorders. Symptoms typically
include difficulty communicating and interacting with others and a compulsion
to repetitive actions. According to my limited internet research, Asperger's
Syndrome, the diagnosis assigned to Max, the little boy in author Matthew
Dicks' Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, is now considered a
part of the ASD spectrum.
I loved Dicks' novel
because it helped me imagine what it would be like to BE autistic and
"different" from other children. Budo, Max's imaginary friend, tells
the story. Budo loves Max with all his heart and tries to protect him from the
raft of dangers that can befall an eight-year-old who attracts the attention of
class bullies.
I might never have
picked up this novel if it weren’t for my book club, which (thank you) forces
me out of my mystery and romantic suspense comfort zone. However, I heartily
recommend this adventure for its lively point-of-view, intriguing characters,
and solid plot.
If you haven’t seen Rain Man, I urge you to track it down on
one of the services that catalog older movie treasures like this one. This film’s
ASD sufferer is a grown man, Raymond Babbitt, played flawlessly by Dustin
Hoffman. Tom Cruise plays Ray’s materialistic younger brother Charlie, who didn’t
know he even had a brother until the senior Babbitt dies.
Both the book and the
movie show us love’s many guises and the value of relationships that can be as
difficult as they are rewarding. Humor is the added ingredient in both works of
art.
If you’ve read the book
or seen the movie, do you agree with my five-star ratings?
2 comments:
I aree that Rain Man deserves a five-star rating. I haven't read the book, but I'm putting it on my to-be-read list. With some studies indicating one in 63 children born today in this country are on the autism spectrum, it's important to understand how they experience the world. That's on the order of 2% of the population!
Thoughtful post, Linda. I would agree Rain Man is a 5 star movie. And I also agree that a well-written i.e. researched book can take us inside the lives of people who are very different from ourselves.
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