The Only Boy in the WorldThe Only Boy in the World
a Father Explores the Mysteries of Autism
Title rated 4 out of 5 stars, based on 1 ratings(1 rating)
Book, 2006
Current format, Book, 2006, , Available .Book, 2006
Current format, Book, 2006, , Available . Offered in 0 more formatsA father's attempt to understand his son's autism offers insights into a bizarre and mysterious world of mental isolation.
A little boy stops on a slide and sings, oblivious to the queue snapping behind him. In a hardware store, he plonks himself on a display toilet before crowds of shoppers and wees. He thumps crying babies. Joe is ten and mentally disabled. He lives in a hubble of misunderstanding and occasional calamity. He's funny, fascinating, maddening.
This book tells Joe's story, but it also argues something audacious: that until you know Joe's life, you can't fully understand your own: that his misadventures teach us 'nothing less than the people-ness of people'.
Through his strangeness, Joe makes normality luminous: how we make sense of others, what we mean by guilt and innocence, how we perceive our surroundings. All of which invites an outrageous question: for if Joe sets everyday humanity in such sharp relief, how is he still part of it? The author who asks is Joe's father. Here is the answer.
The Only Boy in the World is a memoir, an investigation into what makes us human, a study of aberration, and a love story. It’s about all the odd ways journalist Michael Blastland's autistic son, Joe, has of seeing the world and understanding others, and what that tells the rest of us about how we also tick. Through the strange stories of Joe's scrapes and confusions, he makes luminous the routine skills by which the rest of us mostly avoid the disasters that befall him.
The book strives to this understanding by combining Technicolor scenes from Joe's bizarre life, from the long catalog of his social accidents, with scientific and psychological understanding of how we normally relate to other people. Illuminating the emotional core of the book are the ways that Joe and his father relate through all the turbulence to one other.
The Only Boy in the World is a memoir, an investigation into what makes us human, a study of aberration, and a love story. It's about all the odd ways journalist Michael Blastland's autistic son, Joe, has of seeing the world and understanding others, and what that tells the rest of us about how we also tick. Through the strange stories of Joe's scrapes and confusions, he makes luminous the routine skills by which the rest of us mostly avoid the disasters that befall him. The book strives to this understanding by combining Technicolor scenes from Joe's bizarre life, from the long catalog of his social accidents, with scientific and psychological understanding of how we normally relate to other people. Illuminating the emotional core of the book are the ways that Joe and his father relate through all the turbulence to one other.
The Only Boy in the World is a memoir, an investigation into what makes us human, a study of aberration, and a love story. It’s about all the odd ways journalist Michael Blastland's autistic son, Joe, has of seeing the world and understanding others, and what that tells the rest of us about how we also tick. Through the strange stories of Joe's scrapes and confusions, he makes luminous the routine skills by which the rest of us mostly avoid the disasters that befall him.
The book strives to this understanding by combining Technicolor scenes from Joe's bizarre life, from the long catalog of his social accidents, with scientific and psychological understanding of how we normally relate to other people. Illuminating the emotional core of the book are the ways that Joe and his father relate through all the turbulence to one other.
A little boy stops on a slide and sings, oblivious to the queue snapping behind him. In a hardware store, he plonks himself on a display toilet before crowds of shoppers and wees. He thumps crying babies. Joe is ten and mentally disabled. He lives in a hubble of misunderstanding and occasional calamity. He's funny, fascinating, maddening.
This book tells Joe's story, but it also argues something audacious: that until you know Joe's life, you can't fully understand your own: that his misadventures teach us 'nothing less than the people-ness of people'.
Through his strangeness, Joe makes normality luminous: how we make sense of others, what we mean by guilt and innocence, how we perceive our surroundings. All of which invites an outrageous question: for if Joe sets everyday humanity in such sharp relief, how is he still part of it? The author who asks is Joe's father. Here is the answer.
The Only Boy in the World is a memoir, an investigation into what makes us human, a study of aberration, and a love story. It’s about all the odd ways journalist Michael Blastland's autistic son, Joe, has of seeing the world and understanding others, and what that tells the rest of us about how we also tick. Through the strange stories of Joe's scrapes and confusions, he makes luminous the routine skills by which the rest of us mostly avoid the disasters that befall him.
The book strives to this understanding by combining Technicolor scenes from Joe's bizarre life, from the long catalog of his social accidents, with scientific and psychological understanding of how we normally relate to other people. Illuminating the emotional core of the book are the ways that Joe and his father relate through all the turbulence to one other.
The Only Boy in the World is a memoir, an investigation into what makes us human, a study of aberration, and a love story. It's about all the odd ways journalist Michael Blastland's autistic son, Joe, has of seeing the world and understanding others, and what that tells the rest of us about how we also tick. Through the strange stories of Joe's scrapes and confusions, he makes luminous the routine skills by which the rest of us mostly avoid the disasters that befall him. The book strives to this understanding by combining Technicolor scenes from Joe's bizarre life, from the long catalog of his social accidents, with scientific and psychological understanding of how we normally relate to other people. Illuminating the emotional core of the book are the ways that Joe and his father relate through all the turbulence to one other.
The Only Boy in the World is a memoir, an investigation into what makes us human, a study of aberration, and a love story. It’s about all the odd ways journalist Michael Blastland's autistic son, Joe, has of seeing the world and understanding others, and what that tells the rest of us about how we also tick. Through the strange stories of Joe's scrapes and confusions, he makes luminous the routine skills by which the rest of us mostly avoid the disasters that befall him.
The book strives to this understanding by combining Technicolor scenes from Joe's bizarre life, from the long catalog of his social accidents, with scientific and psychological understanding of how we normally relate to other people. Illuminating the emotional core of the book are the ways that Joe and his father relate through all the turbulence to one other.
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- New York : Marlowe & Co., c2006.
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