Autism and Asperger's Syndrome - Popular works, Mental/Psychological Disorder Patients - Biography, General & Miscellaneous Music Biography

Parallel Play: Growing up with Undiagnosed Asperger's

Name: Parallel Play: Growing up with Undiagnosed Asperger's
Author: Tim Page
ISBN: 9780385532075

by Tim Page

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Overview

An affecting memoir of life as a boy who didn’t know he had Asperger’s syndrome until he became a man.

In 1997, Tim Page won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his work as the chief classical music critic of The Washington Post, work that the Pulitzer board called “lucid and illuminating.” Three years later, at the age of 45, he was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome–an autistic disorder characterized by often superior intellectual abilities but also by obsessive behavior, ineffective communication, and social awkwardness.

In a personal chronicle that is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Page revisits his early days through the prism of newfound clarity. Here is the tale of a boy who could blithely recite the names and dates of all the United States’ presidents and their wives in order (backward upon request), yet lacked the coordination to participate in the simplest childhood games. It is the story of a child who memorized vast portions of the World Book Encyclopedia simply by skimming through its volumes, but was unable to pass elementary school math and science. And it is the triumphant account of a disadvantaged boy who grew into a high-functioning, highly successful adult—perhaps not despite his Asperger’s but because of it, as Page believes. For in the end, it was his all-consuming love of music that emerged as something around which to construct a life and a prodigious career.

In graceful prose, Page recounts the eccentric behavior that withstood glucose-tolerance tests, anti-seizure medications, and sessions with the school psychiatrist, but which above all, eluded his own understanding. A poignant portrait of a lifelong search for answers, Parallel Play provides a unique perspective on Asperger’s and the well of creativity that can spring forth as a result of the condition.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

About the Author, Tim Page

Tim Page is a professor of journalism and music at the University of Southern California. He has been a music critic at the New York Times, Newsday, and The Washington Post. In 1997, Tim Page won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his work as the chief classical music critic of The Washington Post, work that the Pulitzer board called “lucid and illuminating.” He has also written a biography of the American novelist Dawn Powell, as well as edited her letters and a two-volume edition of her works published by The Library of America.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

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Editorials

Janet Maslin

…an improbably lovely memoir about the loneliness that has made [Page] feel throughout his life that he is "not quite a mammal"…In fascinatingly precise detail and often to pricelessly funny effect, he describes ways in which his efforts to feign normalcy have backfired…With seemingly effortless grace this book moves back and forth between Mr. Page's very private idiosyncrasies and those of the wider culture in which he came of age.
—The New York Times

Suki Casanave

Awash in detail, Page's account reads like a verbal version of the minimalist music he discovered and loved as a teen. "As a listener…you settled in…as though you had boarded a train and thought nothing about where you'd been or where you were heading but merely surrendered yourself to jostle and speed and passing images." His book itself is a jostling trip. Lists of musical compositions, book titles and authors, as well as excruciating memories of teenage exploits, some of them horrific, are recounted in detail thanks to the author's astonishing recall of minutiae, one of the defining aspects of an Aspie (as Page frequently refers to his syndrome). In the midst of this nonstop journey, the wordsmithing is nimble and lyrical, well-tuned by a writer with a musician's ear.
—The Washington Post

Kirkus Reviews

Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Page (Journalism and Music/Univ. of Southern California) reflects on his bizarre childhood and the late Asperger's diagnosis that brought a certain measure of clarity to his memories. Though the author wasn't diagnosed until he was in his mid-40s, it was clear from his early childhood that something distinguished him from the other children. Asperger's, a disorder that falls on the autism spectrum, is characterized by, among other things, a pervasive difficulty in connecting with other people, the ability to amass astonishing amounts of what some might call minutia and, if the individual is lucky, a strikingly high level of intelligence. Page was one of the lucky ones, and so the loneliness stemming from being the only two-year-old Maurice Ravel devotee in his suburban neighborhood was perhaps mitigated by having the wit to (occasionally) engage others in his passions. At age 13, he became the subject of Iris and David Hoffman's documentary, A Day with Filmmaker Timmy Page, in which the juvenile auteur closely directs his childhood friends in The Fall of a Nation, a story of children taking over the world. Because his precocity could not be channeled in any activity that didn't interest him, Page floundered through school, experimenting heavily with drugs, often failing courses and struggling with loneliness and depression. His memoir is also the story of a man who, having to work extra hard to make friendships, is reluctant to let them go. Throughout, Page is animated by his visceral, passionate love for music and writing. A lucid, sweetly sentimental testament to growing up different.