Keep Clear: My Adventures With Asperger's

by Tom Cutler

Overview

A wonderfully bittersweet, funnystrange account of living unwittingly with Asperger’s syndrome.

It is only after a crack-up, at the age of 55, that Tom Cutler gets the diagnosis that allows him to make sense of everything that’s come before, including his weird obsessions with road-sign design, magic tricks, spinning tops, and Sherlock Holmes. The final realization that he has Asperger’s allows a light to dawn on the riddles of his life: his accidental rudeness, maladroitness, Pan Am smile, and other social impediments. But, like many with Asperger’s, Tom possesses great facility with words, and this shines through this exceptionally warm, bright, and moving memoir, which is alternately strikingly revealing, laugh-out-loud funny, and achingly sad.

Tom explores his eccentric behavior from boyhood to manhood, examines the role of autism in his strange family, and investigates the scientific explanations for the condition. He recounts his anxiety and bewilderment in social situations, his sensory overload, his strange way of dressing, and his particular trouble with girls. He shares his autistic adventures in offices, toyshops, backstage in theaters, and in book and magazine publishing houses, as well as on—or more often off—roads.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781950354085
Publisher:	Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Publication date:	07/07/2020
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.30(h) x (d)

About the Author

Tom Cutler is a bestselling author of humor books, including 211 Things a Bright Boy Can Do and The Gentleman's Bedside Companion. The son of a sex therapist and a sometime Dominican friar, Tom Cutler is one of the few Englishmen to have been married in Bismarck, North Dakota. He is a practising magician and member of the Magic Circle, as well as a detective story fan and longstanding Sherlock Holmes aficionado. In 2016 he was identified as being on the autism spectrum. This, he says, was the happiest day of his life.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

Chapter 1 Falling rocks 3

Chapter 2 Signals not in use 39

Chapter 3 Loose chippings 125

Chapter 4 Steep hill upwards 173

Chapter 5 Road narrows 235

Chapter 6 Changed priorities ahead 291

Acknowledgements 335

Editorial Reviews

This is a delightful and intimate insight into Asperger's, it couldn't be more timely or more valuable.”
—Nicholas Blincoe, author of Manchester Slingback

“A British humor writer chronicles his experiences with Asperger’s syndrome, for which he didn’t receive a diagnosis until he was 55, and explores some of the science associated with the condition…[T]he meat of the book is Cutler’s detailed, highly entertaining examination of his life on the spectrum, and his unique brand of comedy is evident throughout…An intimate embrace of Asperger’s full of both melancholy and salty humor.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Honest, witty and informative, this is an important and valuable book on many levels … If you have a friend or family member who is on the Autism Spectrum, this book will go a long way toward helping to understand the immense effort it requires to try to fit into a ‘neurotypical’ world.”
—The Sherlock Holmes Journal

“What makes this book extraordinary…is not the autism of its author but Cutler’s ability to articulate subtle shades of feeling in prose that feels both rigorously precise and uproariously funny. By its unexpectedly heart-wrenching conclusion, Keep Clear has delivered the readers into a world transformed by being glimpsed through the eyes of another—the reward of all superb writing.”
—Steve Silberman, The Spectator

Praise for A Gentleman's Bedside Book:

“The perfect stocking filler for the man who has everything.”
—The Oldie

From the Publisher

2020-04-12
A British humor writer chronicles his experiences with Asperger’s syndrome, for which he didn’t receive a diagnosis until he was 55, and explores some of the science associated with the condition.

For decades, Cutler lived with his “eccentric” nature, “which until lately had mystified and grieved me.” Some of the traits of his personality included perfectionism, anxiety, limited eye contact, hypersensitivity, directness, uncommon vocabulary, loneliness, distaste of social touch, and an inability to engage in small talk. All of these formed a “painful puzzle,” with “the real me…hidden behind a façade of facile wit and practiced social formulas.” The author astutely points out that “there is no such thing as a typical Asperger,” and he chronicles how, after a nighttime panic attack, he found a psychiatrist who suggested Asperger’s as a diagnosis. Unconvinced, Cutler began researching, and he shares a readable history of the autism spectrum, jumping in where necessary to offer personal commentary: “What people often do not see in Aspergers, sometimes because it is so well camouflaged, is the confusion and dismay caused by the frequently inhospitable world: the constant self-monitoring, the anxiety, the botched social approaches and muffed relationships, the anguish, the exhaustion, the silent rage, and the deep dark cave of loneliness.” In precise prose laced with a sharp sense of humor as well as plenty of somber moments, the author delves into his journey of self-discovery, learning that, although the origins of Asperger’s are not clearly defined, there is solid evidence of a genetic component. Science aside, the meat of the book is Cutler’s detailed, highly entertaining examination of his life on the spectrum, and his unique brand of comedy is evident throughout—e.g., his account of awkwardly learning ballroom dancing, where the participants were “holding our partners like bags of radioactive waste.”

An intimate embrace of Asperger’s full of both melancholy and salty humor.

Kirkus Reviews