Published on 12, July, 2020
With many of these people, the condition is highly speculative rather than actually diagnosed. Some of the symptoms suggested, too, could indicate other conditions - particularly with people like Woody Allen.
Still... I find it reassuring in many ways to maybe share something in common with people who've made such an impact in their own particular ways...
www.asperger-syndrome.me.uk/people.htm
I enjoyed school apart from the other kids. I got on well with teachers and other adults, though one teacher told my parents she found me intellectually intimidating:I was 7 or 8 at the time. I thrived at university, but have struggled getting regular employment since: I'm a precariously employed university admin temp, despite a PhD and being a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.
Meursault – yes. I feel for him. I wasn't all that affected when my mother died, either: more concerned about the effect on my Dad, with whom I get on better.
I adore Claude. He's an obsessive, geeky intellectual, hopeless with relationships, kind to orphans, but given to self-destructive melt-downs, self-harming (to the point he's having bouts of delirium from probable septicaemia for much of the later part of the book), cassock-ripping, and precipitating horrific tragedy... And I want to rescue him, tuck him up with a mug of hot milk and give him "the talk about girls" he should have had years ago. ("If you want to chat up a girl you find attractive, getting your hideously deformed adopted child to abduct her off the street isn't the best way of attracting her attention. And you could do better than that airhead dancer!")