Please let me in this post extend a big thank you to fellow blogger Lisa Walker England. She writes about the asperger community and our fascination with the horror author Howard Philips Lovecraft (1890-1937) in two posts on her blog The Scrappy storyteller:
What, then, is my reason for bringing this up now? Well, her first post was one reason I started my research into connections between the autism disorder spectrum and Lovecraft’s Mythos Universe. The other is that in her second post she writes very nicely about my presentation at the Providence NecronomiCon 2015.
Many of you are probably already aware of her blog, which also features a very good serial art story as this is written. It is well worth a visit and I often repost her posts to the facebook page of the writers’ group I am a member of.
I recently read the following blog by Lisa Walker England (an aspie fellow):
What she wrote made me think… I write. In fact, I love writing. In my dreams I am a full time author; yes, in my dreams. In reality, I would never be able to support myself on my writing. What I have published has been either in learned journals or in small press, which does not pay, and I do not see how that will change in the foreseeable future. Still, I have some finished or nearly finished projects that I think deserve to be read, so, instead of letting my pieces gather virtual dust while finding ways to publish them I will put them on my blog. That will give me the joy of seeing my work available to others, who might feel inspired to do the same.
As many other aspies I was bullied. Some bullied me just for fun and others did it to crush me and bend me to their will, most notably my family and my first teacher. What I have discovered is that bullies have something in common with universalist ideologies: both want you to accept that their truth is the only one.
What do I mean by a universalist ideology? First of all we have the global monotheistic religions that teach that there is only one god and no others, and everyone that does not believe in this god is wrong. Then we have the political mass movements that so much dominated the twentieth century. Their founders, followers and leaders claimed that their ideology possessed the only truth and that everyone not sharing their ideology was inferior, and therefore prey.
I grew up in 1970s Sweden where the currents from 1968 strongly influenced society. I was a pariah because my father was a businessman and my first schoolteacher made it his personal contribution to the world revolution to make my life hell. To him I, a seven year old, was the local representative of world capitalism and was therefore legal prey.
What does this have to do with reading and writing you the reader, rightly ask?
As I stated above, it is vitally important for bullies to make their victims accept that they are right. However, reading opens up other worlds and other opinions to the reader. When the real world was too unbearable I could disappear in the written world and discover that there was more to life than what my tormentors tried to force me to think. I, like many other aspies, discovered science fiction and fantasy and escaped into their alternate realities; both helped me to recharge and to tackle life.
The French author Houellebecq in his analysis of the horror author H P Lovecraft states that healthy people do not read. He might be right there, but he misses the real point, and that is that reading also comforts and heals.
An Aspie's Voyage 