MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Understanding autism
MATTHEW HAWKINS admires a writer with the gumption and wit to extend a transformative experience of autism to the reader
Cedric Villani, the French mathematician, speaking at a public meeting of Macron’s centre-right party En Marche in Tokyo, 2018
[Syced/CC] 
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
Nine Minds – Inner Lives on The Spectrum
Daniel Tammet, Wellcome collection, £20
IS a mainstream mindset ever caught up in patterns of thought that are obsessive? Lines can be crossed: wires too. Eccentric or blinkered ways that are relatable in adulthood may signify as ominous mania in early life.
Nine Minds – Inner Lives on The Spectrum gets under the skin, by illustrating how intense interests or mental blanks that occur recognisably amid a happy majority can curiously ramp up or miss-time to designate an autistic community, among whom general rubric is written in upper-case bold.
Nine Minds keys into difference, from the perspective of interviewees who find themselves on the autistic spectrum. Its writing is not, essentially, a worded version of the workings of the autistic brain. Instead, author Daniel Tammet finds workable language to conjure portraits of his protagonists at their various stages of life.
More from this author
MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
MATTHEW HAWKINS enjoys the perverse jocularity, depraved glamour and inner turbulence of the Tate gallery’s tribute to Leigh Bowery
MATTHEW HAWKINS enjoys a father’s memoir of life with his autistic son, and the music they explore together
MATTHEW HAWKINS gives us a sense of what to expect from Glasgow’s International Dance festival
