Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant
Daniel Tammet
DANIEL TAMMET can recite 22,514 digits of pi--five hours, no mistakes--and learned Icelandic (Icelandic!) in a week. But don't be jelly of his brain powers. Asperger's is no picnic. Tammet endured potentially fatal seizures, an entire childhood of ostracism, guilt over the trouble he caused his parents and intensive battles with his own petulant brain before reaching the comfortable plateau of domestic bliss and demi-celebrity where he currently resides. Did I mention he's gay?
Why beat around the bush: I loved this book. It doesn't hurt that the "blue day" in question was exactly one week before my own wee birthday, which would make it way too easy for Tammet to tell me that was a Wednesday. (His savant powers include calendrical calculation, the ability to tell what day of the week any given date falls.) "Wednesdays are always blue," he explains in the book's opening paragraph, "like the number 9 or the sound of loud voices arguing."
Like many autistic savants, Tammet has synesthesia, which means that he experiences numbers and words unusually. He strongly associates numbers with specific colors and images. (When he met David Letterman, he declared the talk show host looked like the number 117: "tall and lanky.") He also writes about how certain words make him feel. I will never be able to envision the digits of pi as a soothing landscape of hills, but with the words I think I get it. The word "Clebilicious" makes me feel cute inside, whereas, "Fergalicious"--yuck. At least don't spell it with an "a."
WHILE Tammet's mental struggles take place on an unimaginable scale, his neuroses are universally human. He quests to be at peace with his limitations and embrace his gifts. He yearns for understanding, acceptance, love.
He also has to strike a balance between overcoming his psychological tics and accomodating them. He has learned, for example, that if he drops a spoon while doing dishes, meltdown will ensue. So he slowly steps away from the sink and lets it pass. We should all be so serene. (Shit, I should be so serene.)
Three-quarters of the way through the book, I turned the page to find a chapter entitled "Falling in Love," and my eyes teared up. You can't help but want this guy to be happy. Tammet's relationship with honey bunny Neil is almost unbearably sweet. For someone like Tammet--being, well, weird--it is particularly meaningful to be wholly understood and accepted by another person.
DID I mention he's really into vegetable gardening? He touches on it in the book, but in the documentary about him, Brain Man (he kinda hated the title), the back garden at his home in Herne Bay, England is featured as an important source of equanimity. (Oh yeah, did I mention he's British? Could I possibly not adore him?)
By the end of the book, Tammet has traveled an immense distance from his childhood--attested to by the fact that he wrote a book. It's hard for anyone on the autistic spectrum to express emotions and it's hard for anyone on the human spectrum to write a book. So, yes, his mind is extraordinary. But what makes this book such a great read is Tammet's extraordinary heart.
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