Fiction

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Not at all true of me.

For me I read to get into the character's head and live another life - living only one life is boring! I completely lose awareness both of myself and the author when I read a book. I don't really care what the author intended (and if it's too obvious what they intended I get mad). Nor do I see any connection between me and the character, even if the character is exactly like me. If I think of those things at all, it's after I've closed the book.

Personally, I always had trouble in literature classes deciphering what the intended meaning was. I always took it to mean exactly what it said. And maybe that's the issue some people on the spectrum have with it.

I did read a lot more fiction when I was a kid. However, I was always very frustrated with it. I always felt like even if the story was good, something was missing. For several years, I thought I would write fiction so that it would be the way that I wanted it to be. However, people always thought my stories were weird. And then I lost interest altogether. Today, there are a handful of fiction books that I love, and most of them are science fiction. But these days I'm far more interested in non-fiction.

One of my passions is Charles Dickens...I'm like a certain character on Lost...I've read everything the man has written, more than once.

I have similar feelings about To Kill A Mockingbird.

Same. With the whole Autistic literalism thing, when I first saw people "decoding" the "intended meaning" (college short story class) I was sooo bloody lost. I still don't understand why anyone would do this to this day.

I can get lost in the world, but thinking about it outside of the base experience is kind of meh. If it's a story about someone diving into the remains of a lost shipwreck, it's not about women or mens struggle to reclaim the cultural treasures of the past or any such thing. It's about a bloody diver and a shipwreck. And rather boring at that.

I prefer none-fiction, but I do like fiction regardless! I've gotten into it a lot more recently.

I had trouble with literature classes too. I always struggled with grasping the meaning of all that stuff. The worst was poetry.

Most of the time when I was reading a sci-fi novel or a classic novel, I was only a quiet spectator of the events. Such convenience reminds me to my young self, when I didn't take any active steps, accepted guidance, and participated in common activities only when it was necessary. However, I can identify with or relate to characters. The older I become the better I can.

A kid can identify with a likable character on screen very easily. As a child I was shocked by the perceived resemblance between me and little Oliver Twist, when I saw the 1948 classic movie on a matinée (see John Howard Davies on the left).

(I'm yet to read To Kill A Mockingbird, but didn't forget about.)

I understood it, but I am not interested in.

The only things I like are realistic fiction and Nancy Drew.

"Decoding" symbolism and metaphor is fun and engaging.

A diving story could be about diving, or it could be about men and women's struggle to reclaim the past. Or it could be interpreted to be about a thousand other things. That's the entire point. There are numerous schools of literary thought and no one is required to embrace one particular view. Your success or failure in a literature class rests on your ability to argue in favor of your interpretation and support it with evidence. Personally, I'm partial to the views of Jung and Campbell.

I like fiction because I find studying art is infinitely more instructive about human nature than either sociology, psychology, or philosophy. It also encompasses ALL of the humanities and doesn't just focus on one subject. As a bonus, I'm the only person who's perspective truly matters when interpreting a story and I don't have to trouble myself with the opinions of everyone else.

Ultimately, I read everything. I was obsessed with fiction for a few years, but now I'm into non-fiction.

I read fiction, and have trouble getting onto nonfiction. When I first heard the idea that autistics don't like fiction, I'm a complete nerd who gets wrapped up in imaginary worlds, and just assumed everyone else was the same. I think I prefer fiction because the characters, with clear motives and relationships, just make more sense than real people.

I'm not interested in reading most fiction, but I read news and I read a lot of research materials.

In most cases when literature teachers would talk about one thing meaning another and imagery, I thought that they were delusional, that if the authors had meant to express things that they would have just said them, and that the teachers were the only people in the classrooms who actually believed the things in the stories represented other things. I thought that the real point of those classes was to come up with creative comparisons, and the teacher would give points based on how creative you were in coming up with such comparisons or how closely you could repeat back the teachers' respective own interpretations.

I was very good at repeating the teachers' explanations back to them, but I actually only very infrequently read the stories assigned.

maybe you are right! I thought that autistics want more to know the "truth", many autistics have this. I thougt this would also have influence on the reading, too. I think I didn't start reading much fiction, because I got this feeling that it is not about the "real world". It won't help me. Imagining to be someone else while reading a book can be very relaxing, yes! I don't know...

Today so few people in the west do reading anything, including fiction. It's hard to say why autistics also don't.

Yes maybe, i didn't enjoy reading for the reasons you mentioned. Yes I think i had a harder time understanding some things. Maybe I took it took it too literally.

Maybe I also didn't get the allegories and comparisons. Maybe I was to fixated at the details. Maybe thinking more simple might have helped.


I don't know, but anyway, I think this is a very interesting topic. When we find some answer, maybe it will help me enjoying reading much more, because then I can work on my problems, and increase understanding.

Please continue this fruitful and exciting discussion! )


anton

I never quite understood why some people have trouble with symbolism in literature.

By contrast, numbers don't really "exist" either. They're just squiggles and lines on paper meant to represent other concepts, usually quantities. If you understand that the number "9" can represent a quantity of nine apples, what's difficult about an oak tree representing "love," or the relationship between the story's protagonist and his sister? It's all just abstract symbolism. The primary difference is "literary symbolism" generally has more possible interpretations than mathematical symbolism. It's like me saying, "The number nine doesn't represent anything, it's just a squiggly line on paper! It certainly has nothing to do with oranges."

Honestly, I don't think it's an "autism" thing. Most people seem to be pretty clueless when it comes to literary theory.

I like fiction. Paradox is you can sometimes express meaning and ideas better in fiction than in social science.

I've had major problems with symbolism in other areas, too.

For example, I had trouble in science understanding the periodic table of elements. I could understand the numbers and what they meant but it's difficult to understand formulas as other people write them with the symbols, especially if the symbols don't match the words(like in the U.S. we say "sodium" instead of "natrium", but sodium is symbolized as "Na"). If they're written with the actual word for the chemical I can understand them but with the 2-digit abbreviation it makes things very difficult and slows down my understanding significantly.

In math classes I also had great difficulty learning to work with variables. I was very good at doing the calculations, and if I were to replace the variables with what they actually represented I could solve the problems(actually I could often solve the problems without writing anything down), but the symbols and the fact that they meant letters to be representative of things was very confusing to me. When learning a concept I could often visualize exactly what was being described, but decoding mathematical formulas to create the visualization of what is being described is difficult.

Functions were especially confusing, because it was difficult to keep in mind that f(x) and x were not the same thing. Teaching myself computer programming was the only thing that made me understand how functions work. In f(x) the f looks too much like a variable itself, but I know that it's not, so I perceive f(x) as being x. It shouldn't have been written like that.

I'm not bad at understanding math and science concepts; if I write out the formulas in plain english I can understand them very well. And I can visualize what's actually happening, but I have to write things out to remove the symbols to understand.

And when using a computer I have significant difficulty understanding what icons mean if they don't have words to describe them. I can actually use most computer interfaces better than almost anyone I've ever met, but when I look at an individual icon it may take several seconds to decode it.

Ah.

Thank you for taking the time to explain. I'm always curious as to the nature of other people's comprehension in regards to learning things since I have a very odd learning profile. Also, your explanation will help me understand other people's strengths and weaknesses better.

Have a nice day.

Numbers are abstract concepts that are easily represented by concrete objects. The fact that nine can represent a quantity of nine apples, nine cars, nine buildings, nine puppies, makes it possible to grasp it in the same way as having an oak tree representing something as abstract as love or a relationship. They are, as far as my brain is concerned, entirely different things.

For what it's worth, what tripped math for me - what switched it on from something I had a lot of trouble understanding to doing mental arithmetic was being able to relate numbers to concrete objects.

Also, algebra was extremely difficult for me. Geometry was extremely easy.

Anyway, it can both be an autism thing and not an autism thing. It seems to me that it is in large part a concrete thinking thing which is more common in autistic people than in NTs (but not just autistic people), but it is a thing you can find in most segments of the population.