Author and USC professor Tim Page discussed his struggles with Asperger's
Syndrome at the Los Angeles Public Library. (photo by Jonathan Arkin)

The Los Angeles Public Library's ALOUD series featured two USC journalism professors - Sasha Anawalt  and Tim Page - for a Feb. 4 talk on Page's new book "Parallel Play."

The book chronicles the difficult but revealing struggles Page underwent with undiagnosed Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism that affects social and communication skills differently than its parent condition.

"I am left with the melancholy sensation that my life is in a perpetual state of parallel play," said Page, reading to a packed auditorium from the book's prologue and then adding that his was neither a how-to book about his condition nor an attempt at sympathy. "Growing up with Asperger's Syndrome was certainly part of the story...but I hoped that this book was pretty fun. I did my best not to wallow in the sadness."

"Parallel Play," which began its life as a 2007 piece in The New Yorker, has been recently hailed by the New York Times as "an improbably lovely memoir about the loneliness" that caused Page to discover "an excruciating awareness of my own strangeness," one of many admissions he shared while reading the prologue to the audience.

"The line I use to explain Asperger's Syndrome is the 'absent-minded professor,' times five," said Page, who admitted to occasionally fleeing social gatherings in spite of his desire to socially be a good colleague at USC. "You put me in a party situation where no one knows who I am, and I have no idea what's expected of me, and I'm a total disaster. But I'm fine at most parties - if I can't possibly avoid them."

Anawalt, who was introduced by the Library Foundation's host, Louise Steinman, as "a force for arts and all that is good in Los Angeles" and teaches with Page in the new Specialized Journalism program at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, said that despite Page's avowed preference for social introversion, his talent and gifts extend outward.

"Tim is my colleague at USC...he has some sort of weird mojo with students," Anawalt said. "He can take them from whatever level they are at and elevate them... He has had a tough life and a charmed life. He has worked so hard at figuring out what 'the box' is and when he needs to fit into it, and when he does not."

The director of Annenberg's School of Journalism, Geneva Overholser, was also present at the reading and had similar praise for Page and his writing.

"We're just so lucky to have Tim as a member of our faculty," Overholser said following the talk as Page signed copies of his book. "When I knew him at The Washington Post, I thought he was one of the most special people I had ever known. Now we know more about what makes him so special. I found the book to be a revelation."

When he was diagnosed in 2000, Page said of his own particular revelation, he was simply "fascinated" by the closure that finally labeled his condition.

"I was, as you'd say, gobsmacked," Page said. "I was amazed by it...people with autism were supposed to be these people who rocked back and forth, and grunted, and never spoke. For me, speaking about what was going on in my brain was always incredibly easy. It just wasn't easy talking about what was going on in anybody else's brain."

However, Page has established a name for himself doing just that: getting into the psyches of misunderstood or overlooked artists and enlightening audiences in the process - in addition to his Pulitzer Prize for Criticism he won in 1997, he has written extensively on the lives of Dawn Powell, Glenn Gould and other enigmatic personalities.

"Every now and then I am embarrassed," Page said of his struggles to determine which episodes, however difficult to relive, would make it into "Parallel Play." "When I finally decided to go with the book, I decided I didn't really care...it's something I had to tell."

Page revealed several things that may have come as a surprise to some in his audience; namely, that his son had been recently diagnosed with Asperger's - for Page, the condition clearly became "terribly, terribly hereditary" - in addition, that he was dissatisfied with the subtitle of the book "Living with undiagnosed Asperger's Syndrome" and that he would change it for upcoming editions as it presented unwanted implications.

"One thing I've noticed about a lot of people with Asperger's Syndrome is they tend to like continuity," Page said of the decision he made with his agent, Melanie Jackson, adding that his frequent contact with successful, productive female colleagues is no accident. "You'll find that a lot of Asperger's people really respond to and are really devoted to strong women. We really need someone to pull us into life."

Anawalt, who has also known Page for years, said she was delighted that Page read the prologue to the audience - as it illuminated both the critic's writing skills and his deep passion for the arts - and that it resonated with many of those living with Asperger's who attended the event.

"Your language is so visual," Anawalt said of Page's forays into music, black and white film and sound recordings. "To me, the way the silent film works in your life is like a visual counterpart to your music."

Page said that of the more workaday, non-artistic anecdotal themes he took on, including the recounting of a horrific automobile accident and his struggles with a fourth grade gym teacher and principal, much of his ethos was shared with Plato's maxim "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle" which he said was both useful and humane.

"I feel that force in the book," Anawalt said. "The book hits a nerve, possibly because it offers hope."