Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s

Robison’s father, John G. Robison, was a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Before Robison’s father becomes a tenured professor, the family lives in Seattle, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. Some of Robison’s earliest memories of his father are violent, although he concedes there are two sides to him: the daytime, friendly father and the nighttime, alcoholic father. John G. Robison drinks heavily and abuses his sons both physically and emotionally. It is his father’s abuse that pushes Robison out of the house at a young age and forces him to become self-reliant.

At the time Robison writes his memoir, his father’s drinking and arthritis have left him in declining health. After a bite from a venomous spider and a bad fall, he eventually dies in 2005. Robison admits that, in hindsight, he may have treated his father “harshly” in his memoir, and as his father’s death draws near, his traumatic memories become intermingled with happy ones. He concludes that his father did the best he could with the cards he was dealt.

Robison’s mother, Margaret, is an artist and writer, and Robison credits her with his writing ability. She and John G. are students at the University of Georgia when Robison is born, and they eventually settle near Amherst, Massachusetts. Margaret’s marriage to John G. is tumultuous. He drinks to excess and becomes violent, and perhaps due to this, Margaret develops mental health problems. Robison refers to numerous psychotic breaks in which his mother becomes dazed and distant, even spending time in mental hospitals. Robison describes both of his parents as “damaged,” and part of Margaret’s mental breakdowns may be attributed to her “overly critical” mother and her frustrated artistic ambitions. Although she aspires to be a poet, she still feels obligated to marry and have a family. Her creative pursuits are relegated to part-time status, and perhaps she resents her husband and children for the sacrifices she makes.

Eventually, she and her husband seek counseling with an unconventional therapist known in the book as Dr. Finch. While Finch seems helpful at first, his influence over Margaret grows until she becomes, in Robison’s memory, a prisoner in a cult. When Robison grows older, he and his father no longer participate in Finch’s therapy sessions, but Margaret continues, bringing Robison’s younger brother along. She even lives for a time with Finch’s family in a dilapidated Victorian house. Margaret Robison eventually writes her own memoir, The Long Journey Home, published in 2011.

Robison’s younger brother Christopher legally changed his name to Augusten Xon Burroughs and wrote the best-selling memoir Running with Scissors (2002). Because Robison’s Asperger’s renders him unable to understand emotional signals, Look Me in the Eye is rife with dispassionate accounts of tormenting his younger brother with practical jokes. When Robison dumps Burroughs into a hole and leaves him there, his reaction is not empathy or remorse but satisfaction that his prank worked. Later, as Margaret Robison’s psychosis worsens, she takes Burroughs to live with her therapist, Dr. Finch. The time spent with Finch and his extended family becomes the subject of Burroughs’s memoir.

Burroughs’s relationship with his older brother is complicated. He confesses, “I loved him and hated him in equal measure” (xi). He also describes a very different mother and father than Robison. In Robison’s reckoning, their father is an abusive alcoholic. Burroughs remembers it differently, describing his parents as “an optimistic, young couple in their twenties” (xi). Memory is not an exact science, and the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

Burroughs published a second memoir, Dry (2003), recounting his adulthood and struggles with sobriety. It is unusual for three members of the same family to all publish memoirs about their experiences, which suggests a connection, however tenuous, between trauma and creativity. Margaret, John Elder, and Burroughs all exhibit strong creative abilities, although in vastly divergent fields.

Robison and Trompke meet in high school, where they share an interest in electronic gadgets. They spend time repairing record players and tape decks, and for the first time, Robison overcomes his discomfort with women. He can relate to Trompke, finding her a “shy, damaged kid” (67); this similarity fascinates him and gives him the courage to pursue a relationship with her. Her shyness allows him to be more assertive. For years, he shies away from people because he expects to be ridiculed, but Trompke’s quiet demeanor reassures him that they are more similar than different and that she won’t mock him. When Robison confesses that he is in love, it is a significant emotional breakthrough, allowing himself to be vulnerable to the whims of another. Robison and Trompke eventually marry, and she helps him build circuit boards in their apartment when he is designing guitars for KISS. While their similar dispositions draw them together, those similarities are not enough to sustain their marriage. Trompke and Robison have a son, Jack (aka Cubby), but in the end, professional and personal stresses take their toll, and the marriage ends in divorce.

Boughton and Robison live near each other in Amherst and share a love of cars, motorcycles, and explosives. Boughton, who enjoys building high-intensity forges and experimenting with pyrotechnics, is Robison’s kindred spirit in destruction. They speak the same language and have the same disregard for danger. When Robison needs an exploding guitar, he seeks Boughton’s advice. When Boughton nearly burns down his parents’ garage, Robison envies his calm reaction to the crisis. Boughton is not only a friend with whom Robison shares common interests; he also provides Robison a refuge from the turmoil of his family life, giving him a safe space to exorcise his inner demons under the supervision of an older, more experienced mentor.