The Secret Life of Stories

Starred review from November 1, 2015
How does the study of disability help us to understand stories? In this important contribution to disability studies, literary scholar and critic Berube (Literature, Director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities/Pennsylvania State Univ.; The Left at War, 2009, etc.) examines how characters with intellectual disabilities shape "the specific narrative they inhabit." What can these characters know about this narrative? How can they serve as "a device for exploring the phenomenon of human sociality?" How can they inform our assumptions about "the 'real' and the 'normal?' " Central to this inquiry is the overarching question of how to define intellectual disability. The author resists diagnosing characters and perpetuating stereotypes of such conditions as autism and Down syndrome, rather arguing that each character is distinct. He is skeptical, for example, about whether the theory of mindblindness--the inability to imagine that other people have minds--is useful for understanding autism, but he sees that a character's "strategic adoption of mindblindness" may allow for "complex readings" of a narrative. Focusing on three themes--motive, time, and self-awareness--Berube analyzes a copious number of novels, plays, and movies. He assumes his readers' familiarity not only with significant texts in disability studies, but also with the literary works he discusses, including the Harry Potter series, The Woman Warrior, The Sound and the Fury, A Wrinkle in Time, Life and Times of Michael K, Don Quixote, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Berube helpfully offers a synopsis of Philip K. Dick's "little known and rarely studied Martian Time-Slip," which he considers "one of Anglophone literature's most fascinating attempts to textualize intellectual disability." For Berube, considering such disability serves "as an invitation to...hyperattentiveness," a way to reinvigorate perception, "to make objects unfamiliar, to render people imaginable." An academic yet concise, fresh, and deeply informed look at how we read.

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December 1, 2015

Berube (Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature, Pennsylvania State Univ.; The Left at War) names as inspiration for this book a paper he wrote upon rereading Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, in which he saw for the first time "the deployment of intellectual disability as a motive for storytelling in the text" by exploring the problem of "narrative relation to a character who became increasingly unable to understand narrative." Berube proceeds to align his project with Tobin Siebers's Disability Aesthetics and Joseph N. Straus's Extraordinary Measures, then opens new lines of inquiry in disability studies by moving beyond "the representation of human bodies and minds in literary texts" and into an examination of how characters, writers, and readers are affected by the social structures surrounding disability. His framing example comes from Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, in which the stigma of intellectual disability is felt and reacted against by Meg and Charles Wallace Murry, along with their parents, although no one in their family is actually disabled. Berube then explores the narrative function of Dumbledore's sister Ariana in the Harry Potter books and a wide variety of examples from other texts. VERDICT An enlightening examination of an emerging field recommended for all academic and public libraries.--Jenny Brewer, Helen Hall Lib., League City, TX

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