Storytellersunplugged

My short story collection PUNKTOWN has recently been re-released by Prime Books, and in its new incarnation it features twice as many stories as the original. One of the stories that did appear in the original, “Face”, was a last-minute addition to the book. It was inspired by my son, Colin. Another story from that same period in my life, “John Sadness”, appeared in “Dark Regions” magazine and has been reprinted in my collection AAAIIIEEE!!!. “John Sadness” was inspired by Colin, too.

Colin, now twelve years old, is autistic. He’s what they call a “high functioning” autistic. He is funny, sweet, affectionate, and very artistic, filling reams of paper monthly with his drawings – usually of monsters inspired by video games. He tends to redesign them, however, blending them with other characters from cartoons and movies, forming delightfully unlikely combinations such as “Planktontron”. Planktontron is based on the one-eyed micro-villain from “Spongebob Squarepants”, by way of the monsters in the video game “Doom 3″. Colin likes to design his own game guides, too, referencing levels such as “Colin’s House”, and so he lists Planktontron’s attributes thusly:

Size: 11 Ft
Weapons: Rayguns
World: Auditorium

There is also a “Plankton Zombie”. (I know there are zombie animals in your novels, Brian Keene, but if try to steal this idea you’ll hear from our attorney.) I don’t know where this kid gets his wild imagination. Ah-hem. Anyway, he seems very aware of the wonderful absurdism of his combinations, seems to take a conscious satisfaction in envisioning movies such as “Mary Poppins Versus the Shadow Vampires” and “Blade and the Teletubbies”. (Heh…I fear for Wesley Snipes going up against THOSE fiends from Hell.) You might understand, when I tell you that if I could push a magic button and make Colin “normal”, I would not do it. He would be another child, another unique individual, then…and this remarkable being would no longer exist. I would not even hop in a time machine and do it all over again, if I could alter his destiny from the very start. This isn’t to say I would want to bring a second autistic child into the world if I could avoid it. And this isn’t to say it wasn’t devastating to learn that our child was not merely late in developing speech because his Mom was deaf – but because he was autistic.

It was indeed devastating. I felt an anger and a sadness I can liken only to when our first child was miscarried. It was immensely difficult to deal with. Ultimately, one of the ways in which I dealt with my feelings was to address them in fiction. This is how I express myself, even though it might be more helpful, more useful to others, if I were inclined to approach an issue like autism through nonfiction.

And at this point, I want to digress slightly for a few moments to urge you to read an important article on autism in the latest “Rolling Stone”; if you need added incentive, it has Jessica Alba on the cover…sigh. Autism is a crisis of staggering magnitude. There’s a good possibility that its increase through recent years has to do with the presence of mercury in children’s vaccines. The medical industry denies this connection, of course – and drug companies give politicians hundreds of thousands of dollars, in return for which people like Republican Senator Bill Frist work to pass legislation that would protect the pharmaceutical industry from lawsuits filed by parents of autistic children. Well, at least one of these mercury-based neurotoxins, thimerosal, is seldom used in US vaccines, now. Oh…but we still send these thimerosal-tainted vaccines to China, where I guess it’s okay that there are now nearly two million children with autism in a country that barely knew of the condition before the vaccinations started being used, only as long ago as 1999.

Maybe you can see now why I DON’T address my feelings head-on through nonfiction. It might immerse me too much in my hatred and my fury and I’ll be buying a Glock instead of a new ink cartridge for my printer. Mostly, though, it’s just how my own quirky and hopefully fascinating brain works; like Colin with his imagination, it’s how I process my world – through a distorting lens. One might not glean hard facts from those stories of mine that address serious issues such as autism, but I should hope that the emotions conveyed in these works of fiction might still serve their own humble purpose…to entertain, to move the heart, and to inspire the reader to seek out that nonfiction article, next time.

Both “Face” and “John Sadness” concern the short life and tragic death of a physically monstrous child. I do not see my son as a monster…but in the stories, others do perceive the two children in this way. Perhaps by having the children die in the stories I was subconsciously coming to terms with the “death” of the son I had thought I would know, the person I had expected to watch grow up and develop. These stories, I think – despite the pain that fills them, which to this day causes me to shed tears when I read them (I’ll certainly never read them aloud to an audience) – helped me get through the period when my mental image of my son was forced to MUTATE to fit another form. I curse whoever or whatever might be causing this plague of autism. But again, I would not reconfigure one brain cell of the beautiful soul that is my son. I have never met a finer human being, nor a closer embodiment of an angel, than my son Colin James Thomas. But I did have to acclimate to the “change” in my perception of him. It puts me in mind of when my wife was pregnant with Colin; we had been hoping for a girl and so we were disappointed at first to learn we’d be having a son instead. But once we received the news, the adjustment came quickly. We wouldn’t have had it any other way, after that.

They say, “Write of what you know.” Sure – it makes sense. If one has been a lawyer, one can write a more convincing courtroom drama. If one has been a doctor, a more convincing medical thriller. (In terms of technical detail, at least…though experience does not guarantee a compelling plot or prose voice.) But I do think this philosophy can be taken too far. I was once part of a joint book signing during which the audience addressed questions to the authors, and I was asked how I research my stories. I remarked that the internet often comes in handy; I had recently written a novel (MONSTROCITY) in which the protagonist ventures into an abandoned subway system, and various web sites on such places had been a great source of inspiration. Another author, however, rather snidely mocked my statement, I guess suggesting that instead of merely reading about various subjects, I should go out and experience them firsthand. After the signing, he took a copy of a deer hunting computer game from a shelf nearby and left it where he’d been sitting, and next to it jotted a note – something to the effect that this game had taught him all he needed to know about the great outdoors. Hmmm…if this guy writes stories about smug asses, he surely possesses the knowledge of an expert.

Anyway, another author at the signing had worked closely with wolves, apparently to research a book on werewolves. And I think that’s cool! Robert DeNiro is my favorite actor, and if he wants to gain weight to play Jake LaMotta or if Christian Bale wants to emaciate himself to play “The Machinist”, more power to them! Though Lawrence Olivier, no slouch himself, once said to Dustin Hoffman, “Why don’t you just ACT, my boy?” There are more than one road to get to your destination. Choose the one that works best for you, I say. Maybe this is why I invent the settings of my books, time and time again. The nightmarish future city of PUNKTOWN and EVERYBODY SCREAM!. The netherworld of my novel LETTERS FROM HADES. The surreal, parallel-universe America in BONELAND. Mr. Deer Hunter, I tell you – I AM writing of what I know. I KNOW Punktown…and Hades…and Boneland. They exist in this thing I call the imagination. It’s why I write fiction, instead of nonfiction. It’s why I read it, too. Because the imagination is a wondrous thing.

Just ask an artist named Colin James Thomas.

– Jeffrey Thomas