oy...

in zadie smith's second novel, the autograph man, her dual heritage character alex li-tandem has spent many hours of his life devoted to many seemingly pointless exercises, and one of them is a book. a book of categorisation.

with alex's book, his aim is to look at every object, thought, verb, theme, occassion or happenstance and assign it to one of two camps- jewish or goyish. for example- "goyish smells of the 17th cenury (sandalwood, walnuts, wet forest floor)" and "goyish holidays/ festivals which are actually jewish" and "jewish trees of note (poplar, sycamore, oak)".

at the core of his assignations lies his fundamental truth- everything interesting, everything with integrity, everything with soul, he defines as jewish.

and my point is i now realise that i am in danger of becoming this way about the autistic spectrum, such is my fervent defensiveness/ evangelism, and just maybe the point of this blog is to assign an a.s.d. to everything awesome. this could mean that in six months time a sample from it might read

aquilegias
space hoppers
new chanel couture collection
=
landau-klefner syndrome.


well, its a thought.




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