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theangrylawngnome's review
2.0
Nearly spit tea out my nose when I saw that one of his ex-wives is actually a distant relation of mine. I think I've met her a grand total of three times, and him never, but it is still weird to see the name of someone you've met in print. At least for me. Not sure that bit of disclosure is truly necessary, but, well there it is. And that's all I have to say about that.
As to the book itself, Robison seemed completely unaware that the "bootstrapping" he did for himself, admirable as it was and is, is -- I would submit -- simply impossible these days. Certainly via the route he took. A high school drop-out with no training is not going to walk into a car repair shop (especially at a dealer) and be hired to do anything other than sweep floors and clean toilets. And they're certainly not going to be hired as an electrical engineer by any corporation, however many textbooks they've read or however well they can complete an application.
I admit I move onto shakier ground making a similar claim re: customizing musical instruments, but my sense is that they're far less accessible to the garage tinkerer these days than they were when he made a living doing it. Besides, Robison himself seemed to give conflicting signals as to what sort of "living" he made doing this. The KISS anecdote was nifty, and clearly showed that he had clawed his way up to the top of a certain pyramid...yet it also seemed he spent most of his time living very much hand to mouth while involved in this field.
I was also irritated that all of a sudden, hey, presto, he's opened an auto repair business. Okay. How? As in, how did he afford stuff like heavy-duty car-lifters? How did he handle the initial leasing of space? Did he buy out an existing owner of a repair shop, privately financing a note? Or did he convince a bank to lend him the funds? Or did he have enough cash on hand, somehow, to simply write a check? I wouldn't expect his personal finances listed in detail, but as far as the text goes for all we know it was a sprinkling of pixie dust that got him where it got him.
Moreover, we never hear how he handles being not only an owner, but a boss as well. How does he figure out who to hire? How does he handle letting people go? Is all of the above delegated to someone neurotypical, or does he really, truly force himself to look someone in the eye and say "You're fired?" (Just the thought of this -- even in the hypothetical -- makes my stomach churn, personally. But that's a "luxury" I can afford, while Robison cannot.) And you can't forget the mountain of paperwork crammed down the throat of every small business owner, from government agencies, insurance companies, creditors and so on. It obviously all gets done, but how and by whom?
Perhaps I am reading too much into the specifics, and not drawing the proper general lessons from his life? Being on the Autistic Spectrum myself, I've certainly spent enough time seeing trees when I was supposed to be seeing a forest. And if he were coming through the public schools of today, chances are he would not, in fact, have dropped out. He would have received help, enough so that he very well may have had a college degree or vocational training of a sort that would render him far more employable.
But, in my defense, the only explicitly "forest" chapter in the book is also clearly the weakest. It is a mush of cliches and happy talk that starts nowhere and ends proving nothing. It also does nothing to dispel a sense that the path(s) he took are now gone. Or if "gone" seems too harsh, then substitute "far more difficult in 2011 than they were in the early '70s." Whichever way floats yer boat.
Robison is a surpisingly good writer, and none of the above criticism came to me while reading the book. Stylistically, he hits a home run. You wanna/gotta know what's coming next. But after the fact, the primitive empiricist in me came out to play. Details I'd not noticed while reading the work became manifest, or rather noticed but failed to grasp what sprang from them. And this perhaps overly-harsh review is the result.
And one other thing: Somewhere in the back of my mind I've got this image of a 14 year old boy on the Spectrum reading this book, and drawing conclusions wildly, horribly, perhaps tragically wrong. Hopefully said image is the product of a fevered and overwrought imagination; at times either one or both verbs can accurately describe me. I hope with all my heart that's the case here. But it is also not an image I'm shaking off, either.
As to the book itself, Robison seemed completely unaware that the "bootstrapping" he did for himself, admirable as it was and is, is -- I would submit -- simply impossible these days. Certainly via the route he took. A high school drop-out with no training is not going to walk into a car repair shop (especially at a dealer) and be hired to do anything other than sweep floors and clean toilets. And they're certainly not going to be hired as an electrical engineer by any corporation, however many textbooks they've read or however well they can complete an application.
I admit I move onto shakier ground making a similar claim re: customizing musical instruments, but my sense is that they're far less accessible to the garage tinkerer these days than they were when he made a living doing it. Besides, Robison himself seemed to give conflicting signals as to what sort of "living" he made doing this. The KISS anecdote was nifty, and clearly showed that he had clawed his way up to the top of a certain pyramid...yet it also seemed he spent most of his time living very much hand to mouth while involved in this field.
I was also irritated that all of a sudden, hey, presto, he's opened an auto repair business. Okay. How? As in, how did he afford stuff like heavy-duty car-lifters? How did he handle the initial leasing of space? Did he buy out an existing owner of a repair shop, privately financing a note? Or did he convince a bank to lend him the funds? Or did he have enough cash on hand, somehow, to simply write a check? I wouldn't expect his personal finances listed in detail, but as far as the text goes for all we know it was a sprinkling of pixie dust that got him where it got him.
Moreover, we never hear how he handles being not only an owner, but a boss as well. How does he figure out who to hire? How does he handle letting people go? Is all of the above delegated to someone neurotypical, or does he really, truly force himself to look someone in the eye and say "You're fired?" (Just the thought of this -- even in the hypothetical -- makes my stomach churn, personally. But that's a "luxury" I can afford, while Robison cannot.) And you can't forget the mountain of paperwork crammed down the throat of every small business owner, from government agencies, insurance companies, creditors and so on. It obviously all gets done, but how and by whom?
Perhaps I am reading too much into the specifics, and not drawing the proper general lessons from his life? Being on the Autistic Spectrum myself, I've certainly spent enough time seeing trees when I was supposed to be seeing a forest. And if he were coming through the public schools of today, chances are he would not, in fact, have dropped out. He would have received help, enough so that he very well may have had a college degree or vocational training of a sort that would render him far more employable.
But, in my defense, the only explicitly "forest" chapter in the book is also clearly the weakest. It is a mush of cliches and happy talk that starts nowhere and ends proving nothing. It also does nothing to dispel a sense that the path(s) he took are now gone. Or if "gone" seems too harsh, then substitute "far more difficult in 2011 than they were in the early '70s." Whichever way floats yer boat.
Robison is a surpisingly good writer, and none of the above criticism came to me while reading the book. Stylistically, he hits a home run. You wanna/gotta know what's coming next. But after the fact, the primitive empiricist in me came out to play. Details I'd not noticed while reading the work became manifest, or rather noticed but failed to grasp what sprang from them. And this perhaps overly-harsh review is the result.
And one other thing: Somewhere in the back of my mind I've got this image of a 14 year old boy on the Spectrum reading this book, and drawing conclusions wildly, horribly, perhaps tragically wrong. Hopefully said image is the product of a fevered and overwrought imagination; at times either one or both verbs can accurately describe me. I hope with all my heart that's the case here. But it is also not an image I'm shaking off, either.
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