“Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant” (Free Press)

[lsanderson]

Brainman, at Rest in His Oasis
By SARAH LYALL

BROOMFIELD, England

BULLIED by other children and bewildered by ordinary life, Daniel Tammet spent his early years burrowed deep inside the world of numbers. They were his companions and his solace, living, breathing beings that enveloped him with their shapes and textures and colors.

He still loves them and needs them; he can still do extraordinary things with them, like perform complicated calculations instantly in his head, far beyond the capacity of an ordinary calculator. But Mr. Tammet, who at the age of 25 received a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism, has made a difficult and self-conscious journey out from his own mind.

“I live in two countries, one of the mind and one of the body, one of numbers and one of people,” he said recently. Slight and soft-spoken, dressed in a T-shirt and casual combat-style pants, he sat cross-legged in his living room and sipped a cup of tea, one of several he drinks at set times each day.

Not so long ago, even a conversation like this one would have been prohibitively difficult for Mr. Tammet, now 28. As he describes in his newly published memoir, “Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant” (Free Press), he has willed himself to learn what to do. Offer a visitor a drink; look her in the eye; don’t stand in someone else’s space. These are all conscious decisions.

Recently, some friends warned him that in his eagerness to make eye contact, he tended to stare too intently. “It’s like being on a tightrope,” he said. “If you try too hard, you’ll come off. But you have to try.” More