Big Reading and Big Stumbling: Does anyone else read like this? Is Neurodivergent reading a thing?

My relationship with reading and books feels a bit phantasmagorical and surprising to me, up until the age of 20 I had never picked up or read a book of my own volition. I went to a shit school and none of my friends read, my mum reads but not in a highbrow way, just on the toilet at night because she can’t sleep. 

I don’t really know how it happened, but I saw Camu’s The Outsider in a shop in Brighton next to some world cinema DVD’s that I was wanting to purchase and I picked it up and bought it because I think it was only about a quid. World cinema DVD’s is also a surprise because I grew up in a cultural cesspit and had no adult inspiration pushing culture and I was studying Accountancy and Finance at university, so no inspiration there. 

I read the book pretty quickly cover to cover and felt this whoosh of recognition that the words within it contained something I had been searching for without really ever knowing, I had this deep listless sense of disappointment with the world and how banal it all felt and suddenly I felt something ignite within that felt not only worth pursuing but impossible to ignore. 

I was at the end of my third year at uni and quickly looked up philosophy masters and applied at Brighton uni within a few days of seeing that they offered one. The interview totally baffled the head of the course, but I think also delighted him that I was a true convert from the dark side of accountancy and had been miraculously enlightened by one book. 

From this point on I became obsessed with reading, it was close to all I did. I literally inhaled books, and not light reading either. I had been set on a pretty challenging reading list over the summer to get me up to speed enough to take on a philosophy masters without even really knowing what philosophy was. I really didn’t understand what I was reading, yet somehow I did, my mind was so stimulated and full of shapes and colours and when it came to writing essays I still didn’t feel like I had a clue what I was doing yet I got a 2:1 for my first essay and was totally blown away. 

I continued to read as I travelled to India for a 6 month holiday - the book shops in India all seemed to sell George Orwell and Bertrand Russell so I read loads of that, and really hold onto Bertrand’s essay “In Praise of Idleness” and Orwell’s essay about killing an Elephant. I can remember the unfolding landscape of India as I think about these books and can even remember that I was wearing a H&M green t-shirt and some Levis chords for much of the reading. 

I later went on a trip by train from Berlin to Bangkok, and took some reading for the trans siberian leg, I decided to do the whole thing in two big chunks because I wanted to know what it felt like to be on a train for 6 whole days - I took Ulysses and Heidegger's Being and Time.  Both heavy books that totally baffled me. I only chose Ulysses because someone told me it was the best book ever written, so I thought I’d like to read it. I hadn’t realised that there were books that were cool or clever to read, I didn’t know anyone who read and I was just going for it. The 6 days were a dazzling blur and I felt awful when I got off the train, partly because I had taken terrible food, only almonds and porridge oats, and partly because of the weird phenomena of being jet lagged from a train.  

After this trip I ended up living at my sister’s for a period of time where I had some kind of agonising arthritis post my trips and breaking up with my girlfriend - part suppressed emotions, part first sign of neurodivergent burnout. I remember reading Robert Musil’s A Man Without Qualities, whilst listening to Elliott Smith almost non stop, whilst consuming the entire What the Fuck section on Love film… this was a good, and awful time in my life. 

I then discovered William Burroughs and got pretty obsessed with the nonsensical surrealism of his writing, but mainly the effect it had on me of painting insane images in my mind that were so full and vivid that it felt like an incredible experience, but one that would spit me out and find me telling people “sorry I’m a bit spaced out, I’ve been reading all day” - and I would literally read all day. 

I then moved onto early 20th century or maybe 19th century French writers like Louis Ferdidand Celine, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Raymond Queneu - why, I have no idea, and where from, I have no idea. And within this I also read the Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa, a book that totally blew my mind… I also read Kafka, but after the Trial, which I loved, I felt like it was all the same but I still find I love his quotes.  

My next step and next travels took me to Nepal and obsessively reading Murakami - I read IQ84 whilst walking up to Annapurna base camp, I was really into it, and what I love it that the only books that were on sale in the shop I bought The Outsider from were, Murakami, Orwell and Camus. 

I still read today, but nothing like I had before… what it felt like was that from growing up in a place with no culture I somehow had a deep longing for it, and I found something that could feed me and I ate quickly and furiously until I was full. I now read less often, and pretty much only female authors, I love Jenny Diski, Sheila Heti and Maggie Nelson to name a few. I found that male writers seem to ruin the writing by trying to force something onto you in a way that female writers don’t seem to.  I find the female voice more open, honest and trustworthy. Though I do still love Karl Ove Knausgard. 

 I still return to my time of big reading with memories of real pleasure, it was through reading that I became a person and was no longer lost and listlessly wandering around the place. 

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