241 Pizza

“I took an early offer of just over one million dollars.”

My jaw drops, though I catch it before it hits the table. “What?” I say. “One million, as in one million?”

“It was very worrisome to me, seeing those kinds of numbers,” he says, looking at me directly, if fleetingly. His face shows little emotion but, if it did, it would have looked pained. He explains his analysis: an advance is based on royalties and, since all his ten publishers said his book would be around for ever, then the advance was, actually, immaterial. Logically, then, what mattered most was getting the right publisher. I would soon learn that logic is everything to John: he sees Mr Spock as an Aspergian role model. (That’s not a joke, either.)

He finds the subject of his advance embarrassing. “I see so many people who spend years writing a novel. You meet people like that. I come along and I write this book and sell it for this huge amount of money. It’s almost like, it’s a, um… To me, no matter how you look at it, it reflects badly on me. It suggests I have an arrogant excess of talent or there was some kind of inside trick. There was no such thing. I just wrote the book and that was the reception.”

Well, I can see why publishers were so keen. The book itself is really three books. John has had a life that is humanity’s version of extreme sport. Even without the Asperger’s he would have had an appalling childhood. Truly, even the Grimm brothers could not have found a way to make it worse. His father, a philosophy professor, was a drunk who hit the sherry bottle and his sons. His mother had periodic episodes of madness in which she imagined murder plots and talked to light fixtures. This would, at times, lead her to being locked up. They fought endlessly. John was a misfit in a horrendous situation that, day by day, only got worse.

This is no misery memoir, however. He is a gifted storyteller with a deadpan sense of humour and the book is a rollicking read. For when John dropped out of high school, he did not drop out of life. Instead he took his almost savant-like ability in electronics and applied it to – wait for it – guitars. This is the man who invented the smoking guitar that billowed round the world on Kiss tours. He was a geek rock and roller (he only loved the electronics, not the coke or groupies). Later he would decide to go back to repairing cars, specialising in British ones. His success at this business has made him – and this is painfully important to him – acceptable to the normal world.

Then, of course, there is the Asperger’s. He admits that he doesn’t mind being a poster boy (indeed, he welcomes it if it helps others), and the book is a primer. The negatives include: not looking at others, a lack of empathy, an obsession with facts, a rebelliousness, an inability to make small talk. He has trouble with normal names: he called his younger brother Varmint and his parents Slave and Stupid. His first wife was Little Bear and their son, now 17, was instantly christened Cubby. His second wife, Martha, is called Unit 2. She is the middle one of three sisters who are, of course, Unit 1 and Unit 3, who is, of course, married to 3b. Her parents, almost unbelievably, are Unit Zeros. It’s really very strange, until you realise it’s just the way he is.

Also, just to add another layer of craziness to the story, his brother is Augusten Burroughs, the celebrated author who wrote the bestselling memoir Running With Scissors (he changed his name from Chris Robison). This means that Augusten was, of course, Varmint. “But,” I say, “didn’t he mind being called Varmint?”

“Why would he mind being called Varmint?” demands John.

“Well,” I say, “because varmints are things you want to get rid of.”

John snorts. “How would he know? He was four years old!”

That logic thing can get very irritating, as you can see. Actually, Augusten’s life was so ghastly that being called Varmint may not have even registered. He has written a foreword to John’s book and will help with some of the publicity. John did not ask his help with the writing.

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