Autistic Reader Interview: Jay Edelson
Everything Is True
Ada Hoffmann's author newsletter
Jay Edelson (he/him) is a queer autist in his mid-twenties still figuring out what he's going to do with his life. He enjoys reading comics and books, drawing, and taking walks around his neighborhood. Some of his special interests include conceptual metaphor, puzzles of all kinds, and oracle decks.
Tell me a little bit about yourself. Is there anything you've written or made recently that you'd like other readers to know about? Other than what's in your bio, is there anything about your connection to autism, books, and reading that you'd like to share?
I mentioned reading comics in my bio, and I'm going to stretch the original intent of this interview a little and mostly talk about those. Comics exist in a funny relationship to books-- they often are book-shaped, and we say that we read comics, not that we watch or play or listen to them. But they're not the same, even though a lot of people still treat them as "reading lite". Visual communication can do things that text alone cannot (and vice versa!) and a lot of the visual techniques that are closest to my heart are things I find relatable on an autistic level.
What are some of the characters in fiction that you find most relatable? Some autistic readers love autistic representation, and others prefer aliens, robots, or characters who they relate to in a subtler way; do you notice any patterns in the kinds of characters that resonate for you?
I mentioned that I don't know of any openly autistic cartoonists, and unfortunately I also know very few canonically autistic comics characters-- the only ones I can name off the top of my head are Joyce and Dina from Dumbing of Age. However, I actually really enjoy finding autistic headcanons! To me there's something more personal about recognizing autism on my own, rather than being specifically told that it's there.
Of course, autistic people can be very different and not every character who I headcanon as autistic is similar to me! One character I do really relate to is the nameless protagonist of a city inside (Tillie Walden). She's someone who intensely needs time to be alone and space to wander, which I relate to. She also shares my experience of enjoying eye contact only with people I love and trust, and even then finding it intense and intimate. That detail about her isn't ever said in words, rather it's communicated visually in the moments where eye contact is depicted, which I think is really cool.
Are there any tropes you really, especially love?
I really enjoy identifying tropes and patterns that speak to me, and they tend to be so specific that I get to name them myself! There's one I call the Reunion Scene, where two people with a complex-but-loving relationship finally come back together in a bittersweet way. That one comes from O Human Star (Blue Delliquanti) and Umbrella (Sonia Liao). And there's another one where someone is brought back from the brink of death by evil forces who want to use them as a pawn, and they have to reclaim their life as their own. The most obvious example of that is one I got from movies-- Bucky Barnes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe-- but in terms of comics there's also Finder: Dream Sequence (Carla Speed McNeil) and Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle (CLAMP), as well as a narrative video game called The Ice-Bound Concordance (Aaron A. Reed and Jacob Garbe).
Both those tropes, and many others I've identified in my favorite stories, speak to my personal life and experience in ways that aren't always easy to explain, but always significant to who I am. That's why I enjoy looking for them-- they're ways of understanding myself.
Have you ever had a special interest in a fiction series or genre of fiction? What makes a work of fiction special-interest-worthy for you - or do the interests seem to descend at random?
Honestly, a lot of the titles I've already mentioned have been special interests at one time or another! One I haven't brought up yet is Island Book (Evan Dahm)-- mostly just the first one, even though it's a trilogy. That's a good way to talk about what makes something a special interest or not, actually.
All three books in the series have the same main characters and were made by the same person, but the first one is very different from the second and third. What that one has (and the other two lack) is a systematicity to the way the story is laid out. There's three kids who come from three different islands, who have different but parallel experiences of ostracization. Whereas the second and third books are broader, messier stories with more characters and less parallelism. In the first book, each kid and their island has a strong unifying aesthetic, but the second and third books take place in a globalizing world where those aesthetics have gotten jumbled together.
There's something appealing about a story that feels like it has some system behind the way the world works. My biggest-ever fictional special interest is O Human Star (Blue Delliquanti), which has a complicated tapestry of symbols and motifs woven all through it. I know a lot of people's special interests have to do with sorting and categorizing, and I think my fiction special interests tend to come from that same place.
Is there anything else you'd like to share?
I'd like to share some advice: you don't have to conform to neurotypical models of how to enjoy things, whether that's books or comics or anything else. Lots of people are eager to judge the kinds of stories you read, the amount of time you spend on them, and your ways of experiencing and expressing the joy they bring you. You don't have to listen to their judgements! I spent a lot of time as a teenager writing literary analyses of my favorite comics for fun. People thought I was weird, but years later, those comics are still fond memories and I've mostly forgotten the people who judged me. Your joy is important, and I hope you value and protect it!
This month at Everything Is True, we’re interviewing a wide variety of autistic readers with questions like these! You can find a schedule with the rest of the interviews here.