Mary Renault’s Autistic Cupboard

Mary Renault piled her clutter into cupboards, bureaus, and drawers. The room definitely looked better but her life hadn’t gained anything by way of organization. Squared away, everything in order, clean lines—that’s the impression her surroundings now gave, and I suspect the impression was for her too, not just visitors. She wanted the look because she was unsure about much else. There are central principles that turn mere activity into desired results. Some of those principles weren’t lost on her, and she did well by them. Some others she couldn’t locate and the absence left her feeling at sea in a chronic, lifelong way. She was permanently behind the curve regarding certain basics of existence, things that most people have as standard issue, and she felt it. That’s my theory.

Brace yourself, a famous figure’s being discussed as a possible autistic. The case is a smattering of facts, nothing weighty. But as I wonder about my autistic self, I see how other people look when the light falls a certain way. Renault couldn’t understand why her fellow writers wanted to let an unqualified author (all he’d written was a manual about birds) into their chapter of PEN. He was black and she opposed apartheid, and now the chapter might use its bit of power to create a chink in apartheid’s wall. But he wasn’t an author by the group’s own written standards, and she couldn’t fathom how events might proceed past that point.

Her obstacle when she started writing fiction was a linearity that kept her from jumping to those incidents that actually made up her story. She proceeded with her nose to the surface, making sure she wrote about a character putting on his shoes, combing his hair, drinking his coffee, boarding a trolley, and arriving at work before he got into a fight with his boss. When she found her calling as a historical novelist she proceeded nose to surface in a different, more productive way. Now she nailed down each fact and inched along in her research until she felt sure she knew where her fictional world was solid; only then she could begin writing. Before becoming a writer she was a nurse, a profession that revolves around execution of detailed instructions. I mean that Renault had an autist’s need to orient herself around some small thing, something plain and graspable that indicated she was doing all right, she was probably on target.

Good looks are one such indicator, though not the best. A rather craggy lesbian, Renault had a lifetime affinity for broad-shouldered, clean-profiled men. When she was in college she doted on Edward, prince of Wales, the future King Edward VIII and a fine image of manhood except when it came to brains and character. To my mind, much of the autistic lifestyle is realizing your immense limitations and then trying to keep them away from your mental view. New York City stuck big plastic decals of daisies onto abandoned buildings so the city wouldn’t look so bad. Mary Renault glimpsed that she wasn’t a fully equipped person and slotted in a simple, look-at-this substitute for what a full person should be: a man who looks like a high-end clothing ad, with the slim hips and the wide shoulders and the cheekbones. (In the case of Edward, this person was applauded at large as Britain’s finest specimen, so there was something else for the young Renault to fall back on—“everybody says so, we’re all in on this.”)

Alexander was considered a monster by some. Willful paradox, Renault said, he was obviously a hero. The elements are there: he wanted union with Persia, not outright spoilage; he had lush hair and fair skin; his story was one of upward success until a youthful encounter with death. On the other hand, a tough Macedonian general was said to shudder whenever he passed Alexander’s statue, and Alexander’s union would’ve been built on a great many casualties. It was all a long time ago, only certain facts are left, one angle or another can change their look. But Renault couldn’t tilt her head and see this different look; she ruled it out. The beau fine thing—not just Alexander but his legend—had to stay fine or the world came undone. Nor, at PEN, could she move her eye past a plain rule and at least consider whether a greater good might be served. Nor could she accept that a storyteller might accept some historical facts and reject others; the idea left her aghast. The world needed an anchor, and sometimes that anchor was a fine profile, at other times a bylaw, at other times an ironbound, 100 percent fact endorsed by experts. Without them, no anchor; everything threatened to come loose.

Renault could inch her way, detail by detail, to wrap up some giant task and meanwhile her cupboard overflowed with papers and they didn’t matter if she wasn’t looking at them. She could also write novels that a million people wanted to read. Her limitations certainly weren’t the biggest thing about her. But they attract me. When I line them up, I see what I mean by an autist.