Woody Brown's debut novel, "Upward Bound," has achieved best-seller status, reaching Amazon's top-10 list following a promotional appearance on the Today show. However, the 28-year-old author, who communicates by pointing to letters on a board due to severe autism, faces mounting skepticism regarding the authenticity of his writing method. Journalist Dan Engber of The Atlantic recently highlighted concerns, questioning whether Brown or his mother, Mary Brown, is the true author of the critically acclaimed work. This controversy reignites long-standing debates surrounding Facilitated Communication (FC) and its derivative, Rapid Prompting Method (RPM).
The core of the skepticism stems from Brown's communication technique, which involves him pointing to letters on a laminated board while his mother, Mary, interprets and voices his messages. Critics, including linguist Katharine Beals, who has studied such methods for decades, observed footage of Brown's letter-pointing and concluded, "You can see that he’s not pointing to the letters." This raises questions about the independent authorship of the novel, which has been praised as "deeply heartfelt and moving" by Today show co-host Jenna Bush Hager.
Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) and its predecessor, Facilitated Communication (FC), have been widely disavowed by professional organizations, including the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), which labels them as "pseudoscience." These methods are criticized for the "Ouija-board effect," where facilitators may unconsciously influence the communication, leading to messages that reflect the facilitator's thoughts rather than the individual with autism. ASHA warns of "serious harm" due to potential misleading communication.
Despite the controversy, Brown, through his mother, has defended his method. In a statement to The Atlantic, he reportedly spelled, "I can understand why people are curious—even skeptical—about my method of communication." He added, "It is mysterious and confounding to see a severely autistic nonspeaker perform acts of scholarship and fiction writing if you don’t presume intelligence in a disabled person." His mother, Mary Brown, who holds a master's degree in English literature and previously worked as a script analyst, has been a constant presence throughout his education and writing process.
Hogarth, an imprint of Penguin Random House and Brown's publisher, maintains confidence in the book's authorship. The novel's editor, David Ebershoff, stated that the book is "Woody’s" and "illuminates lives too often left out of society and literature." This stance comes even as some literary figures who mentored Brown acknowledge the "vagaries of collaboration" and the possibility of interpretation at play. The success of "Upward Bound" continues to fuel a complex discussion about neurodiversity, communication, and authorship in the literary world.
