Howard Bouten, a college dropout from Detroit, juggled three extraordinary lives.
In one, he was a sweet, clumsy, mute red-nosed clown named Buffo. He sold out theaters around the world. Critics compared him to Charlie Chaplin and Harpo Marx.
In another example, he volunteered as an advocate for children with autism, went back to school to earn a PhD in psychology, helped pioneer treatments for autism, and opened a treatment center. I did.
He began his third life as a novelist. “Bart,'' written in the voice of an upset eight-year-old boy, was a huge flop in the United States, but in France it incredibly achieved the status of “The Catcher in the Rye,'' selling nearly a million copies and leading to his It turned out like this. And a little bit of regret, it's a cultural feeling.
“Howard Bouten is a kind of walking poem,” wrote French writer and actor Claude Duneton in the preface to Mr. Bouten's autobiography, Buffo (2005). “Images emanate from him, creating slow music, an adagio of concentric circles like ripples on water.”
Bouten died on January 3 at a nursing home near his home in Promodien, a town on the coast of Brittany, France. He was 74 years old.
His partner and sole survivor, Jacqueline Huet, said the cause was a neurodegenerative disease.
Mr. Bouten's three lives began when he moved to France in 1981 following the unexpected success of his novel “Bult” and wrote the novel's first sentence, “When I was five years old, I committed suicide.” The title merged when it was published in French.
Mr. Bouten volunteered at an autism clinic during the day, then set up his own center in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis. At night, he played buffo in nightclubs and theaters, and in 1998 he won the Molière Award, the equivalent of the Tony Award. He wrote novels in his free time at cafes, on trains, and in the back of taxis.
To organize the polymath's life, Buten used a color-coding system for his calendar. Yellow and orange ink blocks out buffer performances, black with autism center appointments, and blue with writing time. “I manage these three aspects of my life very well,” he told the Swiss newspaper Le Temps in 2003. “Those are all things I need.”
They weren't as different as they seemed.
After dropping out of the University of Michigan in 1970, Mr. Bouten attended Ringling Bros. & Burnham & Bailey Clown College in Venice, Florida. After touring with a circus for two years, he returned to Detroit and invented a type of circus called Buffo. A tribute to Glock, the famous Swiss clown who performed pantomimes, played musical instruments, and wore a white face.
No star was born.
“Howie never really went anywhere,” Jim Bernstein, a childhood friend and director of the University of Michigan's screenwriting program, said in an interview. “He wrote a novel that no one wanted. His girlfriend broke up with him. His dog Frank got run over. He was in a horrible place.”
Wanting to do some good in the world and get back on her feet, Buten volunteered at a center for children with developmental disabilities in Detroit. This was in 1974, six years before the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders established diagnostic criteria for autism.
The first child he met was a four-year-old named Adam Shelton.
“He bit, headbutted, pinched, and slapped himself and others,” Bouten wrote in “Through the Glass Wall: A Journey into the Closed World of an Autistic Person” (2004). ) is written in “He had no language. He didn't come when I called him. He wouldn't sit still in his chair.”
Mr. Bouten worked with Adam almost every day. Unable to communicate with him, Ms. Bouten decided to imitate his actions: “When he shakes, I shake, when he flaps his hands, I flap my hands, when he screams, “I screamed and hummed when I hummed,” he wrote.
One day Adam started imitating him.
Intrigued, Mr. Bouten continued his approach, eventually using imitation to teach Adam acceptable social behavior and more than a dozen words. The method Bouten stumbled upon wasn't entirely new, but studies have shown that the technique, called reciprocal imitation training, can help treat autism.
In treating Adam, Mr. Bouten also stumbled upon the persona of Buffo, a clown who could sing and make noise but could not speak.
“What I learned is how to be autistic,” Bouten told the San Francisco Examiner in 1981. Autistic. A type of Idiot Savant Syndrome, that's what Buffer is all about: endearing, infantile, and completely innocent. ”
Adam also had Mr. Bouten in mind when he wrote Bart (1981), which sold fewer than 10,000 copies in the United States but is still read in French schools. .
“This is a story about a child who is thought to be mentally ill and is in a psychiatric hospital,” Bouten told the Detroit Free Press in 1981. He added, “The whole point of this book is about how ordinary adults don't understand children, even though they were once children.''
Early in the novel, Bart wanders around the facility alone.
“I was sleepy,” Bart says. “I was sitting on the bed. It has a sheet. All we have at home is a blanket. He's blue. I've had him since he was a baby. My mother wanted to throw him away. But one time I urinated on the blanket and it smelled very pungent.''
Howard Alan Bouten was born on July 28, 1950 in Detroit. His father, Ben Bouten, was a lawyer. His mother, Dorothy (Fleischer) Bouten, was a tap dancer and vaudeville performer from an early age.
Howie was precocious and artistic.
After being taught to sing and dance by his mother, he taught himself to be a ventriloquist. His first singing gig was at a synagogue “as a kind of junior cantor,” he told the San Francisco Examiner. “I thought it was a religious thing, but it was actually showbiz.”
He majored in Far Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan, but spent most of his time skipping class and goofing around. Determined to pursue a career as a real clown, Buten did the math.
“You can become a clown if you go to clown college for 13 weeks,” he told his friends. “Or you can go to the University of Michigan for two more years and become a clown.”
Although he never graduated from college, he earned a doctorate in clinical psychology from the Fielding Graduate School in Santa Barbara, California, in 1986, and his clinic, the Adam Shelton Center, opened in 1996. . “Bart” was reissued in the United States with a French title. In 2000, it received new recognition, this time.
In his review for the Washington Post, Rick Whittaker said, “Mr. Burt has the most charming narration voice since Holden Caulfield,'' and that Mr. Buten was “too good to be left to the French alone.'' He is also very good,” he added.
The French revere Mr. Bouten in a way that Americans never did, and the mystery will puzzle him for the rest of his life. he In 1991, he received the Order of Arts and Letters from the French Ministry of Culture.
Mr. Bouten returned to the United States sporadically to play Buffo. In 2004, he performed for two consecutive nights at the State Playhouse at California State University, Los Angeles. A review in the Los Angeles Times described the performance as “a sweet swirl of existential idiocy and enlightened understanding.”
French magazine Culture Crown once asked him what happened after he left the stage.
“Buffo disappeared and Howard came back,” he said. “That's why it feels awkward when we're clapping. Buffa is shy and Howard doesn't like to take credit for himself.”
