Howard Button, a college dropout from Detroit, has lived three extraordinary lives.
In one, he was a mild-mannered, clumsy and wordless red-nosed clown named Buffo. It sold out theaters around the world. Critics compared him to Charlie Chaplin and Harpo Marx.
In another, she volunteered as an aide with autistic children, went back to school to earn a doctorate in psychology, helped pioneer autism treatments and opened a treatment center.
He squeezed in a third life as a novelist. “Brit,” written in the voice of a distraught 8-year-old boy, flopped in the U.S. but became an incredible “Catcher in the Rye” in France, where it sold nearly a million copies. became And mild anxiety – a cultural sensation.
“Howard Button is a kind of moving poem,” French writer and actor Claude Devanton wrote in the introduction to “Buffo” (2005), a biography of Mr. Boutin. “Images emanate from it, creating a slow music, a concentrated adage like ripples on water.”
Mr Boutin died on January 3 at an assisted living facility near his home in Ploumoderen, France, a town in coastal Brittany. He was 74 years old.
His partner and only immediate survivor, Jacqueline Hewitt, said the cause was a neurodegenerative disorder.
Mr. Boutin’s three lives converged when he moved to France in 1981 after the unexpected success of “Brit,” which was published in French under a new title, “When I Was Five I Killed Myself.” Dala” — the first sentence of the novel.
By day, Mr Boutin volunteered at an autism clinic before setting up his own center in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. In the evenings, in nightclubs and theaters he was Buffo — an act that won him a Moliere in 1998, the equivalent of a Tony Award. He wrote The novel During free moments in cafes, trains and back seats of taxis.
To organize his polymathic life, Mr. Boutin used a color-coded system in his calendar: yellow and orange ink for Buffo performances, black for appointments at the autism center, blue for blocking time for writing. “I manage these three aspects of my life very well,” he told In 2003, the Swiss newspaper Le Temps. “They are all important to me.”
They were not as different as they might seem.
After leaving the University of Michigan in 1970, Mr. Boutin attended Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College in Venice, Fla. He toured with a circus for two years, then returned to Detroit and invented Buffo—an homage to the famous Swiss clown. Groka pantomiming, musical instrument-playing, white-faced simpleton.
A star was not born.
“Howie was going absolutely nowhere,” his childhood friend Jim Bernsteindirector 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 ran away. He was in a terrible place.”
Hoping to lift himself up by doing some good in the world, Mr. Boutin volunteered at a center for developmentally disabled children in Detroit. It was 1974, six years ago Quality The diagnosis of autism was established by the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
The first child he met was 4-year-old Adam Shelton.
“He bit and he butted and he pinched and he hit himself and others,” Mr Boutin wrote. “Through the Glass Wall: A Journey into the Closed World of the Autistic”. (2004). “He had no language. He would not come when called. He would not sit quietly in a chair.
Mr. Button worked with Adam almost every day. Unable to communicate with him, Mr. Boutin decides to imitate his actions – “When he shakes, shakes, when he flaps his hands, flaps my hands, when he screams and hums, ” he wrote.
One day Adam (peace be upon him) started imitating him.
Surprised, Mr. Boutin maintains the approach, eventually using imitation to teach Adam acceptable social behavior and more than a dozen words. Although the method Mr Bouton stumbled upon was not entirely new, studies have shown that the technique – called interpersonal analogy training – is a helpful treatment for autism.
While treating Adam, Mr. Button also stumbles upon a persona for Buffo: a clown who can sing and make noises but is unable to speak.
“What I learned is how to be autistic,” Mr. Boutin told The San Francisco Examiner in 1981. “It goes right to Buffo – his mannerisms, speech patterns (or lack thereof), physical behavior and perceptions of reality are all real. Autistic is a kind of stupid savant syndrome that is Buffo: cute, infantile, absolutely. Innocent.
Adam was also in Mr. Boutin’s mind when he wrote “Brit” (1981), which sold fewer than 10,000 copies in the U.S. but is still read in French schools.
“It’s about a kid in a mental institution who is thought to be disturbed,” Mr. Boutin told the Detroit Free Press in 1981. “I wrote it from the child’s point of view because I don’t think he’s worried.” used to be.”
Early in the novel, Burt wanders around the institution alone.
“I was sleeping,” Burt says. “I sat on my bed. It’s got sheets. There’s a blanket in the house. It’s blue. I’ve had it since I was a kid. My mom wants to throw it away but I won’t let it go. But once I Did something. I pee on blankie. It smelled so strong.”
Howard Allen Button was born on July 28, 1950 in Detroit. His father, Ben Boutin, was a lawyer. His mother, Dorothy (Fleischer) Button, was a tap dancer and vaudeville performer growing up.
Howie was extraordinary and artistic.
While his mother taught him to sing and dance, he taught himself to be a ventriloquist. He told the San Francisco Examiner that his first time singing was in a synagogue “like a junior cantor.” “I thought it was religious but it was really showbiz.”
He studied Far Eastern studies at the University of Michigan, but spent most of his time skipping class and being a clown. Determined to pursue a career in real clowning, Mr. Button did the math.
“I could go to clown college for 13 weeks and be a clown,” he told his friends. “Or I could go to the University of Michigan for two more years and be a clown.”
Despite not completing college, he earned a doctorate in clinical psychology in 1986 from Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California, opening his clinic, the Adam Shelton Center, in 1996. “Brit” was re-released in the United States with its French title. In 2000, this time to redefine.
“Burt Holden narrates in the most charming voice since Caulfield,” Rick Whittaker said In a Washington Post review, he added that Mr. Boutin was “too good for the French to leave alone.”
The French loved Mr. Boutin in a way Americans never did, a mystery that puzzled him throughout his life. He was made one. Chevalier of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture in 1991.
Mr. Boutin returned to America intermittently to perform as Buffo. In 2004, it played a two-night stand at Cal State LA’s State Playhouse—a Los Angeles Times review describing the performance as “a sweet-hearted romp of existential tomfoolery and Sage Fahmy.”
Culture clonesA French magazine once asked him what happened when he left the stage.
“Buffo disappears, and Howard comes back,” he said. “That’s why I feel awkward during the applause — Buffo is shy, and Howard doesn’t like to take credit for himself.”