Howard Buten, autism therapist, novelist and clown, dies at the age of 74

Howard Buten, a Detroit college dropout, led three extraordinary lives.

In one, he was an affectionate, clumsy and mute red-nosed clown named Buffo. It sold out cinema tickets all over the world. Critics compared him to Charlie Chaplin and Harpo Marx.

In another, he volunteered as a caregiver for autistic children, went back to school to earn a doctorate in psychology, helped pioneer autism therapy, and opened a treatment center.

He pressed on with his third life as a novelist. “Burt,” written in the voice of a troubled 8-year-old boy, flopped in the United States but improbably achieved “Catcher in the Rye” status in France, where it sold nearly a million copies and, to his amusement, became worry – cultural sensation.

“Howard Buten is a kind of walking poem,” wrote French writer and actor Claude Duneton in the introduction to Buten’s autobiography “Buffo” (2005). “Images emanate from it, creating ponderous music, a concentric adagio like ripples on water.”

Mr. Buten died on Jan. 3 at a care center near his home in Plomodiern, France, a town on the Brittany coast. He was 74 years antique.

His partner and sole survivor, Jacqueline Huet, said the cause was a neurodegenerative disease.

Buten’s three lives intertwined when he moved to France in 1981 after the unexpected success of “Burt”, which was published in French under a fresh title: “When I was five years antique, I killed myself” – which was the first sentence of the novel.

During the day, Buten volunteered at an autism clinic and then set up his own center in Saint-Denis, a suburb of Paris. In the evenings, he played the role of Buffo in nightclubs and theaters – an actor who won Molière, the equivalent of a Tony Award, in 1998. He wrote novels during free time in cafes, on trains and in the back of taxis.

To organize his polymath life, Mr. Buten used a color-coded system in his calendar: yellow and orange ink for Buffo performances, black for visits to the autism center, blue for blocking time for writing. “I deal with these three aspects of my life quite well,” he said he said the Swiss newspaper Le Temps in 2003. “I need everyone.”

They weren’t as different as you might think.

After leaving the University of Michigan in 1970, Buten signed on with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College in Venice, Florida. He toured with the circus for two years before returning to Detroit and inventing Buffo, a sort of homage to the eminent Swiss clown Grock, a pantomiming, white-faced simpleton playing musical instruments.

A star was not born.

“Howie was going nowhere” – his childhood friend Jim Burnsteinthe director of the screenwriting program at the University of Michigan said in an interview. “He wrote a novel that no one wanted. His girlfriend broke up with him. His dog Frank was run over. He was in a terrible place.”

Hoping to lift his spirits by doing something good in the world, Mr. Buten volunteered at a center for children with developmental disabilities in Detroit. This took place in 1974, six years earlier criteria for the diagnosis of autism was developed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association.

The first child he met was 4-year-old Adam Shelton.

“He bit, head-butted, pinched and hit himself and others,” Buten wrote in his book Through the Glass Wall: Journeys into the Closed Worlds of Autistic People (2004). “He didn’t know the language. He didn’t come when called. He wouldn’t sit still in a chair.”

Mr. Buten worked with Adam almost every day. Unable to communicate with him, Buten decided to imitate his behavior – “he swayed as he swayed, waved his arms as he waved his arms, screamed and hummed as he shouted and hummed,” he wrote.

One day Adam started imitating him.

Intrigued, Buten continued this approach, eventually using imitation to teach Adam acceptable social behavior and a dozen words. Although the method Buten came across wasn’t entirely fresh, research has shown that the technique – called reciprocal imitation training – is a helpful treatment for autism.

While treating Adam, Buten also came across the character Buffo: a clown who can sing and make noise, but cannot speak.

“I’ve learned how to be autistic,” Mr. Buten told The San Francisco Examiner in 1981. “This goes right to the heart of Buffo — his mannerisms, speech patterns (or lack thereof), physical behavior and perception of reality are truly autistic. Buffo is a kind of idiot-intelligent syndrome: lovable, infantile, completely innocent.

Adam also had Mr. Buten in mind when he wrote “Burt” (1981), which sold less than 10,000 copies in the United States but is still read in French schools.

“It’s a story about a child in a mental hospital who is considered disturbed,” Mr. Buten told the Detroit Free Press in 1981. “I wrote it from the point of view of the child because I don’t think he is disturbed. ” He added: “The point of this book is to say that adults generally do not understand children, even though they once were children.”

At the beginning of the novel, Burt wanders the institution alone.

“I was sleepy,” Burt says. “I sat down on the bed. It has sheets. Blanke is at home. He is blue. I’ve had it since I was a child. My mom wants to throw it away, but I won’t let her. But one time I did something. I peed on Blankee. He smelled very sharp.

Howard Alan Buten was born on July 28, 1950 in Detroit. His father, Ben Buten, was a lawyer. His mother, Dorothy (Fleisher) Buten, was a tap dancer and vaudeville performer while growing up.

Howie was precocious and artistic.

After his mother taught him to sing and dance, he taught himself to be a ventriloquist. He made his first vocal performance in a synagogue “as a junior cantor,” he told The San Francisco Examiner. “I thought it was a religious thing, but really it was showbiz.”

He majored in Far Eastern studies at the University of Michigan, but spent most of his time skipping classes and clowning around. Determined to pursue a career as a true clown, Buten did the math.

“I could go to clown college for 13 weeks and become a clown,” he told his friends. “Or I could go to the University of Michigan for another two years and become a clown.”

Although he never graduated from college, he earned a doctorate in clinical psychology from Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara, California in 1986. His clinic, the Adam Shelton Center, opened in 1996. “Burt” was reissued in the United States under French title in 2000, this time due to newfound recognition.

“Burt has one of the most charming voices since Holden Caulfield” – Rick Whitaker he said in a review for The Washington Post, adding that Buten was “too good to be left to the French alone.”

The French adored Mr. Buten in a way Americans never did, and the mystery puzzled him all his life. It was made A Knight of Arts and Letters awarded by the French Ministry of Culture in 1991.

Buten occasionally returned to the United States to perform as Buffo. In 2004, he played two nights at the State Playhouse at Cal State in Los Angeles – a performance in a Los Angeles Times review that was described as “a charming whirlwind of existential antics and wise understanding.”

Cultural clowna 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 applause – Buffo is shy and Howard doesn’t like to take credit on his behalf.”