The Forbidden Experiment - by Roger Shattuck (Paperback)

About the Book

"Just before dawn on January 9, 1800, a mysterious creature emerged from a forest in southern France. Although he was human in form and walked upright, his habits were those of a young male animal. He was wearing only a tattered shirt, but did not seem troubled by the cold. Showing no modesty about his nakedness, he ate greedily, seizing roasted potatoes from a hot fire. He seemed to have no language skills, only grunting occasionally. A cause celebre developed over the question of what should be done with this puzzling wild boy. People Could he learn to speak? Or be taught to eat with a knife and fork? In THE FORBIDDEN EXPERIMENT, the award-winning cultural historian Roger Shattuck offers a captivating account of this fascinating episode in intellectual history. He examines the relationships that developed among the boy, soon named Victor; Madame Guerin, the woman who fed and washed him; and Itard, the tutor who defiled his colleagues who believed the boy was hopelessly retarded. Shattuck helps modern readers form many of the questions that still haunt parents, special education teachers, guidance counselors, and all students of human behavior to this How do children acquire language? How do deaf and mute children learn? Can children who have been neglected or abused ever learn to trust the world? Like a true-life tale of adventure rolled into a detective story, Roger Shattuck's riveting account of the Wild Boy of Aveyron is an unforgettable telling of one of history's greatest mystery stories"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

The true story of the nineteenth century's so-called "Wild Boy of Aveyron"--an abandoned French child who lived for years alone in the wilderness before being brought under the care of an innovative young physician.

"Before dawn on January 9, 1800, a remarkable creature came out of the woods near the village of Saint-Sernin in southern France." So begins Roger Shattuck's book about the so-called Wild Boy of Aveyron--a child abandoned by his caretakers and captured, years later, while scavenging food from a garden. Unable to speak, he was sent to the National Institute for the Deaf in Paris, declared a hopeless case, and left to languish.
One day, however, Jean Itard, a young medical student from the provinces, took notice of the boy. Itard began to spend time with him, and soon the two found ways to interact. With games and toys Itard engaged the boy's senses and imagination, developing methods of education (some of which went on to form a basis for special education and the Montessory method) that brought him out further. For a while Victor--as Itard named him--made progress, but soon it stalled. Isolated behind institutional walls, the boy lived out the rest of his life a stone's throw from the Luxembourg Gardens.
The Forbidden Experiment tells the story of a tragic young man and the extraordinary doctor who tried, however imperfectly, to help him. It is a story of compassion, like the case studies of Oliver Sacks--a figure whom Itard foreshadows. It is also a story that leads Shattuck to ask deep questions about the human animal: What is language, how do we acquire it, and what do we become if we are deprived of it?

Review Quotes

"Roger Shattuck's The Forbidden Experiment is a marvelous book. I am delighted to learn it is being revived; it should never have been out of print." --Oliver Sacks

"A beautiful story . . . we feel grateful to Shattuck for telling it so well." --Robert Darnton, The New York Review of Books

"Beautiful . . . a resonant story . . . the mystery will always be there, but on it Shattuck shines a warm and clarifying light." --The Boston Globe

"Roger Shattuck has done a beautiful job of recreating the story, skillfully using a wealth of known documents and discovering a few new ones. Although there have been other good books about the wild child, Mr. Shattuck's has the merits of conciseness, humanity, and just enough detachment." --H. E. Gruber, The New York Times Book Review

"A touching story, told with insight and compassion . . . evokes the theme and myth, the fantasy of the flight from society, not only to the woods but deeper into the self." --Los Angeles Times

"Shattuck's sensitive, balanced, and reflective study . . . bring[s] exactly before us what was before Itard--the unnerving claim of Victor's human face." --Clifford Geertz, The New Republic

"The doctor considered the experiment a failure; yet he was a pioneer in what is today called special education, and many of his techniques were adopted by Maria Montessori. . . . The detailed discussions of Victor's behavior and training are fascinating." --H. H. Flowers, The Horn Book

"Erudite, but never showy, [Shattuck] pieces the full story together, places it in scientific and social contexts and animates his narrative with lively asides. . . . Its appeal lies in the universal dream of escape from the responsibilities of civilized life to a simpler, freer existence. . . . Shattuck's careful reconstruction of the experience--with the twentieth century's perspective on psychology, history, philosophy, and linguistics--adds a rich new chapter to the endlessly interesting debate about nature versus nuture." --Jean Strouse, Newsweek

About the Author

Roger Shattuck (1923-2005) was born in New York City, studied at Yale, and taught at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Virginia, and Boston University. A frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, he was the author of The Banquet Years, The Innocent Eye, Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography, and Marcel Proust, which was awarded the National Book Award in 1975. His book The Forbidden Experiment (2025) and his edition of Helen Keller's The World I Live In (2004) are published by NYRB Classics.

Jed Perl is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. His books include Paris Without End, New Art City, Magicians and Charlatans, Antoine's Alphabet, a two-volume biography of Alexander Calder, and, most recently, Authority and Freedom: A Defense of the Arts. Perl was a contributing editor at Vogue for a decade and the art critic at The New Republic for twenty years.