I don't know about anyone else, but I wasn't surprised when Tim Page — child prodigy, Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic and professor — wrote the autobiographical account in The New Yorker that he later expanded into "Parallel Play."

Tim is the only person ever to ask me how I was, and then, two sentences in, say — completely without irony — "Well, enough about you. Let's talk about me." Tim has Asperger's syndrome, which went undiagnosed until he was 45.

Asperger's is a major peninsula on the psychological continent of autism. Aspies may learn, the hard way, to fit in with normal society, but it never comes easily. Their childhoods feature social awkwardness and, sometimes, intellectual brilliance; misunderstood social cues and an insecurity that can translate as arrogance; obsessions with things like train schedules and record numbers, and a near-complete obliviousness to ordinary social niceties.

It is relatively common among scientists, mathematicians, intellectuals, musicians and other artists — and among critics. Page quotes Hans Asperger, who in 1944 identified the syndrome that bears his name: "For success in science or art, a dash of autism is essential."

Among Page's early obsessions were street maps and silent films. At the age of 12, he started making his own silent movies, and was the topic of a documentary. With the help of an etiquette manual, he learned the basic rules for functioning in society. After floundering in school, he found his way and became a celebrated music critic, writing for the New York Times, Newsday and the Washington Post.

Page won his Pulitzer in 1997. Soon after, he decided to change careers, and came to the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra as an artistic adviser.

"I was a disaster," he writes. "There were numerous extra-musical facets of the job that didn't interest me and to which I couldn't pay attention. Not wouldn't, couldn't. Any sort of prevarication — even a harmless official compliment after a less-than-stellar performance — was foreign to me, and I was unable to keep state secrets. Nor was I politic with donors; I'm afraid I laughed out loud when one trustee suggested that we'd sell more tickets if we put Ravel's 'Bolero' on every program, but I had thought, for a few seconds, that she was joking."

Asked about his year in St. Louis in a recent interview, Page says, "I was in a miserable time emotionally — my marriage breaking up, my mother dying of Alzheimer's. But I was cocky professionally; I had won the Pulitzer Prize, I had a book coming out. I thought I could do a huge job that was beyond me."

He liked St. Louis, particularly the Central West End, where he lived. He made friends here. He liked both then-SLSO president Don Roth and music director Hans Vonk "enormously. They were both, in their own way, good bosses and terrific friends." But a big part of Page's job was supposed to be advising Vonk on programming "interesting music," and Vonk wasn't really interested.

He was good at some parts of the job, like speaking about music on radio interviews and other public arenas. He was poor at others, like taking part in meetings.

"I'm constitutionally a loner — a loner with a lot of friends," he says. When, for the first time, he had a job that demanded that he "have 'face time' with a hundred people regularly, having to keep in mind different people's ideas for the orchestra, having to be diplomatic — I discovered I was just a miserable fit."

Page adds, "I'm not really good with spontaneity. I don't read social circumstances very well. As I get older, I learn to avoid the ones I'm not going to make a contribution to."

He credits former SLSO vice president Carla Johnson with helping him out by doing "the parts of the job that I couldn't," and, along with PR woman Karen Moody and concertmaster David Halen, "keeping me sane."

From St. Louis, Page went back to the Washington Post, and eventually resumed his old job. Now 55, he has another new career, as a professor of journalism and music at the University of Southern California, and he says it's a good fit.

His book is dedicated to his sons, William, Robert and John, "with the hope that this book may explain some things."

"I feel lighter, in a strange way, having talked about all this stuff. I like to hope it will (help) other people," Page says. "I'm just a little bit out there, and I consider myself profoundly lucky that I've found jobs that work for me."