In specialized school
He was six years old when the diagnosis was made and kept in mind the “vague memory” an office, an appointment with a specialist – “a psychologist or a speech therapy” – and a relatively summary test where he failed. “I must have had the misfortune of writing my Z or my E backwards and having difficulty telling the time.”
The verdict: dyslexia. Advice given: specialized school. At the start of the school year, little Thomas joins an establishment where children affected by various disabilities are brought together: Down syndrome, psychomotor problems or others. “A kind of big catch-all with teachers who did what they could to keep everyone’s head above water. My little friends and I were aware that we were on the fringes of the classical system and the other children. We considered ourselves ‘not normal’, we looked at the world of normals from afar.”
Chronic stress
A world that he reenters in first secondary school. While he was first “without doing anything” Throughout primary school, Thomas Gunzig suddenly found himself in ranking limbo. “In primary school, it was basic studies. I didn’t have any Dutch lessons while I was in Brussels, I barely had any French lessons, I had almost no grammar lessons. In maths, it was limited to additions, subtractions and multiplications”he lists. “I never managed to catch up.”
“Suddenly, I was among the best. The one whose essays we read in class.
His adaptation to “classical” education is all the more difficult since the morning columnist of the Première, also socially out of step, does not have many friends. “I came from an environment with a whole bunch of little friends who were a little strange, a little unusual. I was really very alone at that time.”
Refugee in SF
So he will find refuge in books. Science fiction mainly devoured in the yard when the others are playing hopscotch or football. His readings: Philippe K. Dick, Isaac Asimov or Robert Silverberg. “I think it was quite decisive in the formation of my imagination. I have no problem reading or writing. In the dyslexic field, there are many, many things. What I have is very bad spelling…”
Thomas Gunzig’s life “turned upside down” after the arrival of a fourth-year French teacher at the Athénée royale d’Uccle 1. Ms. De Pauw, now deceased, decided to no longer take his faults into account, but to attach, on the contrary, importance to “form and things”.
“Suddenly, I was among the best. The one whose essays we read in class. It’s the first form of recognition in my life. It’s the first time I said to myself: well actually, maybe I’m not the kind of insignificant gnome that people always pretended I was. Maybe I’m worth something in the field of writing, of literature”recalls the author who is a professor at La Cambre and Saint-Luc.
“Rocky, Last Shore” by Thomas Gunzig: after the apocalypse, only one family survives
The “key” year of his 16th birthday, he will also begin to share literary favorites with other classmates and especially to write. At 55, does he hold a grudge against his parents? “I wondered why they didn’t resist more, didn’t ask for a second opinion. Now that I’m a parent, that I see how complicated it is, how we’re constantly wrong, I can’t blame them”concludes the man whose last book – Rocky, last shore published in 2023 by Diable Vauvert – was a SF book. “The one I dreamed of writing.”
