(Today's review is much longer than Goodreads' word-count limitations. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)I've mentioned here regularly the entire idea of there being an "underground-arts canon;" that is, that just like the academic community, what we call the modern cutting-edge arts has now been around long enough (arguably since the early 1900s) that we can now say, "If you want to consider yourself well-versed on the subject, you need to make sure to read this person and this person and this person." This is a hugely important subject among intellectuals, after all, because that's what intellectualism is mostly based on in the first place; of that entire group of deep thinkers coming together and collectively deciding what is most important to their group, of what most directly and profoundly helps any intelligent person understand what that group is all about. And thus in the last year and a half have I been desperately trying to fill in the holes of such a canon in my own life; for those who don't know, see, I spent the 15 years before opening CCLaP not as an academe but as an actual working artist, so mostly spent those years actually photographing and writing instead of reading and studying. It's important that I fill in these intellectual gaps now, precisely because I am trying to be a full-time arts critic these days, because it matters with artistic criticism just how much you know about the subject; and thus it is that I'm constantly having to admit these days to a woeful lack of exposure to this artist or that, as I finally make my way through the first of their projects and talk about them here at the site.And that, ladies and gentlemen, brings us to gay Generation X memoirist Augusten Burroughs; because Burroughs is precisely one of these shining lights of the so-called "contemporary canon," according to his fans, one of those "must-read" authors you absolutely need to be familiar with, in order to understand the contemporary underground arts in any kind of sophisticated way whatsoever. His work has previously always simply eluded my attention, for whatever reason; before last week, not only had I never read any of his books, I hadn't even seen the slick high-budget 2006 Hollywood adaptation that was made of his first bestseller, the horrifically comedic / comedically horrific coming-of-age tale Running with Scissors, much less the four other freaking personal memoirs written since or the absurdist novel written before. And whether you like him or hate him, the simple fact is that my non-knowledge of his work is a weakness for me as a critic and book reviewer; there are simply so many people familiar with his books by now, so many references made in other literary reviews to his manuscripts, that any decent reporter of the underground needs to make sure they're familiar with him, for no other reason than so they're on the same page as other lovers of the underground.And it's all this, of course, that made it even such a bigger shock than normal when I actually sat down and read two of Burroughs' memoirs, his oldest (the aforementioned Scissors from 2002) and newest (A Wolf at the Table, from 2008), and realized the following: "Oh my God, Augusten Burroughs' memoirs f-cking suck." How can this be?, any intelligent person will ask at that moment -- how can it be that these books have had so much praise heaped on them over the years, when they turn out to be such weak excuses for compelling literature? Has there been...what, a massive hypnotic spell placed over all the people who gush and gush about the stirring prose and fascinating storylines found within? Has the collective lack of education and anti-intellectual stirrings of Neocon America over the last thirty years finally hit its tipping point, with the American populace simply no longer able to distinguish good books from bad ones? Is that what happened? Or is it that Burroughs got in during the last gasp of an artistic movement that we now consider trite and passe, exactly the "Generation X" house-of-cards I mentioned earlier, and thus suffers the dated wrath of a veteran like Douglas Coupland but at a fraction of the time?Because let's make no mistake -- when the snotty pop-culture historians of the future think back to these days, and specifically the whole New Age middle-class suburban Oprah Hillary "It Takes A Village" politically-correct pink-ribbon crowd, they will think of Augusten Burroughs. Because that's basically what both of these books are, through and through, from the first page to ostensibly the last; they are whiny, victim-oriented, badly-written, semi-made-up so-called "true stories" about just how bad poor little Augusten has had it his whole whimsically funny life, of how every terrible thing that's ever happened to him is everyone else's fault but his own, and how by the way all those bad things just happened to be poetically poignant and contained the exact kind of dialogue that makes middle-aged suburban Oprah-worshipping pink-ribbon-wearing New Age soccer moms swoon. Nice coincidence, that!And in fact, that brings up one of the first and ultimately biggest problems I encountered with Burroughs' work, when I tried to make my way through it for the first time last week; that it simply comes off as untrue, as made-up, not exactly a lie under the legal definition of the term, but definitely "cutsied up" so bad that it might as well be a fictional story. Because, see, for those who don't know, both of the books under review today supposedly cover Burroughs' early childhood among dysfunctional hippies in the "let it all hang out" 1970s, a series of vignettes that he actually writes from the mindset and viewpoint of that particular age; so in other words, if he's recalling an event from when he was five years old, he actually writes it as a five-year-old would supposedly see it. And in that manner, Burroughs essentially gets to have his cake and eat it too; he gets to say outrageously offensive things about all the real people around him at that time in his life, absurdly unprovable things that rely as much on magical realism as...you know, realism, while still having the convenient James-Frey Oprahesque New-Age excuse of, "I'm a writer, and I'm paid to write about how something felt. And this is how these events felt to me. And it doesn't matter if what I say is exactly true or not, not from a factual standpoint, because they are factual accounts of how I felt at that moment, or perhaps how I felt thirty years later when looking back on it through the filter of a mainstream publishing contract and looming deadline."I think it's very telling, for example, that his own parents freaking sued him for defamation when Scissors came out*, but that this hasn't stopped any of these publishing companies from continuing to put out, put out, put out yet another semi-crap childhood memoir and yet another semi-crap childhood memoir by him. Because simply, we live in an age where a huge majority of the American public can no longer distinguish fact from fiction -- an age where over 50 percent of all Americans believe that The DaVinci Code is a true story, an age where over 50 percent of all Americans believe that The Secret is a true story. And that's because our country's educational system has been steadily crumbling since the end of World War Two, since the moment the US first started embracing the military-industrial complex, and first started diverting more and more of our national budget away from everything else and towards the military. No one gets a decent education in the United States anymore, critics claim, not unless they seek one out as an adult as the theory goes; and therefore most Americans are no longer even educated enough to understand the difference between true and made-up, the difference between science and "Intelligent Design" (i.e. "Creationism" with a new name), the difference between "memoir" and "sh-t I pulled out of my ass that sounds all tragic and crap, and that no one can exactly either prove or disprove."And that's why earlier, I said that I was only guessing at what was the "ostensible" endings of these books; because to admit the absolute truth, I only made it about halfway through Running With Scissors before finally giving up, and couldn't even get thirty pages into A Wolf at the Table without doing the same. And seriously, Mr. Burroughs, if you just happen to ever come across this review -- I understand that writers with unique voices are easy to parody, precisely because they have unique voices, but do you really have to make it so damn tempting as well?"Me. Pre-natal. What are these fleshy jail-cell walls that hold me in so tightly? Probably the result of my mother, of course, the cocktail-swilling fool. I wish to yell at her, wish to express my disgust at her smothering yet cold presence. But then I realize -- Oh yes, that's right, I'm a fetus. I'm not yet capable of advanced thought or human speech. So why is it that I'm already so eerily attracted to the Six Million Dollar Man?"UGH. It's writers like Augusten Burroughs that makes me want to turn my entire back on Generation X in general, despite me actually being a member of Generation X; it's books like these that makes me understand why kids currently in their twenties hate me and my friends so much, of why they feel the desire to angrily vomit whenever the subjects of tribal-tattoos or Pearl Jam are...
I was interested in reading this after getting hints of the story in Burroughs' brother's memoir "Look Me in the Eye". My honest reaction? This book made me deeply uncomfortable. Oh, I kept reading it, the same way I and everyone else would keep eyeballing a car accident, as the old cliché goes. But there was a part of me that honestly couldn't believe that all of this stuff was real. And if it was, how could Burroughs write about it almost as if it was a years-long romp? (I know I go against all my empathetic instincts when I say such things.) I've lived through family weirdness; I've read plenty of other memoirs and novels dealing with it. This one disturbed me. I can't say why. (Perhaps the fact that it was made into a ha-ha-look-at-the-crazy-family movie?) Interesting also to consider is the reaction of the family the story is based on. They say--rightly, based on what Burroughs himself writes--that Burroughs was always searching for fame. Did he milk his own story, overexaggerating it? Either way, the impetus to write it, the way it was written, suggests psychological disturbance to me that is really unsettling. And let's not forget the wild critical reaction to it! I don't think it was spectacularly written. It had a lot of shock value. There was something gleeful in how much people enjoyed reading of this fucked-up family's existence. I guess my conclusion is, the whole thing just creeped me out.
What do You think about Running With Scissors (2003)?
I couldn't stand this book. I didn't take to any of the characters, finding them all uninteresting and just plain creepy. I resent people like Augustin Burroughs believing their experience, as mildly off the wall as it may be, actually amounts to something the rest of us should invest our time reading about. Just about any one of us could doctor up our pasts enough to leave some wondering how we emerged from the wreckage as reasonably functioning adults. But we just don't, because these things about us only matter to our family and friends, people whose lives we touch directly, not the masses. And the worst part is it doesn't even end here. We get to read all about how Augustin descends into alcoholism, etc., in his next 'memoir'. Please, spare me. Who is Augustin Burroughs and why do we care?
—Laure
I'm really not a fan of this memoir craze, and Running With Scissors is no exception. It shows potential in some parts, where the author puts down the 2x4 he was using to beat you over the head with and just tells a story. Most of the time, though, he's not-so-subtly reminding you that he had a terrible childhood, his dad hated him, his mum was crazy, he didn't have anyone, etc. Yawn. In an age where 52% of marriages end in divorce, this is everyone's story. Now it's just a pissing match to see who hates themselves more, and I don't want to hear about any of it. I've got better things to read than pity parties, thanks. If I want to read quirky and funny family anecdotes I'll stick with David Sedaris, who doesn't feel the need to suddenly switch to a violin and try to cheaply play on my affections.My copy of the book also came with a preview of Burrough's sequel to Running, Dry. In order to fully stick it out I read this section and rolled my eyes so hard I think I sprained something. He not only regurgitates his terrible, awful childhood at random intervals, but has turned into a pompous, arrogant arse. If I didn't want to finish Running With Scissors, then I really won't want to look at Dry. Spare your eyes.
—Friend the Girl
Augusten Burroughs childhood was not your average childhood. Most of us don't have our insane mothers sending us packing to go live with their shrink. If that wasn't bad enough, the household members of the Finch family - blood and adopted - are also crazy. And definitely not tidy. Not in any sense of the word. . . .This book was funny, sad, vulgar (mainly vulgar, actually). The one person I was actually liking was Hope until the cat incident. She never seemed quite right to me after that but I'm not sure why I thought initially she was semi-normal. Augusten has an affair with an older man when he is a young teenager. I had no problem with that being in this story but I ended up skipping some chapters about their sex life. (Did I mention the vulgar part of this book?) I didn't feel the graphic depictions of their relationship enhanced the book other than to emphasize just how messed up this whole thing really was.There were some rather disgusting things in this book. I don't even know what to say about the scatalogical fortune telling chapter. Like, what???? Did I really read that? Did that really happen? Yet I kept reading. I really did need to know how this ended. I appreciated the epilogue.Did some googling and saw the "Finch" family sued him for two million dollars. Hmmmm.I can't say I would recommend this book to anyone but it's been on my to-read list for so long I'm actually glad I read it. (Except now I can't get some of these images out of my mind. Make it go away, please. . . .)
—Sara
