2) Running With Scissors: Memoirs and Crazies

Book Read: Running With Scissors
Author: Augusten Burroughs
Pages: 331
Favorite quote: "I am paranoid about serial killers. Any of Finch's patients could be one. Especially that crazy lady who owns the Blue Moon Grill in Easthampton. I just look at her and she creeps me out. She looks like she would eat a baby. Not that she's fat. She just looks hungry in some dangerous way that can't be explained."
Method of acquisition: Bought in Chapters with a gift certificate. Supercheap. Paperback.
Distraction level: Moderate. I am now on season two of The Wire and it continues to suck up my life. Damn you, Bunk! I am counteracting this problem by reading during lunch breaks; this is helpful.

Background: My bookish pal friend Dave passed me Burroughs' story of his battle with alcoholism, Dry, a couple of years ago, with a resounding "bleh." He was not a fan. I read it largely while hungover. It was funny, sad and nauseating. The book implies that his alcoholism is rooted in his undoubtedly shitty and bizarre childhood, which is chronicled the earlier memoir Running with Scissors.

All Familes Are Psychotic? The basic facts (and plot) follow. Burroughs was given away by his batshit-crazy matchstick-eating aspiring-poet mother to her psychiatrist and his family. They are also crazy. The psychiatrist's adopted son begins raping the 13-year-old Burroughs and they eventually develop a relationship. Burrough's father, also an alcoholic, disappears during this time (although he reappeared this year in a sense when Burroughs published the rather tellingly-titled Wolf At The Table.)
So basically, I'm just letting you know that my understanding of Burroughs' messed-up life is all out of order. So what? You're out of order.

The Memoir: Platform of the Whiny?: Here's the thing. Some memoirs are fantastic. We have all read amazing memoirs about people who have lived through war, extreme poverty, police states, abuse and so on. Then there are some stories that are simply so deliciously and magically sensational that you absolutely can't. stop. reading. (The Dirt is one of my favorite books of all time. Don't judge until you read it.) Some memoirs, though, are indulgent and stupid. I am an overprivileged North American, and generally I don't like reading books written by other overprivileged North Americans. They're whiny. The exceptions to this rule are David Sedaris, because his books have made me laugh so hard that I cried, and Burroughs.

Family Circus:There's definitely an indulgent aspect to Burroughs' story. The young boy that comes of age in Running With Scissors is a nascent celebrity whore if I ever saw one. If the young Burroughs didn't have intelligence and talent on his side, he could have been a 1970's Captain and Tennille-chasing Perez Hilton. Thankfully, the man can write, and the story he shares is compelling enough that I stayed with it even as certain moments strained credulity. The greatest flaw of Running With Scissors is that some of its characters are so sketchily drawn that we end up not caring about them anymore, while you can't help but care about Burroughs, his dysfunctional "sister" and partner-in-crime Natalie Finch and even his creepy, pedophilic, manipulative and desperately needy "lover" Bookman. Aside from these three, though, I didn't give a shit about anyone in the book---especially Burroughs' mother. Crazy or not, the woman was a heartless shrew.

The book's style is also a bit distracting as it falls into a rhythm of Sedaris-like vignettes about forgotten Christmas trees and fortune-telling turds. Don't get me wrong---it's interesting and sometimes it's really, really funny. But when these little interludes are interspersed with entire chapters about rough gay sex and lunatic violence, things get uneven.

The true tragedy of Burroughs' upbringing is threaded throughout the book. For me, that's what stuck. Burroughs has a wonderful ear for dialogue and it's through his conversations with Natalie and Bookman that we see what the book is really about: loss, numbness, and coping with the infinite disappointment and fuckery of a truly dysfunctional upbringing. In that light, Burroughs' story is one of Survival---with none of the saccharine or sentimental trappings associated with the term. And it's certainly one worth reading.