How to make yourself feel better in the parent category
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs was majorly hyped a couple of years ago but I didn’t think it lived up to the buzz.
This is an autobiography about Burroughs’ life between the ages of 12-17. His mother is psychotic and gives him away when he is about 12 yrs old to her even crazier psychiatrist. The psychiatrist has a slew of crazy kids and patients living in his filth ridden house where both the dog and the toddler shit anywhere they want in the house. Some of the highlights of the books are when Augusten discovers he’s gay and has a vividly described relationship with a creepy thirty-something patient that is also living in the house or when he decides he doesn’t want to go to school anymore so the psychiatrist/pseudo-father figure has him overdose on drugs and alcohol so that he ends up in the mental ward of a hospital.
Burroughs’ has often been compared to Sedaris, and while his writing is extremely witty, Sedaris is very believable, while this book was just too over the top. I have to believe that Burroughs didn’t embellish, but you can’t honestly believe that the psychiatrist was able to practice for so many years and that his crazy house went unnoticed by social services. Assuming that the story is true, then it is pretty amazing that Augusten turned out to be a NY Times bestselling author.
This story certainly made me feel like mother of the year and made by Jewish guilt about not spending enough quality time with my kids seem ridiculous.
March 15th, 2005 at 12:25 pm
I heard Mr. Burroughs talking about his books, including this one, on Fresh Air. It turns out that Augusten Burroughs is not his real name - go figure. The interview is available as streaming audio at the NPR Web Site for your lunch break enjoyment.
September 25th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
[...] The first apparent stinker, was Little Children based on the book by Tom Perrotta. I picked up Little Children when it came out based solely upon the idea, “hey this is the guy who wrote Election, this is going to be awesome.” It wasn’t. It’s possible that I read this book at the wrong time in my life. I picked up the book within a few months of the birth of my daughter, so maybe I wasn’t ready to settle down with a book that is largely about how morally bankrupt parenting is for our generation. Weirdly, the trailer for the movie was ominously paced as though the movie was a horror film. Can’t tell you what that’s all about. The second preview was for Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors. The book was a very disturbing memoir, as told by a witty author (according to BGB’s Nitro). The movie trailer, however, appears to be for some other story that is a mad cap romp full of wacky hi-jinks. I kept waiting for the Walking on Sunshine intro music to start. While I haven’t seen any previews yet, the movie adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis looks like it will at least be in keeping with the graphic novels (based upon these stills). The movie will apparently be in French (Satrapi lives in Paris) with English subtitles, which should ensure that the people who need to see the movie most will stay far, far away. [...]