My boyhood, for instance, which no longer exists, exists in time past, which no longer exists.

May 1, 2008 11:53 PM

Who can remember the color of a stranger’s belt, and the precise angle of the back corner of an old movie theater’s lobby, but not the number of his own apartment, or any of the movies he saw? What kind of memory is that?

The Memory Addiction of Augusten Burroughs
Ruthless with Scissors
Augusten's Blog

Augusten Burroughs' Mother Speaks Out
Returning to the Past and Finding the Bogeyman Is Still There
Chapter Ten of A Wolf At The Door

posted by anotherpanacea (28 comments total)

Great post, thanks anotherpanacea. Yet another reminder that I need to pick up one of Burroughs' books (though I'll skip on his mother's poetry).
posted by farishta at 1:00 AM on May 2

I have mixed feelings about Burroughs. I've read three of his books and was thoroughly entertained, but I don't think he's a good person.
posted by hjo3 at 1:37 AM on May 2

I have mixed feelings about Burroughs.

It IS disconcerting when we are faced with such a dichotomy between a person's art and their life, hj03. I personally find it quite troubling in the case of Hitler, who was a TERRIBLE artist, but otherwise a really great guy.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 2:02 AM on May 2 [1 favorite]

Wait a second ... I think I've got that the wrong way round - sorry. What I meant was Hitler was a horrible, disgusting mass-murderer, but his paintings are wonderfully sublime and compassionate.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 2:04 AM on May 2

No, that's not right ... his paintings are shit too. OK, I think that means that the inconsistency here must be between Hitler, who was a complete jerk in every department, and me - obviously some kind of world's ultimate genius or something.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 2:08 AM on May 2 [1 favorite]

From Running With Scissors: I'll never forget the part with the black triangle moving back and forth in front of his face.
posted by clearly at 2:31 AM on May 2

... or the skylight on a whim in the kitchen.
posted by clearly at 2:32 AM on May 2

Good timing. Burroughs is coming here to Portland (ME) to do a reading in the next few weeks and I've been looking forward to going to see if the myth and the man match up, so to speak.
posted by anastasiav at 4:28 AM on May 2

Burroughs’s new book, A Wolf at the Table, is being promoted as “his first memoir in five years”—a gem of self-canceling hype roughly equivalent to “her first wedding since last fall” or “his ninth bar mitzvah since he was 13.”

Heh. That's about what I thought when I saw the book. And I'm with the author of the first piece; there's so much to to peg the bullshit meter about Burroughs, from his "memory trances" to his confusion about Bastard Out of Carolina being a memoir (it's not) to this:

As I watch Burroughs react, my polygraph needle begins to tremble again. Outraged denial is, of course, a reasonable response for an honest writer accused of lying. But is it even remotely possible that, after a well-publicized two-year trial in which his career and reputation hung in the balance, these allegations would come as a surprise to him? Can he possibly be “flabbergasted” by anything I’ve said?

I ask him if these accusations came up in court. He says he doesn’t remember. A minute later he says he thinks they probably did.

The ending of the article is a great touch but I still find myself thinking Burroughs wants to have it both ways - yes, I might get some details wrong, but no, my memory is accurate, and I'm going to get mad at you for questioning it. I solve the problem by avoiding his books.
posted by mediareport at 6:17 AM on May 2

If his book 'Dry' is an accurate account, then it's truly amazing what he has achieved with the brain cells he has left.
posted by StickyCarpet at 6:35 AM on May 2

Btw, the first piece doesn't mention some of the worst things Burroughs did to his family and friends, according to that Vanity Fair article from last year. Stringing them along to pick their brains for details without telling them he was writing a book about them is just one:

...Burroughs fielded a question from the audience about whether he had maintained any contact with the family. Burroughs, who is now 41, answered that the only person he had kept up with for any period of time was Natalie (Theresa), and that they had spoken "a few times" when he was in his 20s.

But, according to Theresa, they spoke after that. In the mid-1990s, after an invitation from Burroughs, she and her daughter visited him in New York, where, as she remembers it, he went on and on about what a wonderful person she was, what a kind person she was, how she had gotten it together, how she had gone to Smith, how she had had a wonderful child. She says she also got phone calls from him subsequent to that, sometimes when he was sober but more often when he was drunk...

She and Burroughs talked about many things, she says: her life, what other members of the family were up to, events in the past—things that friends freely communicate to each other. But when she read the book that first time, she says, it became horrifyingly clear that Burroughs had taken details from those conversations, twisted them, and put them into the book without telling her that he was writing about her family.

That kind of stuff goes way beyond "Was it La Scala or La Traviata on the record player when mom was in the room that time?" It gets to the heart of the kind of process Burroughs used to unearth his "memories." It seems obvious to me that Burroughs' outraged response to the other charges is a smokescreen for his inability or unwillingness to address the more serious ones.
posted by mediareport at 6:40 AM on May 2

I just don't think he's a very good writer.

The thing about Setting is that it should be, you know, in the background. Burroughs constantly reminds us what decade it is by pumping out a barrage of vintage pop culture references. It's annoying and unnecessary. If it's even relevant that the story is set in the 70's (note: it isn't), he'd do better to simply omit modern details than to add in superfluous period ones.
posted by Sys Rq at 6:43 AM on May 2

These details would all matter a great deal more if Burroughs is actually a decent writer. He isn’t.
posted by tiger yang at 8:02 AM on May 2

But apparently I'm not either: is/was. oops.
posted by tiger yang at 8:03 AM on May 2

The only book of his I've read was Running with Scissors, which I hated. He's not a very good writer, I didn't believe half of it, and he did some really awful things to the people he claims to love. I'll pass on any more of his work. Oh, and his first memoir in five years? I'm with mediareport on the validity of that.
posted by arcticwoman at 8:19 AM on May 2

I guess the working definition of "memoir" has been so exploded in the last, say, two decades (not that it was especially sacred beforehand) that I'm willing to look at any "memoir" with an obviously unreliable narrator as just a novel.

In that light, "Running With Scissors" (the only book of his I've read) wasn't bad. It was transparent and self-aggrandizing in a histrionic sort of way, but it still had measures of evil and sweet, poignant and self-indulgent. It always seemed like an imagined backstory just outrageous enough to justify the depths to which someone had fallen.

The fact that bits and pieces of it were based on reality doesn't lessen that impression. The fact that the real-life author may have been real-life disingenuous when collecting details is really not that big a deal - especially when we've granted that the difference between a memoir and novel comes down to marketing, not content.
posted by abulafa at 9:24 AM on May 2

You know who else was a shitty writer?

James Frey.
posted by rusty at 10:13 AM on May 2

I always preferred Dry to RWS. I found it to be much more compelling and real, whether it was or not. Like abulafa said, I just assume any memoir is based in real events, but most likely revised for dramatic effect. If it's an enjoyable read, who cares?
posted by rooftop secrets at 10:19 AM on May 2

The only book of his I've read was Running with Scissors, which I hated. He's not a very good writer, I didn't believe half of it, and he did some really awful things to the people he claims to love.

I wanted to like it. I really did. I hate it when I buy a book and I start getting that creeping feeling that it sucks, but my response was exactly the same as yours, arcticwoman.

You know who else was a shitty writer?

I agree Frey's a shitty writer. He writes for the sub-literate. No word longer than two syllables. No sentence longer than five words. No paragraph longer than three sentences. And a plot that's more far fetched than L. Ron Hubbard. But as much as he sucks, he's still able to tell a story that keeps the reader engaged and keeps the page turning. If Burroughs could write half as well as Frey, I wouldn't hate him half as much.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 11:47 AM on May 2

I really enjoyed Dry, but I had to drag myself through RWT. The first few alcohol-soaked chapters were fascinating.
posted by graventy at 1:16 PM on May 2

It's funny how purely supportive some of those fan comments are, especially considering that the piece seems to come out pretty positive. Like they're afraid Burroughs is only a step away from relapse, and any negativity could cause it. Myself, I like the man's books, and I'll probably read this one, but I won't need to dot my i's with flowers if I write him a note about it.
posted by redsparkler at 1:26 PM on May 2

Frey and Borroughs both tap into a sort of grief that people have over their messed up selves or families, and because these guys can put it into print better then most they get these really passionate fans, many of whom are relatively "new" to reading (from my experience).
posted by cell divide at 2:30 PM on May 2

Who can remember the color of a stranger’s belt, and the precise angle of the back corner of an old movie theater’s lobby, but not the number of his own apartment, or any of the movies he saw? What kind of memory is that?

We call that a MetaMemory.
posted by telstar at 2:46 PM on May 2

High-functioning Korsakoff's confabulation?

Granted, he claims and seems to have stopped drinking, and seems pretty sharp in conversation.

It also isn't unknown for narcissistic writers to basically make up their own lives. Hemingway killed himself when his life no longer fit the story he was used to telling.

The narcissism in Burroughs' case lies in being unwilling to call his work fiction; it must be a memoir. The publishing industry encourages this.

I myself found the Finches in Scissors unbelievable -- one damn thing after another, even given the period and psychoanalytic wankery.
posted by bad grammar at 6:07 PM on May 2

I classify Frey, Burroughs, and Palahniuk as writers for people who don't usually enjoy reading. I don't mean to spark a pointless discussion of high vs. low art but have these people ever read a line of Proust? Shakespeare? Tolstoy? If the prose needs to be seemingly straight forward or more modern, how about Carver? Yates? Now those were drunks who could write!

Why is most people's experience of culture so narrow? I really can't figure it out. There's so much more rewarding stuff out there.
posted by inoculatedcities at 7:57 AM on May 3

I agree Frey's a shitty writer. He writes for the sub-literate. No word longer than two syllables. No sentence longer than five words. No paragraph longer than three sentences. And a plot that's more far fetched than L. Ron Hubbard. But as much as he sucks, he's still able to tell a story that keeps the reader engaged and keeps the page turning.

Or more abstractly:

"1) Safe backlash opinion. 2) Dull ad hominem. 3)-5) Three sentences of mere description of Frey's style that purport to back up (1) and (2) but in fact do not. 6) False, ridiculous claim. 7) Concession that Frey's writing is effective, demonstrating incidentally a lack of evaluative consistency on the part of the commenter."

Frey's got a new novel coming out this year, apparently. A Million Little Pieces was a very effective book and I'm curious to see whether he can pull off wide-angle fiction. Never read anything by this Burroughs fellow. Sounds tiresome. But then (as I've just demonstrated) I've muddled through tiresome reading before.
posted by waxbanks at 1:23 PM on May 3

According to this review of his latest book, Burroughs describes memories of detailed events that took place when he was a year and a half old: "The thick slippery feel of my bottle's rubber nipple inside my mouth," for example. This is not possible. Childhood amnesia and all that. If he is presenting these observations as his recollections of specific events, he is seriously deluded. Or a hoaxer. Or he has a brain that is spectacularly different from every other human brain and he should submit himself for study immediately. He seems totally comfortable confabulating and embellishing the truth. Surprise: the guy was an ad writer, you know?

The most charitable interpretation is that he is working from "recovered memories." There's a massive controversy about them, of course, and I come down on the side of the research indicating that they are not reliable. Certainly not from age 1 1/2. He would be just as likely to be able to remember emerging from the birth canal.

In the "Scissors" case, his confabulations deeply hurt a lot of people. He wants to have it both ways: claiming that it is all true and then working with the facts of his life like a fiction author, changing them in a major ways. There's something deeply wrong here.

Just call it fiction, man.
posted by cogneuro at 1:41 PM on May 3

I have to disagree that A Million Little Pieces was "effective." It was only page-turning because it was written like a children's book. I only even bothered to finish reading it because it took about two hours. I can't come up with anything good to say about Frey's writing. I could say lots more that's bad about it, but why bother? :-)
posted by rusty at 11:44 AM on May 5