Pros: Hilariously foul anecdotes will have you laughing and retching all at once.
Cons: Burroughs' insistence on keeping it light makes it hard to emphathize with characters.
The Bottom Line: Burroughs' impressive compilation of darkly funny stories keeps it light and superficial, but fails to explore below the surface of his kooky characters.
disinclined's Full Review: Augusten Burroughs - Running With Scissors
It's not often that I read memoirs. In our confessional, self-absorbed age, everyone seems to think they have a story to tell, and that everyone else will be delighted and fascinated to hear it. They are rarely correct. Too often, people who have, admittedly, lived through really sucky stuff will go on lengthy, boring harangues about how sh!tty the world is for doing this to them, and how they didn't deserve such heaping helpings of hard luck. Undoubtedly they are right, but whether it's ironic, half-joking laments (like Dave Eggers) or straightforward angry b!tching (like Margaret Cho), it brings me down. I don't believe that people deserve special prizes merely for surviving really crappy situations, but people who have survived really crappy situations generally disagree.
Happily, Augusten Burroughs' memoir, Running with Scissors, avoids the treacherous pitfall of self-pity, although he has as much justification as anyone I've ever seen to spend the rest of his life feeling sorry for himself. When his parents' miserable marriage escalates to chucking objects at each other and making homicidal threats (Augusten's dad memorably chases his wife through the house with a fondue pot), Augusten's mom desperately enrolls them both in marriage counseling with one Dr. Finch. A jolly and Santa-like man, Finch logs in hours a day, several days a week, behind closed doors with his mom. Augusten, being a mere eleven years old, sits out in the waiting room, or goes to amuse himself with the help of cash handouts from Dr. Finch. If this seems creepy and spooky, rest assured that it gets far worse.
After several months of intensive therapy, Augusten's mom announces that the next phase of treatment consists of her going off with Dr. Finch to a motel room for an unspecified amount of time. In the meanwhile, Augusten is welcome to stay at Dr. Finch's house, about which he's been secretly curious for some time. Only when he's dropped off at the house does Augusten (a dapper, neatness-obsessed kid whose favorite outfit is a dress suit) fully apprehend the horror of his new digs: a derelict, crumbling house that's clearly the shame of the neighborhood. An evil smell of rotting food and other filth permeates the place. The carpet is crunchy with toenails, dog food (a favorite snack food of the doctor's wife), and other unspeakable detritus. School-age children defecate in the living room before an audience, and nobody minds. Augusten is pretty sure he's in hell.
Time passes, and Augusten is adopted as an unofficial family member. Always an indifferent student, Augusten's dream in life is to establish a massive hair-product empire, although his forays into hair treatments on himself and those around him - including his boyfriend Neil Bookman, an adoptive Finch some twenty years Augusten's senior - are less than stunning. For now, Augusten contents himself with writing extensively in his journals, tormenting the creepily dependent Neil, and making mischief with Natalie, one of Dr. Finch's daughters. Augusten's mother fades out of the narrative as Augusten comes to consider Casa Finch his true home, and indeed, her psychotic episodes (though impressive) can hardly compare to the everyday wonders of the Finch family, where poop is shoveled out of the toilet for scrying purposes, and the Bible is treated as a kind of Magic 8 Ball for predicting the future.
Bitingly funny and frequently horrifying, Running with Scissors is nothing if not entertaining. But Burroughs's categorical refusal to take any of it seriously reduces his story to one big gross-out joke. Nothing is sacred, as they say, but nothing is deeply felt (at least, in this retelling of events), and so it's hard to even know how literally to believe the outrageous tales. I admire Burroughs's reluctance to court sympathy by whining for pity and attention, but his stoic refusal to admit that his nightmarish childhood was anything but amusing prevents the reader from identifying with his struggles (unless, of course, your family also prognosticated with poop). You'll never hear me say it again, but I wish the author had more deeply explored his true emotional reactions to growing up in such a balls-out weird environment - and yes, I'd even be willing to endure some angsty ranting. Lacking such introspection or even one moment of genuine seriousness, Scissors is consistently witty but ultimately forgettable.
Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her unorthodox psyc...More at HotBookSale
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