Quite the Cut Up
Book review of 'Running with Scissors' by Augusten
Burroughs
Quite the cut
up
Seth J Bookey
01 September 2002
Lambda Book Report
Volume 11, Issue 2; ISSN: 1048-9487
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs St. Martin's Press ISBN 0-312-28370-9
HB $23.95, 304 pp.
Augusten Burroughs opens his memoir, Running with Scissors, with a Jules Renard quote: "Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it." As a child, Buroughs's alcoholic father and insane mother ensured that he was soaking continuously in the nonsensical. It's no wonder he likens Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as "the closest thing I have to a home movie," seeing his escape only in far-off adulthood, as either a doctor or a TV celebrity. When his parents finally divorce, he anticipates that life alone with Mom will resemble One Day at a Time.
Instead, it gets worse.
His mother, a would-be Anne Sexton, spends much time in therapy, when she isn't breaking-or eating-household objects. Her psychiatrist, Dr. Finch, is not quite right either. An unkempt man with a "masturbatorium" in his office, his house is practically a city dump. Finch erases the line between patient and therapist and invites mother and son over. "Visiting the personal residence of John Ritter would not be more exciting than this." Augusten is shocked to find a layer of dirt and animal far covering the house and its contents, with dishes piled high in the sink, while a grandchild runs naked around the house and poops under the piano. All common-- place in the Finch home.
Eventually, Augusten goes from frequent visitor to inhabitant when his mother signs him over to Finch, making him the boy's legal guardian. Augusten devolves, seeing nothing wrong with trying dry dog food at the suggestion of the doctor's wife, who berates her daughter with the criticism of always being "afraid to try something new." He also tries other new things: faking suicide to get out of school and taking on a boyfriend twice his age.
Meanwhile, his mother never improves under Finch. "The line between normal and crazy seemed impossibly thin. A person would have to be an expert tightrope walker in order not to fall." The madness disturbs him, but not his mother. "I marveled at [her] view of her mental illness.... Going psychotic was like going to an artist's retreat." Her girlfriend Dorothy anticipated the outbursts "not as something to be afraid of, but rather as something to look forward to, like a movie."
Burroughs laments, "Why did I feel so trapped?" Probably because he was left rudderless. While the adults espouse a breezy "free-to-be-you-and-me" attitude, he craves but receives no constructive adult guidance. At one point, Finch abandons all rationality, preferring to take direction by "reading" everyone's feces. It is no wonder that Augusten and Natalie Finch (the doctor's daughter) see life as "one endless stretch of misery punctuated by processed fast foods and the occasional crisis or amusing curiosity."
Thankfully, Burroughs found a way out of a "Waiting for Godot" lifestyle, and manages to observe his childhood keenly, and with an even keener humor. The general hilarity of Running with Scissors keeps it from reading like Angela's Ashes. His many references to sitcoms and stars of the age show how desperate he was to grab onto anything passing for normal.
Considering the prevailing depravity and deprivation, his casual use of profanity is more punctuation than shocking. When a released lunatic gives Natalie, his mother and Dorothy a yeast infection, his friend Natalie says, "My cunt look like it's been brushing its teeth. It's just foaming at the mouth." Burroughs has created a work with more laugh-out-loud moments than a David Sedaris essay, and plays marvelously with words. Reflecting on his first boyfriend (34-year-old Neil), he says, "Ours was a seesaw relationship, and right now it was all saw."
Running with Scissors does a beautiful job of reflecting on the bizarre without fetishizing or sentimentalizing it, or being victimized by it. Distance, via time, allows Burroughs to laugh at it all, but underneath all the kitsch (and filth), this memoir perfectly captures how an adult generation abdicated all authority. The only thing more fascinating than Augusten's neglect going unnoticed by anyone who could have helped is that he had the self-- determination not to get stuck in the quicksand of his elders. While Burroughs's surroundings were certainly much more hyperbolic when it comes to dysfunction, there is something recognizable in both his survival and the madness of those around him.
SETH J. BOOKEY LIVES AND WRITES IN NEW YORK CITY. WHEN HE ISN'T WORKING FOR A TRADE PUBLICATION BY DAY, HE WRITES BOOK AND FILM REVIEWS FOR GAY CITY NEWS (FORMERLY LGNY). HE ALSO WORKS WITH THE PUBLISHING TRIANGLE.
Seth J Bookey
01 September 2002
Lambda Book Report
Volume 11, Issue 2; ISSN: 1048-9487
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs St. Martin's Press ISBN 0-312-28370-9
HB $23.95, 304 pp.
Augusten Burroughs opens his memoir, Running with Scissors, with a Jules Renard quote: "Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it." As a child, Buroughs's alcoholic father and insane mother ensured that he was soaking continuously in the nonsensical. It's no wonder he likens Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as "the closest thing I have to a home movie," seeing his escape only in far-off adulthood, as either a doctor or a TV celebrity. When his parents finally divorce, he anticipates that life alone with Mom will resemble One Day at a Time.
Instead, it gets worse.
His mother, a would-be Anne Sexton, spends much time in therapy, when she isn't breaking-or eating-household objects. Her psychiatrist, Dr. Finch, is not quite right either. An unkempt man with a "masturbatorium" in his office, his house is practically a city dump. Finch erases the line between patient and therapist and invites mother and son over. "Visiting the personal residence of John Ritter would not be more exciting than this." Augusten is shocked to find a layer of dirt and animal far covering the house and its contents, with dishes piled high in the sink, while a grandchild runs naked around the house and poops under the piano. All common-- place in the Finch home.
Eventually, Augusten goes from frequent visitor to inhabitant when his mother signs him over to Finch, making him the boy's legal guardian. Augusten devolves, seeing nothing wrong with trying dry dog food at the suggestion of the doctor's wife, who berates her daughter with the criticism of always being "afraid to try something new." He also tries other new things: faking suicide to get out of school and taking on a boyfriend twice his age.
Meanwhile, his mother never improves under Finch. "The line between normal and crazy seemed impossibly thin. A person would have to be an expert tightrope walker in order not to fall." The madness disturbs him, but not his mother. "I marveled at [her] view of her mental illness.... Going psychotic was like going to an artist's retreat." Her girlfriend Dorothy anticipated the outbursts "not as something to be afraid of, but rather as something to look forward to, like a movie."
Burroughs laments, "Why did I feel so trapped?" Probably because he was left rudderless. While the adults espouse a breezy "free-to-be-you-and-me" attitude, he craves but receives no constructive adult guidance. At one point, Finch abandons all rationality, preferring to take direction by "reading" everyone's feces. It is no wonder that Augusten and Natalie Finch (the doctor's daughter) see life as "one endless stretch of misery punctuated by processed fast foods and the occasional crisis or amusing curiosity."
Thankfully, Burroughs found a way out of a "Waiting for Godot" lifestyle, and manages to observe his childhood keenly, and with an even keener humor. The general hilarity of Running with Scissors keeps it from reading like Angela's Ashes. His many references to sitcoms and stars of the age show how desperate he was to grab onto anything passing for normal.
Considering the prevailing depravity and deprivation, his casual use of profanity is more punctuation than shocking. When a released lunatic gives Natalie, his mother and Dorothy a yeast infection, his friend Natalie says, "My cunt look like it's been brushing its teeth. It's just foaming at the mouth." Burroughs has created a work with more laugh-out-loud moments than a David Sedaris essay, and plays marvelously with words. Reflecting on his first boyfriend (34-year-old Neil), he says, "Ours was a seesaw relationship, and right now it was all saw."
Running with Scissors does a beautiful job of reflecting on the bizarre without fetishizing or sentimentalizing it, or being victimized by it. Distance, via time, allows Burroughs to laugh at it all, but underneath all the kitsch (and filth), this memoir perfectly captures how an adult generation abdicated all authority. The only thing more fascinating than Augusten's neglect going unnoticed by anyone who could have helped is that he had the self-- determination not to get stuck in the quicksand of his elders. While Burroughs's surroundings were certainly much more hyperbolic when it comes to dysfunction, there is something recognizable in both his survival and the madness of those around him.
SETH J. BOOKEY LIVES AND WRITES IN NEW YORK CITY. WHEN HE ISN'T WORKING FOR A TRADE PUBLICATION BY DAY, HE WRITES BOOK AND FILM REVIEWS FOR GAY CITY NEWS (FORMERLY LGNY). HE ALSO WORKS WITH THE PUBLISHING TRIANGLE.
Posted: Sun - September 1, 2002 at 12:26 AM
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