192. Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
Publication: Picador (June 1, 2003), Paperback, 320pp / ISBN 031242227X
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir
Rating: Buy it
Read: September 2010
Source: BookMooch
Summary from Amazon:
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 psychiatrist who bore a striking resemblance to Santa Claus. So at the age of twelve, Burroughs found himself amidst Victorian squalor living with the doctor’s bizarre family, and befriending a pedophile who resided in the backyard shed. The story of an outlaw childhood where rules were unheard of, and the Christmas tree stayed up all year round, where Valium was consumed like candy, and if things got dull an electroshock- therapy machine could provide entertainment. The funny, harrowing and bestselling account of an ordinary boy’s survival under the most extraordinary circumstances.
Review
Sometimes when I read a book I know there’s a lot I want to say about it, but I don’t know how to get it all in my review without writing 2000 words and losing all hope of anyone reading it. Normally then I end up talking about maybe one thing and dropping the rest out of frustration, but I think that lessens the quality of my reviews, and so I have to come up with a different way of doing things.
What I think I’ll do is pretend that I’m in a book club (with…myself) and I have to come up with discussion questions for our next meeting. And, hopefully, thinking of questions and then trying to find an answer to them will a) make me think deeper about the book I’ve read and b) be slightly more interesting for y’all to read.
It’s still going to be really long, though. Also a little weird, because I couldn’t decide whether to say “you” or “I” in the questions, but eventually went with “I” to make it less confusing. (Is it less confusing? I hope so.)
So:
The Author’s Note in the front of the book says names have been changed and certain situations/people combined. The “Finch” family filed a suit against Burroughs for defamation of character and invasion of privacy.They also say that most of his book is fictional or exaggerated. How does this affect the book’s veracity as a memoir? Does it affect how I feel about the book?
To be honest, I read that Author’s Note and then completely forgot about it until I started to do more research about Burroughs and Running With Scissors, which is when I learned about the law suit the “Finch” family brought against Burroughs. I also learned that he changed his name from Christopher Robison to Augusten Burroughs when he turned 18, which pinged something in my brain.
The author in 2008
I understand wanting to refer to himself as his current name, even if he was named something else when the events in his memoir took place, but to go so far as to create a completely useless and probably untrue scene explaining the pronunciation…it just seems superfluous, and it immediately made me distrust how true his memoir actually is, and that did negatively affect how I view the book.
I don’t think memoirs have to be 100% true– the very nature of memoir makes that impossible– and I don’t mind so much the meshing of several people into one “character,” or exaggerating certain things to make it more entertaining, or even changing people’s names (although changing your own mother’s name seems weird) but I do take exception to including things that are blatantly untrue. It just seems wrong.
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