| Running with Scissors |
Click here to see a few of the original Journals used in the writing of Running with Scissors) 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 psychiatrist, a dead-ringer for Santa and a lunatic in the bargain. Suddenly, at age twelve, Augusten Burroughs found himself living in a dilapidated Victorian in perfect squalor. The doctor's bizarre family, a few patients, and a pedophile living in the backyard shed completed the tableau. Here, there were no rules, there was no school. The Christmas tree stayed up until summer, and Valium was eaten like Pez. And when things got dull, there was always the vintage electroshock therapy machine under the stairs... RUNNING WITH SCISSORS is at turns foul and harrowing, compelling and maniacally funny. But above all, it chronicles an ordinary boy's survival under the most extraordinary circumstances. Running with Scissors spent over four consecutive years on The New York Times bestseller list. To date, it has been published in over 20 countries. A film based on the book was released in 2006.
"I've just finished reading the most amazing book. "Running With Scissors" is hilarious, freaky-deaky, berserk, controlled, transcendent, touching, affectionate, vengeful, all-embracing. It makes you happy that there's such a thing in the world as a string of written words. It's not for everyone, however. PTA ladies and some Republican members of Congress might want to give this book a pass. "Running With Scissors" has a very high gross-out factor, and if you're the kind of person who tends to look past anyone's "sense of humor" to search for the sorrow lurking beneath, stay away: This memoir will sink you like a stone. But Augusten Burroughs asks you to run a cursory eye over the sorrow beneath and then focus on the metaphysical distance somewhere between rough event and his own bright mind, a golden effervescence of invention and wit that stuns you with its audacity and beauty and powerful love of being alive. "Running with Scissors," as a memoir in the current conventional sense, makes a good run at blowing every other contender out of the water. It takes the staples of the genre (inadequate parents, for example), recognizes the requirements (you want weird parents? I'll show you some weird parents!) and brings out human specimens so ineffably lunatic that Tobias and Geoffrey Wolff and, yes, even I, may have to shrink back in a corner and rethink our positions. You want weird sex? Take a look at this! (And Kathryn Harrison, who, after all only had an affair with her father, may have to put up or shut up. Because at least her dad was a guy, and she was an adult at the time.) Most of all, a great memoir requires bravery, guts and style. These accounts are our American grim fairy tales -- stories of hapless kids abandoned, mistreated, misguided and lied to; there'd be no point to them unless Jack felled the Giant at the top of the beanstalk or Hansel and Gretel succeeded in pushing the old witch into the oven. Burroughs provides that necessary triumph, together with an enormous component of love. Not mushy stuff about his awful parents; but a section for various members of his unofficial family as well as the admiration he arouses in the reader. You want to punch Burroughs companionably in the arm, pump his hand, smother him with hugs and take him out for a drink. You want to find out what else he knows about life. Augusten is 9 years old when this volume commences, 17 when it ends. At the beginning he lives in a "nice" house out in the New England woods with a morose, alcoholic dad and a mom who writes desperately awful poetry: "Childhood is gone. And youth. And ties with people I have loved are broken now. My grief is more than I can easily contain. My grief builds this town anew and raises all the dead to walk this day with me." She's capable of a ghastly domestic cheer -- "It's nearly one in the morning. Way past your bedtime" -- and is genuinely nuts: "Since she'd started seeing Finch, she'd gone crazy every fall. It was like her brain went on a Winter Clearance Sale." Finch is her psychiatrist. He has a wife, several other "wives" on the side and a vast assortment of children; some born to him biologically, some adopted, some mysteriously annexed. When Augusten's mother dumps him, the boy joins this bunch. I so much don't want to give away the plot! I can say that by the time he's 13, Augusten is sexually involved with a man 20 years older than he, a cheesy-drama kind of guy who insists on acting like a character from a very bad grand opera. And that when Augusten is in seventh grade and decides he doesn't want to go to school anymore, his mother and Finch helpfully work with him on a feigned suicide attempt that nearly ends the narrative on Page 128. ("You are an adult," his mother has just told him. "You're thirteen years old. . . . I have my own needs right now. My writing is very important to me . . .") The home of the Finches is distinguished by Christmas trees that never get taken down and Thanksgiving turkey carcasses that linger on as part of the furniture for months and even years. Dead animals are an integral part of this tale, as well as the wholesome American concept of living graciously outdoors. (Dead broke, the Finches attempt a yard sale and end up living companionably for a season out on the front lawn with all the stuff that doesn't sell, or that they don't feel like selling.) Augusten is just the sportingest little kid! He hangs out with his mildly autistic, extremely likable brother, who likes to order "a lump of meat and five iced teas" when they go into a restaurant. He makes friends with two Finch sisters: Hope, always good in an emergency, and then intrepid Natalie, who pines to change her life -- and will. He unmasks people who "present" as normal (oh, that Fern, the minister's wife!); he puts up with his crazy mom without ever seeming pathetic or victimized; he's brave as a bullet and he writes it all down. Oh, I love him! As much as Huck and Tom, that's how much I love Augusten."
"Bawdy, outrageous, often hilarious...the anecdotes in Running with Scissors can be so flippant, and so insanely funny (quite literally), that the effect is that of a William Burroughs situation comedy."
"The memoir gets a bad rap. Anyone who slogged through recent books about Anne Heche's insanity or Elizabeth Wurtzel's inanity certainly has reason to suspect the ''woe is me'' genre. Too many confessionals read like shameless attempts to prove that one is (a) more screwed up than everybody else and (b) not to blame. The examined life, at $23.95 a pop, is not always worth reading. But the best bits of personal history -- think Mary Karr, think Tobias Wolff, think David Sedaris riffing on his North Carolina brood -- offer blessed opportunities for a reader not to think about one's own self for a while... So ignore the genre's stigma, and take a chance on Augusten Burroughs' outrageously amusing recounting of his teenage years...he can consider this a fan letter. Grade A"
"Running With Scissors is testament to the resilience of the human spirit. That he can stand aside as an impartial observer of it, even write with humor in spite of the tragedy around him, is astounding proof of our emotional survival skills...reads like David Sedaris writing "The Hotel New Hampshire."
'Twisted, freakish, unfathomably bizarre...Not only is it one of the funniest "coming of age" memoirs written, it's also the best of the genre since Paul Monette's "Becoming a Man."... It's literally breathtaking, and you may find yourself putting the book down occasionally to catch some air. But when you come back for more, Burroughs' brilliant writing and humor in the face of darkness catch you off guard...It will prove to be a lasting treasure, a gorgeously written true-life story destined to be cherished and quoted long after its last page is read. Best of all, by the book's end, it bravely stands as a life-affirming survival guide for all the misfits of the world."
"Running with Scissors is a cut above...screamingly funny...Two things make Burroughs' book so compelling: his wit and his depiction of the wild goings-on in this large, strange family...But the true source of Running with Scissors' appeal stems from Burroughs' ability to bring the 1970's alive...In the end, the book celebrates Burroughs' resilient, upbeat spirit, which helps him surmount one of the weirder childhoods on record."
"Augusten Burroughs' memoir, "Running With Scissors," is a surreal and entertaining trip through a young life most readers will thank God wasn't theirs...Burroughs never lets his readers forget that stuck in the middle of all the madness is a confused boy."
"Shocking, sarcastic, humorous but never dull, the memoir has an effect similar to watching a car accident. You know you shouldn't gawk, but you simply can't turn away from the carnage."
"He survived parental trauma, his mom's psychiatrist's house of horrors and, to bring the book into the here and now, an acquaintance with a pedophile...But Augusten Burroughs' memoir still makes you laugh, because it's as funny as it is twisted."
"The events of five years in the life of Augusten Burroughs, as recounted in a memoir that is both horrifying and mordantly funny, are so unbelievable, they make even the most outrageous episode of "The Jerry Springer Show" seem rational by comparison. "Running With Scissors" just might be the most aptly titled book ever written. ...as outrageous as the events and characters in "Running With Scissors" are, Burroughs' memoir is shocking and disturbing because it's all real, and at the center of a story that Bunuel might have dreamed up is a little boy whose childhood is prematurely yanked out from under him."
"Ever wonder what it might be like to grow up in a lunatic asylum run by the lunatics? Augusten Burroughs' hilarious and horrifying memoir, "Running with Scissors," tells the story of a polite, well-groomed, cheerful little gay boy who finds himself, like Voltaire's Candide, being thrown from one bizarre situation into another...Life with Papa Finch, his subservient, crone-like wife and their brood of designedly uninhibited offspring is stranger than the Mad Hatter's Tea Party...The nuttiness of the goings-on described in this memoir seem to exemplify the adage: Truth is stranger than fiction...While some writers might have told a story like this in raw, anguished outrage, Burroughs (like a growing number of gay male writers) takes the path of outrageous comedy and satire."
"It's gross, it's shocking and its humor is blacker than a thousand midnights...But this hilarious, provocative and oddly touching book draws you into a bizarre world and keeps you rooting for its unusual narrator to survive, thrive and break free."
"Brutal, disturbing and often wildly funny...Burroughs' humor and wry, crudely detailed storytelling are only part of what keep his memoir from becoming unbearably tragic. "Running with Scissors" also is buoyed by Augusten's almost limitless resiliency. When, at his story's end, he is faced with an unexpected and life-changing decision, we have no doubt that he'll triumph...a stirring and stunning testament to a boy's strength in an environment of unfathomable heartache and dysfunction."
"Burroughs has memorialized his bizarre childhood in Running with Scissors, showing off a dark wit that often rivals that of David Sedaris -while telling a true story that would make even Sedaris cringe."
"Promotes visceral responses (of laughter, wincing, retching) on nearly every page...funny and rich with child's-eye details of adults who have gone off the rails."
"Burroughs memoir is irreverent, scurrilous, profane, licentious, horrific, and vile. It'll warp your mind, upset the neighbors and lower your standing in the community. In other words, it's funny as hell. He spews his life story onto the page with such style, wit, and honesty that you want to comfort him - and then steal his funniest lines."
"[Running with Scissors] will transport you."
"The family who eventually raised him (his mother's analyst's family) owned an electroshock therapy home set and traded insults like, "You're so oral. You'll never make it to genital"-and still this was an improvement over his original home life. Burroughs' introverted alcoholic father was indeed no match for his grandiose, poetry-writing, smoke-out-the-ears crazy wife, who once, waving aside the millionth magazine rejection slip, announced to her young son, "You know, Augusten. Your mother was meant to be a very famous woman." (That someone thinks she'll "get famous" by being a published poet is sufficient evidence that she's pretty far gone.) And then there's the time Burroughs bore witness to a woman performing cunnilingus on his mother. . . Running with Scissors is funny and gregarious..."
"...a childhood of electroshock high jinks."
"Burroughs has a way of writing reminiscent of David Sedaris. [Running with Scissors] tends to have you clutching your stomach with laughter, while covering your mouth in horror and utter disbelief...In the hands of many writers this could be a turgid survivor story - one part Oprah, one part Jerry Springer. Burroughs' book, on the other hand, is breathtaking. It is generous of heart and astutely observed. The prose is graceful and wry, yet lacking the self-conscious whimsy of that "other" memoir - that Running with Scissors has already, inevitably, been compared to - Dave Eggers's Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Burroughs has had an astonishing upbringing, but more astonishing is his ability to recount it so brilliantly.
'The most enthralling memoir since A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius."
"If you love Sedaris, you'll fold over laughing with Running With Scissors."
"Truth may be stranger than fiction, but Augusten Burroughs' extraordinary memoir Running With Scissors suggests that truth is stranger still when filtered through a novelist's lurid imagination and recast as autobiography. Running's defiantly cagey coming-of-age story seems too good to be true, both in the page-by-page outrageousness of every episode and in the vividness with which Burroughs remembers every overripe detail. He defies readers to believe his tall tales, though the one possible proof of their veracity is that the events are so strange and harrowing that they could not have been forgotten, no matter how hard he might have tried to push them from memory...Burroughs pads his way through a difficult period and somehow emerges a fully realized man. The sole comfort of reading this profoundly disturbing memoir, outside of Burroughs' brave comic perspective, lies in knowing that he lived to write it. "
"It's hard to imagine a childhood more disturbing and relentlessly surreal than the one the author describes in this memoir...Luckily, Burroughs tempers the pathos with sharp, riotous humor in stories that are self-deprecating, raunchy, sexually explicit, scatological, grotesque and deeply affecting. Edgier but reminiscent of Dave Eggers' Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, this is a survival story readers won't forget."
"Beautifully written with a finely tuned sense of style and wit...this memoir of a nightmarish youth is both compulsively entertaining and tremendously provocative."
"A grotesque comic merger of John Waters and David Sedaris."
"[B]ound to please fans of dark humor...Burroughs' account, full of frightening and hilarious images, is an entertaining, moving tale of an unconventional 1980s coming of age. It could be the one book you remember reading this summer."
"Running with Scissors is a blast...In the world of childhood memoirs, it sets a new standard."
"This is the Brady Bunch on Viagra...It is impossible not to laugh at all the jokes; to admire the sardonic, fetid tone; to wonder, slack-jawed and agog, at the sheer looniness of the vista he conjures up. "
"Running with Scissors reads like an extremely well crafted and crazed sitcom, a mix of Jerry Springer and Seinfeld...Funny, moving and extraordinary. "
"Funnier and more alarming than any memoir in recent history" |
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