Have you ever read a book - not for school, but voluntarily, willingly - and then said, "Oh thank God!" when it was over? This happened to me for the first time today as I finished Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs.
Running is a memoir of a bizarre childhood spent with people clearly suffering from various mental illnesses. His mother, self-centred and sometimes psychotic, ended up dumping her youngest son with her "unconventional" psychiatrist and his family in their filthy, bug-infested home, where he would later be sexually assaulted by another of the doctor's "adopted" sons. And yet Burroughs writes so well and engagingly - allowing the reader to distance herself somewhat from events, just as he had to in order to survive - that I kept reading despite my repulsion for his circumstances.
I'd like to be half the writer that Burroughs is, but not if I have to live through what he did ...
Update at 6:40AM June 25th - I must have been thinking about this post overnight, because when I woke up this morning, I had a thought or two to add. So here goes:
Running with Scissors is told in as light-hearted a manner as possible. I'm sure it's intended to be comedy. And I really, really hate to be so friggin' literal, but I just couldn't find much about his situation to be humourous. Yet it was a compelling read. It was like watching a car wreck - I wanted what was happening to not happen, or at least to tear my eyes away, and yet I was riveted. Which explains, I think, why I was so relieved when the book was over.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Running with Scissors
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2 comments:
You're right - he absolutely tries to pull off a "haha" outlook, but I didn't buy it, it was too tragic for the comedy to be believable. It stank of coping mechanism, which is understandable...and I think one of the reasons the book is so compelling. His next book, Dry, takes up as he arrives in New York, and details his fight with a serious case of alcoholism. It's raw, unflinching, but ultimately more sentimental, I think.
Yeah, the humour that he uses to cope/distance himself also helped me as the reader to cope the same way. If it weren't for this mechanism, his life story would be unbearable.
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