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.
Posted: Sun - September 1, 2002 at 12:26 AM