Running with Scissors: A Memoir (Paperback)

~ (Author) "MY MOTHER IS STANDING IN FRONT OF THE BATHROOM MIRror smelling polished and ready; like Jean Nate, Dippity Do and the waxy sweetness of lipstick..." (more)
Key Phrases: Father Kimmel, New York City, Poo Bear (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

There is a passage early in Augusten Burroughs's harrowing and highly entertaining memoir, Running with Scissors, that speaks volumes about the author. While going to the garbage dump with his father, young Augusten spots a chipped, glass-top coffee table that he longs to bring home. "I knew I could hide the chip by fanning a display of magazines on the surface, like in a doctor's office," he writes, "And it certainly wouldn't be dirty after I polished it with Windex for three hours." There were certainly numerous chips in the childhood Burroughs describes: an alcoholic father, an unstable mother who gives him up for adoption to her therapist, and an adolescence spent as part of the therapist's eccentric extended family, gobbling prescription meds and fooling around with both an old electroshock machine and a pedophile who lives in a shed out back. But just as he dreamed of doing with that old table, Burroughs employs a vigorous program of decoration and fervent polishing to a life that many would have simply thrown in a landfill. Despite her abandonment, he never gives up on his increasingly unbalanced mother. And rather than despair about his lot, he glamorizes it: planning a "beauty empire" and performing an a capella version of "You Light Up My Life" at a local mental ward. Burroughs's perspective achieves a crucial balance for a memoir: emotional but not self-involved, observant but not clinical, funny but not deliberately comic. And it's ultimately a feel-good story: as he steers through a challenging childhood, there's always a sense that Burroughs's survivor mentality will guide him through and that the coffee table will be salvaged after all. --John Moe

From Publishers Weekly

"Bookman gave me attention. We would go for long walks and talk about all sorts of things. Like how awful the nuns were in his Catholic school when he was a kid and how you have to roll your lips over your teeth when you give a blowjob," writes Burroughs (Sellevision) about his affair, at age 13, with the 33-year-old son of his mother's psychiatrist. That his mother sent him to live with her shrink (who felt that the affair was good therapy for Burroughs) shows that this is not just another 1980s coming-of-age story. The son of a poet with a "wild mental imbalance" and a professor with a "pitch-black dark side," Burroughs is sent to live with Dr. Finch when his parents separate and his mother comes out as a lesbian. While life in the Finch household is often overwhelming (the doctor talks about masturbating to photos of Golda Meir while his wife rages about his adulterous behavior), Burroughs learns "your life [is] your own and no adult should be allowed to shape it for you." There are wonderful moments of paradoxical humor Burroughs, who accepts his homosexuality as a teen, rejects the squeaky-clean pop icon Anita Bryant because she was "tacky and classless" as well as some horrifying moments, as when one of Finch's daughters has a semi-breakdown and thinks that her cat has come back from the dead. Beautifully written with a finely tuned sense of style and wit the occasional clich‚ ("Life would be fabric-softener, tuna-salad-on-white, PTA-meeting normal") stands out anomalously this memoir of a nightmarish youth is both compulsively entertaining and tremendously provocative.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Picador (June 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031242227X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312422271
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (859 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #26,487 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

254 of 288 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Disturbingly hilarious, January 20, 2003

By	Westley (Stuck in my head) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Running with Scissors: A Memoir (Hardcover)

I found myself laughing hysterically at this book while simultaneously shaking my head in horror. It's the story of Burrough's life from the age of roughly 13 to 16. Burrough's lived a middle-classed life, but the people around him were gradually losing it. His mother began to have "psychotic breaks" (although it sounds like she may have had bipolar disorder) and hooked up with a bizarre psychiatrist - Dr. Finch. Soon, every aspect of their lives are touched by Dr. Finch and his equally bizarre family. At times, the events are horrifying, such as Burrough's molestation by Dr. Finch's adopted son. Remarkably, Burrough's manages to find the humor even in these situations. People are likely to compare Burrough's to another gay humorist, David Sedaris; however, Burrough's stories are far darker than those of Sedaris, although both of them write great funny stories. This book was a tremendously quick read, and I laughed out loud more than any recent book I've read. Highly recommended on that basis, but some readers are likely to be highly offended by some of the content.

39 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Disturbingly honest--and disturbingly funny, March 16, 2003

By	D. Cloyce Smith (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Running with Scissors: A Memoir (Hardcover)

When he was a teenager in Massachusetts during the 1970s, Augusten Burroughs kept daily journals recording everything that happened to him. "Running with Scissors" is a result of those journals, but it's unlikely that anyone who suffered experiences like his would need a journal to recall them. Instead, his diaries both gave him the therapeutic outlet he needed while growing up and supplied this book with the rich detail that makes it, at times, so unbelievable.

Burrough's mother was a struggling poet who wanted to be like Anne Sexton, and, lacking any talent, she instead suffered Sexton's psychotic episodes. The father, unable to deal with his wife's instability, drank himself out of the relationship. Eventually, Burroughs is abandoned by his family and adopted by his mother's psychiatrist, a certifiable lunatic who dispenses drugs and sex far more diligently than sound advice and who believes discipline is an evil to be avoided at all costs. To complicate an already disastrous situation, other members of this adopted family include several deeply disturbed individuals, including a pedophile who finds a ready victim in the 14-year-old Burroughs.

I read this book two months ago, and, while I found it simultaneously appalling and enjoyable, I didn't know what to make of it. Since then, I've read several press reports that address some of the rumors generated by this book's publication. No, none of the people described in this book have sued (or threatened to sue) the author for libel. True, no child with the name "Augusten Burroughs" ever lived anywhere near Northampton--because Burroughs legally changed his name when he was 18. In sum, I've read nothing to indicate that Burroughs is making it all up.

Yet there are two criticisms of the book I don't understand. Unfortunately for Burroughs, the back cover includes a single blurb comparing him to David Sedaris, and many readers, unable to think for themselves, contrast the two authors and find Burroughs lacking. Other than being gay and funny (and it's insulting that that is all it takes for people to link the two authors), Burroughs and Sedaris have nothing in common--each has his own writing style and a unique sense of humor. It would be just as pertinent to compare him to Ru Paul.

The second criticism is that Burroughs reproduces conversations verbatim from thirty years ago. Putting aside the fact that he was able to consult diaries to refresh his memory, this technique is not uncommon. J. R. Ackerley, Annie Dillard, and Philip Roth--to name just three I've read recently--all use the same conceit in their classic memoirs. Burroughs is not as good as these three writers--his prose is a bit austere, and the book teeters on the edge of John Waters-inspired camp. Nevertheless, criticism of "recreated" dialogue seems gratuitous: any detail in any autobiography can be censured on the same grounds. Burroughs quite successfully recreates for the reader certain episodes of his life--episodes no human being would have been able to forget--and the exact wording of recalled dialogue matters as much as the exact color of the polyester shirt he was wearing at the time.

Regardless of its faults (both real and alleged), the book is vivid proof that Burroughs emerged from his past with a profound sense of dignity. In a recent interview, he said of the older man who sexually abused him: "Mostly I still feel an incredible rage that he would do that to a young person, but just as much as I feel that rage I feel sorry for him, because he was someone who was mentally ill and had the most atrocious therapist possible." This quote alone displays his uncanny ability to step back and reflect detachedly on his experiences and to be both empathetic and sympathetic even towards those who deserve his venom. Some readers will be disturbed by Burroughs's ability to laugh (and make us laugh) at what happened to him. Yet the book probably would have unbearable otherwise--and, if it weren't for his sense of humor, it's unlikely the author would be around to tell us his story at all.

31 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Don't expect to be sent into fits of laughter., October 26, 2006

By	L. Boswell (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

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Here's the thing about memoirs. Sometimes you read them and you catch yourself saying, "Well, why would the author have the character do that?" Or, "What was the point of the protagonist doing this?" Then you remember it's a memoir--based on real life--and that real life doesn't always conform to the rules of fiction writing.

So, while I'd like to complain about the meaninglessness of having the main character form a really close bond with Natalie, only to throw it away in three pages because of an arguably tough situation right at the end, I can't. Because, as far as I know, the author is simply telling us what happened, and it doesn't necessarily have to have any meaning.

I think I went into this book expecting "The Royal Tennenbaums." This is because the back of the book (which, to my high annoyance, has no synopsis) has multiple quotes from reviewers calling the book "hilarious" or "riotously funny" or "hysterical." That, plus the previews of the movie, make it seem as though the story is going to be fun, quirky ... uhhh ... funny. Maybe a little dark, as Royal was, but not dreadful.

Here are things I simply cannot find funny:

Hateful, selfish parents
Attempted murder of one spouse on the other
Verbal abuse
Parents who disown their children
Child molestation
Selling children

And, uh, that's pretty much what this whole book is about. Its very core is about a mother who goes bananas and just says hateful things to her son, before completely abandoning him. The father isn't present at all. The child is left to fend for himself at a psycho psychiatrists house, along with other kids, from the age of 12 or 13, depending on when you judge the true neglect begins. No one at his school, none of the neighbors, NO ONE ever saw these kids and thought, "Gee, maybe something should be done for these kids?"

I don't find that funny, I find it incredibly sad.

And despite the protagonist's "maturity," it is RAPE when a 33-year-old man has sex with a 13-year-old. Just like it's RAPE when a 40-year-old ADOPTS an 11-year-old so he can have sex with her undeterred.

I know why people find this book charming. The author does have a skill for finding the humor in some awful situations. Some of the dialogue is downright witty. And, any reader can look at the book and say, "Well, his childhood couldn't have been all that bad. I mean, look how successful he's turned out to be."

Sure, true. And honestly, I might not have minded this book so much had someone ever said to me, "It's very disturbing and sad, but the author has a gift for finding some light in the darkness" I might have gone into reading the book with the right mindest and really liked it. But I was expecting funny and what I read seemed to me anything but.