Title: Running With Scissors
Author: Augusten Burroughs

by anonymous

When I first came across Augusten Burrough's memoir, Running With Scissors, the cover alone drew me in. The photograph shows a boy standing in a yard with a giant cardboard box concealing his face. The publishing company Picador couldn't have hit on the issue of identity concealment any better than they did by using this image. When it comes to self-discovery and other identity issues that usually are written about in memoirs, Burroughs knows how to make light of a complicated childhood.

Complicated is an understatement. Factoring in the psychotic mother who eats wax off of candles and is an aspiring poet, his mother's therapist who has a masturbatorium (a "room" filled with adult magazines) at his office for "relief" in between patients, a pedophile man in his thirties that he has a sexual relationship with at the age of 14, and the fact that he moves into the house with the crazy psychiatrist, Burroughs life seems like a Jerry Springer meets Days of Our Lives.

His observations are astute and so descriptive that you wonder just how much really happened and what he has taken the liberty of embellishing. Burroughs has a knack for writing a paragraph of description and then hitting you smack in the face with a few sentences of asides that add humor into his self-reflections.

"Smoking had become my favorite thing in the world to do," Burroughs says early on in the book. "It was like having instant comfort, no matter where or when. No wonder my parents smoked, I thought. The part of me that used to polish my jewelery for hours and comb my hair until my scalp was deeply scratched was now lighting cigarettes every other minute and then carefully stomping them out. It turned out I had always been a smoker. I just hadn't had any cigarettes."

His compulsions and desires lead him through an adolescence that makes Holden Caulfield and Jack Kerouac look yawn-worthy. As he observes the crazy people around him to gain perspective, the crazy people in turn depend on other things for observations. Like shit. The crazy psychiatrist, Dr. Finch, interprets the shape of his own stool to foretell fortunes. The hilarious episode is a lot more entertaining and original than fortune cookies.

As he comes to terms with his sexuality, he doesn't have grand realizations or life-altering lessons. He writes about the bizarre experiences that define his personal childhood almost as a catharsis. The humor Burroughs writes with is a similar style to well-known NPR commentator David Sedaris, and is just as enjoyable.