Tom Lynch

"Running with Scissors," Augusten Burroughs' 2002 debut, shattered any and all expectations and became one of the year's nonfiction bestsellers. The book, a collection of stories essentially about Burroughs' childhood--life with an alcoholic father and an unstable mother, time spent living with a therapist wolfing down prescription meds and a pedophile who lived in the backyard--was shocking and rich with humor, self-reflection and sadness, a coming-of-age story not pigheaded enough to want to inspire but rather to inform (the film adaptation comes out later this year). Written with sweeping vivaciousness, "Running with Scissors" changed contemporary memoir for good.

Of course, contemporary memoir changed drastically again early this year with the James Frey "A Million Little Pieces" controversy, which ended in embarrassment for the once-esteemed author on national television during "The Oprah Winfrey Show," proving that even memoirists--not Scientology-spewing actors or Internet-sex-tape actresses/heiresses--are susceptible to the highs and lows of public perception. Nonfiction may never be the same, not when the reader's first reaction is to doubt, to raise questions and avoid trust. We've been lied to before.

"I don't really know [how it will change the face of memoir]," Burroughs says. "It's a little too early to really know. I think college kids, creative-writing students are naturally really worried. It kind of feels like a Milli Vanilli thing. It hasn't affected me or my writing, other than me being asked about it. I haven't read [Frey's] stuff. It makes people more cynical, though. So much so that people constantly come up to me and say, `I never doubted you.'"

Burroughs released "Possible Side Effects" earlier this month, a collection of essays and his third book since "Running with Scissors." ("Dry" and "Magical Thinking" came in between.) A scattered variety of Burroughs' stories, the book shows life for him in New York City, his internal wiring as he sifts through daily life, plus a few nods to his dysfunctional childhood. In "Pest Control," the author examines his childhood fear of the tooth fairy, praying to "Jesus Fucking Christ" to prevent her from entering his bedroom at night. He writes about "Killing John Updike," how he collects first editions from the author and muses about his eventual death. Without the dramatic depth of "Running with Scissors" or "Dry," this book gives Burroughs the opportunity to go places with his humor that he couldn't before--to everyday life, where the world's funniest, most idiosyncratic offerings hide.

"I make all the decisions based on my gut instinct... I don't want to repeat myself. For example, I sort of already covered the `alcoholic' area, I don't want to do that again," Burroughs says about how he decides what is and isn't story-worthy. "I'll think about things like that. Have I gone through this already? If I have, why am I putting it in? I don't want people to think I'm dragging the bottom of the barrel here. Sometimes it'll be the overall tone of the book. `Magical Thinking' was a little bit darker. It had a mean streak. Not all of the essays have to work with the tone, but they have to help balance it out."

So does it strike him immediately to write about the events in his life, as they occur? "Bad things happen if I don't write," he says. "It's the way I process information. It's a given that I'm gonna write about it if it happens in my life. I mean, I write every day. It's just part of the way I work. Sometimes all I write in a day is just email. I consider that writing. I'll save an email and turn that into a story."

Earlier this year the New York Post's Page Six column reported on Burroughs' disclaimer at the start of "Possible Side Effects," which basically just states that some names and characteristics of the characters have been changed or altered. Page Six suggested that the disclaimer's presence is in response to the Frey controversy, and quoted The Smoking Gun founder Bill Bastone--the journalist who broke the Frey story--saying that since last year, the Web site's received countless requests for more literary investigations, and Burroughs is at the top of everybody's list.

Burroughs laughs it off. "It's like, `Have you people even read the book? It's about the fucking Tooth Fairy! Another story is about my dog, how I really didn't like him at first, and then, well, I did. That's it. They just assumed I was in there writing about fucking the president's daughter."

Burroughs has a lot ahead of him as he already has two books planned--one about Christmas and another about his father--and then he'll move over to fiction. "I love the freedom," he says. "It was the way I was raised."

Augusten Burroughs discusses "Possible Side Effects" May 19 at Borders, 2817 North Clark, (773)935-3909, at 7:30pm. Free.

(2006-05-16)

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