May 17, 2006
BOOKS
Light in Augusten
The therapeutic bad-boy author returns with a collection of short stories.
Augusten Burroughs has never been one to shy away from baring his darkest secrets and deepest flaws. His startlingly forthright exposure method serves to disarm and engage readers as he adeptly extracts benign tumors of hilarity from even the most cancerous situations.Burroughs' first autobiographical book Running With Scissors documents an early childhood fraught with mental illness, and its effects on everything in its wake. From accounts of watching his mother suffer through psychotic episodes to a strange acquaintance with a pedophile, Burroughs still manages to inject therapeutic doses of absurd humor into his well-crafted memoirs.
In the follow-up to Scissors, Dry, Burroughs relates his downward spiral into alcoholism during his days as a self-taught ad man in Manhattan. The book follows Burroughs through company-mandated inpatient rehab-at a gay clinic, no less ("People really appreciate the drama")-and his subsequent daily struggle with his alcoholic demons. The result is eerily funny.
Burroughs' latest Possible Side Effects is a collection of short stories that serve as brief glimpses into what made Burroughs the slightly neurotic, vastly talented individual he is today. From childhood blowups with his mother and grandmother over afro picks and platform boots to his own theories on fast-food demographics (Subway is a favorite among single women due to their healthy dildo-shaped sandwiches, but "Dairy Queen, with it's same-sex undertones, was surely popular with the Evangelical Christians"), the stories in Possible Side Effects are lighter in tone than his previous autobiographical outings, but no less disconcertingly humorous.
I recently caught up with Burroughs via phone as he prepared for another backbreaking day of interviews and glad-handing as the Burroughs Express book tour tossed anchor in Portland, Ore. The conversation topics ranged from Burroughs' naked enthusiasm about the fall 2006 release of Running With Scissors, the motion picture, to the unintended but serendipitous therapy many have derived from his writings. But one thing remained constant throughout the entire interview-the sound of furious gum-chomping on the other end of the line.
Let's talk about the movie. The cast is simply phenomenal-Annette Bening, Gwyneth Paltrow and Alec Baldwin, just to name a few.
"After Running With Scissors appeared on the Times' bestseller list, we were hit with a lot of requests to option the book into a movie. I was never really comfortable with the concept of the book as a film. It just seemed like it'd be too easy to trivialize events and make the whole thing a campy affair. But this guy Ryan Murphy, who was behind that show Popular [and the directorial force of Nip/Tuck], kept calling and calling, so finally I just decided to meet with him for lunch to explain why it just couldn't happen. Instead he told me about his mother and how he handled his experiences with her, and I knew right then and there that he got it and he wouldn't treat it like a sideshow attraction or a car wreck on the side of the road. At that point I figured he was either enormously capable or just plain crazy. It was really a coin toss by then, and we decided to go with him."
How involved were you in the making of the movie?
"When I first decided to consider the movie option, everyone warned me I would lose all control over the project, as is so often the case. Ryan, on the other hand, reeled me in very close, and I was part of nearly every aspect of the film from the casting process to the making of the movie ... even down to the details of the set furniture."
Did this awaken your inner interior designer?
"Ryan asked me to provide written descriptions of the furniture from my childhood home, down to the brand names, provided I could recall any. When I visited the set and saw 'my bedroom,' it really blew me away. A perfect version of my old record holder is sitting right there-same brand and color, even. My old Chess King outfits are scattered about the room. Also, I used to boil and shine my pennies when I was a kid-you know, I had an attraction to shiny things-and sitting on the set bureau was a jar of pennies, and not a single one in there was dated past, oh, I don't know exactly, but there was a cutoff date-like 1979. The attention to detail is just magnificent."
Is it weird seeing your life played out for the big screen when you haven't even reached your 41st birthday?
"Oh, it's definitely surreal. And honestly, some of it is hard to watch. Annette Bening genuinely appears psychotic. Real psychosis is reflected in the eyes. A psychotic has the look of someone who's occupied by someone-or something-else. Annette's turn on my mother is uncanny ... and haunting."
Many people have found comfort, even therapy, in your books. In fact, Dry makes regular appearances on many alcohol rehab reading lists. How's that feel?
"I never set out to write a book like that. I wrote it for myself. I started writing Dry as journal entries in 1995, after I got out of rehab. I wrote because I couldn't do anything else at the time. It was intended as more of a road map for me. But when I meet people who tell me what an effect my book had on their lives, it really hits me in a profound way. The thrill of walking into a bookstore and seeing your book on display lasts about 20 minutes. Same with reviews. But what's truly thrilling and exciting is meeting the people who read your books. That is the ultimate."
Nicorette?
"Yup."
Possible Side Effects
By Augusten Burroughs
St. Martin's Press
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