By: Augusten BurroughsThat this book has been widely compared to David Sedaris is understandable, but only on the very surface. Both authors are gay, and both authors write quirky and humorous memoirs about their dysfunctional families. Ok. If the dysfunction in Sedaris' family could be described as an irritating rash, the dysfunction in Burroughs' would be the slightly more irritating affliction of leprosy.
Which is why, as the devastation that is Burroughs' life unfolds, the comparison rings so false. After spending a few hundred pages with Sedaris, you're comfortable in the knowledge that what ever sets you and/or your family apart, you're not alone. After spending a few hundred pages with Burroughs, you're left wondering how its possible for people like those he grew up with to have actually existed, and how he retains any kind of humor about his situation.
His situation just goes from bad to worse. His mother goes crazy, he goes to live with a crazier family, he gets raped, his mother gets raped, his closest friend prostitutes herself, and anyone who reaches out a helping hand to him ends up, well, not exactly helping.
Its a strange kind of book, I don't know exactly if I've ever read anything so tragic that was dealt with so humorously before. As a result, I feel glad that
Burroughs' made it out alive, much less with the ability to laugh (and make others laugh) about it, but at the same time, theres something very discomforting about turning the story into a comedy.
In conclusion; funny like leprosy, a little uncomfortable, not like Sedaris.
4 comments:
Reading your review and Meezlys
http://meezly.blogspot.com/2007/02/book-1-running-with-scissors.html
give me a very different picture of this book. She made it seem all kind of light and funny, not unlike Sedaris. Yours makes me wonder how they could have even thought of making a movie out of it.
I thought this book was awful. I think he was trying way to hard to be taken seriously—to make the reader feel his pain—while simultaneously trying way too hard to be funny. I also thought his writing was hack. No book that's compared to both Sedaris and Eggers should be allowed to have a fucking cliché for a title.
Interesting.
Mond- I didn't think it was awful, I thought the writing was tight and kept it kept my interest. I do think that its a very awkward subject to base a comedy on, which was the basis of my discomfort with it. I honestly can't tell if the fact that it deals with this tragedy through a comic lens makes it unique, or just ill-conceived.
Perhaps both.
I think I need to let it sit for a while.
Your right olman,- I meant to go back and re-read Meezly's review since i finished it, and now that I have, it is indeed a very different picture.
I wonder if part of the reason that we had such different responses to it has to do with the author's detachment. Its with such blase (accent on the e) that he talks about his rape, his mother rape, etc- that it doesn't elicit much of a response as a reader. In fact, he makes his snarky remarks more memorable in the end.
I find that the more I write about it now, the more I'm inclined to agree with Mond.
the book's blurb said it was supposed to be a "hilarious childhood memoir". so I just took it for how they were trying to market it.
very true that the author's detachment was enough to give readers different impressions, but the odd blase-ness was also noted in my review:
"The tone was always kept somewhat light and casual, so you never felt like you could really get inside the author’s head of how it must have felt to have insanity rip your family apart."
strangely, I didn't find the attempt at comedy disturbing. everyone was so fucked up in their own way, it kind of made sense that the young author was able to regard everything from an emotional distance and a sense of humour. kind of like a useful survival trait.
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