Augusten Burroughs is a freak, and I will not read anymore of his work that is non-fiction and has to do with him. I just do not want to know anything else about this man, and if I ever see him walking toward me, I will cross the street immediately.
Augusten Burroughs is a very good writer. His work is clever, witty and very fast moving. I have read his novel, Sellevision (which I actually read before his smash memoir was released), said smash memoir, Running with Scissors, and just now, his collection of true stories, Magical Thinking. I did not read Dry, the account of his alochol-hazed twenties, and now I do not plan to. Reading Augusten Burroughs books has crystalized something that has been itching at the back of my mind for several months, if not years.
I don’t really want to know peoples’ dark secrets. I want to know people from the moment I meet them forward into the future. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but when it comes to complete strangers, I’m uncomforatble reading about their dirty little (or huge) secrets. This self-confessional form of memoir has been popular for several years now. It started with celebrities, but in the past few years, it seems like anyone can write a book about their chilhood, the more perverse or twisted the better, and have it be a runaway bestseller. I partially blame Oprah. Augusten Burroughs is the most recent, trendy example of this. When I read Burroughs books, I am alternatively entertained and horrified. But it’s not the fun horrified of the spiraling descent in a bleak foreign film, it’s the horrified that genuinely upsets me, and makes me wonder just how much of a freak this man must be.
Now comes the strange part. I get that feeling reading some peoples’ blogs as well. Kind of contradictory, considering I’m writing in my own blog at this moment. But I also have a love/hate relationship with blogs. I do occassionally stumble upon a blog from time to time, that I find fairly interesting, that I read sporadically, or even vaguely regularly. As is often the case, these blogs usually revolve around the person writing it. Lately, I’ve been reading someone’s blog over a period of time, getting to “know” them in a certain sense, then I will start to be horrified at what they’re writing. The things they’re sharing with people they don’t know. I start to think they’re freaks.
It helps if I meet the people, because then I can see them as a whole person, and not just as what they write in their blogs. It has also become wonderfully refreshing to find bloggers who write intelligent, interesting, personal blogs that avoid the mysterious quality that gives me the heebie jeebies.
Then there is film, and as anyone who knows me, film is a medium that I simply adore. There was a film out this fall called TARNATION directed by Jonathan Caouette. Part biography, party memoir, Caouette has been filming his own admittedly dysfunctional life since he was around eleven years old. As an adult, he edited a lot of the footage that he had been filming for his entire life into a film exploring the descent into mental illness sufferred by his mother, and the extremes in his life that he has endured. I was very wary of seeing this film, and watching it, in fact, did make me very uncomfortable in the way reading Augusten Burroughs’ books do. But Mr. Caouette was in the audience that day, and hearing him speak and talk about his life and the making of this film, put my mind at ease. The film, by the way, is pretty amazing, and one of my top 10 of the year, but I’m hoping it doesn’t start a trend.
Perhaps I should go to a reading of Augusten Burroughs, to try and get over this strong aversion I have developed surrounding him. I try to make myself feel better thinking he exaggerates for his books, and that no one like that is really walking around unrestrained among normal people. I know it’s me. His books are best sellers. People love him. And I will happily read anymore fiction that he publishes.
I have to close this blog entry with Mr. Burroughs own words… a passage from his book. He explains, since writing his books, people will approach him on the street and tell him embarassing or horrifying things about themselves. He writes of one woman, somebody’s grandmother and a complete stranger, who confessed something truly repulsive and bizarre to him. After telling this woman’s story, Augusten writes, “Although I was able to maintain a pleasant expression, I was mentally throwing up in her face. This is the sort of detail you don’t reveal to anybody, even a therapist. You simply avoid Dr. Pepper and take your dirty little secret to the grave with you.”
Well, Mr. Burroughs, I wish you had taken your own advice.