Running with Scissors

“Running with Scissors” by Augusten Burroughs is a memoir that made the New York Times bestseller list and has received much critical acclaim. It’s not hard to understand why. The story is so fantastic in a morbid way that reading it is a bit like watching a car accident or a wildfire… it’s frightening and repulsive but one cannot turn away. Yet the tale is so outside the typical reader’s experience that it comes across as surreal and ultimately doesn’t really touch the core of emotion. Perhaps many of us are so numb to the indifference with which one person can treat another that it takes extraordinary writing to pierce through our protective shields. Burroughs’ talent is not sufficient to accomplish this and his memoir reads like bad fiction rather than the revelation of truth it is meant to be.

Augusten’s father is an alcoholic and his mother is a crazy, self-centered poet. Early memories are of spectacular arguments between them. It’s little wonder with everything around him so out of his control, Augusten concentrates on dressing impeccably and surrounding himself with shiny objects and mirrors. He imagines himself a doctor or a celebrity and spends his time performing for the unseen camera, posing. He tries to impose control on a chaotic life.

But life gets more chaotic, not less. After the divorce, his mother spends more and more time in the care of Dr. Fitch, her psychiatrist. Augusten is left to stay with Dr. Fitch’s family in their house, which is both filthy and totally out of control. Dr. Fitch believes that showing anger is healthy, so arguments abound. No one cleans anything unless they want to, so dirty dishes are piled in the sink and the toddler runs naked and excretes on the rug. The furniture is full of holes. For fun, they play ‘electroshock therapy’, or ask questions of God and poke their finger randomly into the Bible to get their answer. A couple of the kids decide to pull down the kitchen ceiling and install a skylight, so when the doctor arises one morning, there is rubble three feet deep across the floor. He’s not upset. “Well, quite a project you have going here,” he says to them as he makes his way to the fridge to get his morning orange juice.

Children attend school if and when they want to. When Augusten feels he can’t stand to attend anymore, Dr. Fitch helps him fake a suicide attempt so he can be released from school to undergo six months of psychotherapy. Augusten is fine with this. So’s his mother, who realizes that she won’t have to bother about her son for a long stretch of time, leaving her free to write her poetry.

Augusten, who also happens to be gay, gets involved with a 33-year old man when he is only fourteen. Dr. Finch is fine with this, although he wishes Augusten had chosen someone a little better for him. Augusten’s mother has always liked the young man because he appreciates her poetry, so she tells Augusten that she’s happy to support him in his relationship.

The worst of horrors can make an effective tale, but only when the reader can relate. “Running with Scissors” is so far from most reader’s experience that it becomes a farce, like a game show or a reality TV series where people eat worms for money. We can sit back and chuckle secure in the knowledge that we would never be so foolish, so desperate, so complicit in our own abuse. But we don’t really take it seriously because we can’t. It is all as far outside our experience as it would be if we had grown up on another planet.

So, ultimately, “Running with Scissors” fails to touch. It’s amusing, farcical, cynical, and entertaining, but it doesn’t feel real.

Bottom line: The scissors need sharpening.