"If My Father Caught Me He Would Cut My Neck..."
Today is the release date for A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father by Augusten Burroughs. Some caveats before I write this entry. I'm not a huge fan of Running with Scissors. The tone feels very uneven. But I thought Dry was brilliant. Quite honestly, I thought that he learned from writing the first book, which is why the second book feels tighter and clearer. I have his two books of essays but haven't really read them. I am looking forward to this one, though, hoping it is more like Dry than Scissors.

But this entry is about something that is driving me crazy. There is a cover story about Burroughs in New York magazine. And the whole point of the story is to catch Burroughs in a lie. Those of you who are longtime readers will remember how upset I was at the James Frey incident. I won't even go back to find the entries I wrote because of the pain I was feeling at the time.

A lot of people think I am naive, but I believe in the possibility of truth. There is a lot to say about how truth can be defined, but I do believe in a line--or continuum--between fiction and nonfiction, truth and falsity. One of the things I love about memoir is the transformation of experience into narrative. I appreciate the challenge of fiction, of turning creation into narrative, but it's not a process that interests me. Therefore, I'm not a big fiction reader.

The thing about Burroughs is that the family he wrote about in Scissors has been trying to prove he lied, that he did what Frey did. But they can't do it. One thing that stunned me about that case is that they questioned such things as whether he saw a child poop on the floor or whether a particular sister's apartment was filled with African artifacts. One of the accusations Burroughs levels at the family is that their father raped his mother. There's a chapter in the book about the father keeping her trapped in a hotel room. No one has ever questioned that. In fact, no one ever says a word about it. When I read details about the case, I went back to the book to see if I was remembering that part wrong, stunned that they would question what kind of art someone owned but letting rape accusations go. I wasn't wrong.

Interpretation of experience is subjective. That's a whole lot different than Frey saying he was in jail for months instead of hours or days. If you're not a memoir fan, then don't read them. But this craving on the parts of many to search for falsity drives me crazy, the whole guilty until proven innocent thing. I admire Burroughs for standing up for himself as he does. Is he arrogant or self-absorbed? Ummm, he's made a fortune for doing nothing but talking about himself, so I think some arrogance and/or self-absorption is to be expected.

Oh, one thing from the New York article that also drives me crazy is that the author tries so hard to find lies while presenting so much evidence that hurts that argument. There is a photograph of all of the evidence Burroughs used to write this book. There are photographs of his father, his father's journals, and scrapbooks kept by his father's parents. It sounds like he was mining the evidence available to write this book.

I'll read the book and come back to talk about it. If it rings false, I'll talk about it. If it doesn't, I'll talk about that, too.
- posted by Nels @ 9:18 PM | | | Link |