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Running With Scissors: A Memoir

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anthony

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RUNNING WITH SCISSORS is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her unorthodox psychiatrist who bore a striking resemblance to Santa Claus. So at the age of twelve, Burroughs found himself amidst Victorian squalor living with the doctor’s bizarre family, and befriending a pedophile who resided in the backyard shed. The story of an outlaw childhood where rules were unheard of, and the Christmas tree stayed up all year-round, where Valium was consumed like candy, and if things got dull, an electroshock therapy machine could provide entertainment. The funny, harrowing, and bestselling account of an ordinary boy’s survival under the most extraordinary circumstances…
 
I have started it. Parts of it, well it is weird but I can relate to him.

I feel he dresses the way he does so perfectly because it is the one area of his life which he can control. Growing up, I wasn't like that with clothes but I was like it with my surroundings and OK, I'll admit it, I was fascinated with the cleanliness of toilets :eek::oops:.

It must have been terrible for the little boy to be uprooted and left with Dr Finch and his family.

I am enjoying the book and I'm looking forward to reading more.
 
I have this on order at the library but they can't tell me when it will be in. I'll start it as soon as I get it but it could be a long wait. :(
 
I love how this starts of... where he is quite young, fourish or so, thinks the world of his mother and believes them to be the richest family in the world, then the second chapter a little older, still naive, though not as much, then the third chapter, about tenish years of age... no longer as naive, though still pleasing nonetheless towards his parents, even though he starts to realise his mother is delusional and living in some fantasy of her abilities, and his father is a drunk who uses big words and makes him constantly frightened that he will kill his mother. Then they divorce.... haven't started chapter four... that is today, plus some more chapters.
 
This book is a total crackup... I nearly lost in laughing when Poo was having a poo on the floor, and the kids were joking about it, "Poo can poo." All cracking up, watching him sniff his finger.
 
I love the way the writer uses descriptive sentences almost like the Japanese poetry Haiku with the traditional surprise endings.

Speaking about his father,"And he had the loving, affectionate and outgoing personality(so far so good) of petrified wood." p.14

Psch is laughing at Mom being proud of being the best bitch in the world. Augusten thinks," As far as I was concerned, my mother was a bitch,period. She was a rare psychotic-confessional-poet strain of salmonella." p.34
 
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