I met him after he did a reading & Question & Answer session at Powell’s in downtown Portland. He actually addressed me with a question at the end of the session & as always, I balked & was uncharacteristically reticent. We had a short chat about Portland’s love of books & how very cool Powell’s is.
A few years later, I saw him walking with a well known Portland queer writer, who has not always been very nice to me, but who has the loveliest husband. As I passed them, I turned I stated: “Augusten… I treasure your work. I have all your books, in hardback, 2 of them autographed, I LOVE YOU!” Turning to the Portland puffy, poofy personality, I tossed off: “& you… not so much.”
Augusten Burroughs is hideously kinky. This is both his attraction & his detraction. I laughed like crazy as I read Running with Scissors & Dry. The first, an account of his nightmarish childhood:drunk father, crazy mother, adopted by his mother's therapist, introduced us to this quirky voice, which will tell us anything. The other is a frank but campy book about the writer's alcoholism & addiction to crack. I also enjoyed- Magical Thinking, a collection of brief personal essays, in which he amplifies the material, adding glittery edges to one of the edgiest writers of the new century. Burroughs is a fresh & honest voice in a heavily medicated century. He's not angry or wounded, which helps. His essays for have explored his 2 sexual encounters with priests, at age 14 & 26, in which the men of the cloth are no match for his experience & ambivalence. In my favorite essay- Beating Raoul, he hilariously deconstructs a date with a hot & impossibly handsomeType-A gay perfectionist who turns out to suffer from acute under-endowment. If you have not read him, you simply really must.
He was born Christopher Robison 45 years ago today.
"I never watch CNN. I hate news & information & anything that threatens to puncture the bubble of oblivion in which I live."
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