Augusten
Burroughs takes a long, cold look at his father in his new
memoir A Wolf at the Table.
One of the most
successful gay writers working today, Augusten Burroughs
has made a career out of exposing his family’s and
his own dysfunction with sharp wit and a taste for the
absurd that belie the pain of growing up amid
unchecked mental illness. But after two memoirs and two
essay collections, what more could he have to tell?
Quite a bit, it turns out. Set during
Burroughs’s childhood in the years leading up to his
parents’ divorce, his latest memoir, A Wolf
at the Table, is the kind of read that grabs
you by the neck and won’t let go until the last
page. Readers looking for a reprise of Running With
Scissors are in for a surprise: This tale is as harrowing
and cathartic as a Stephen King novel.
Why did you choose to tell this story now?
It’s always been a story I wanted to
tell, partly because of my father’s denial of
his behavior—the way he called me and made threats to
kill me, then denied it had happened. I really wanted
to reveal him. Fans who have read my books feel my
mother is this enormous driving force in my life, but
my father was really the rocket fuel. Right after he died,
about three years ago, I started writing this book. It
was like something inside me was unlocked and set
free.
Had you been in touch with your father?
We’d been in touch but hadn’t
mended our relationship. He knew about my success as a
writer but had no idea what I wrote about.
Are you in touch with your mother?
As far as I know she still lives in a small town
in Massachusetts and still writes her poetry. I
don’t talk to her.
How did writing about such a harrowing time in your
childhood affect you?
Around the time I started this book my beloved
French bulldog became paralyzed and I had to move into
the basement of my house because he couldn’t
climb stairs. So I was down there 24 hours a day. My
father’s brother sent me up a huge box of
family documents and photographs, new images
I’d never seen growing up. I entered this peculiar
state. I was working very long hours down there. I
live in the woods, sort of like in the book, and I
would have insomnia at night and I would cry. The whole
thing was a real horror.
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