Augusten Burroughs' Running with Scissors was a darkly comic memoir of his adolescence, living with the family of his mother's psychiatrist - and embarking on a sexual relationship at 13 with a man 20 years his senior. In A Wolf at the Table, out today, Mr. Burroughs steps further back into the past with a very uncomic memoir of his relationship with his now deceased father, a philosophy professor at the University of Massachusetts.
The 42-year-old writer spoke to The Globe and Mail from Amherst, Mass.
A Wolf at the Table is the
prequel to Running with Scissors. Why did the books about your childhood come out of order?
A Wolf at the Table came about because my father has haunted me my entire life. He was the driving force of my life. He was the source of my ambition. My mother encouraged me to be a writer and made writing effortless for me. But it was my father who gave me a need to write to be seen, to be heard, to communicate, to connect with other people. I couldn't write it until he was dead. He died in 2005, and that's essentially when I started. When he died, I wondered if I would be overwhelmed with grief. But I wasn't. I was overwhelmed with freedom.
You think your father was a sociopath capable of murder.
There's no doubt in my mind. He had a wonderful construction. He was admired at work. He was a popular teacher. He was a perfect southern gentleman. That was his shell. Inside, he lacked a certain empathy and compassion.
There were pets that were killed or neglected until they died. And there was your mother's recollection of his marriage proposal in which he threatened to kill himself if she didn't marry him.
It was terrible to see my mother's fear of him and the story of his proposal and to know how threatened she felt. And that word, "dangerous" - my father was "dangerous" - was always uttered. Little things.
The crystallizing moment for you and your mother started with an everyday errand.
We were going to the dump. I used to love hurling the trash bags off a cliff. I slid over because my mom might be joining us. Everything about my father suddenly changed. He gripped the steering wheel and his face just became utterly peculiar and he started clacking his teeth. And he said, "I'm going to kill the thing that means the most to that bitch." And pulled the car out of the driveway and started going really, really fast down the road. I was screaming and terrified, and I realized he was heading straight for a telephone pole and he was going to kill me. I jumped out of the car, screaming and screaming. And my mother had seen the car tearing off. My mother left him at that point.
Then there was a phone call when you were alone. What happened?
My father had moved out. My mother was out for the evening. My father called and he was very, very drunk. He said, "Son, I have stolen a Mustang and I'm coming after you. I'm going to kill you." ... I called the police and they went over to my father's house. He called back and, in a perfectly sober voice, asked why I had called the police. The policeman got on the line and scolded me. It was a terrible moment. I felt, like, "I'm not crazy. This just happened." My mother believed me. She had no doubt.
Still, it wasn't until you were 30 that you felt vindicated. You were worried he may have actually killed someone and were looking for unsolved murder cases in your hometown.
I was tired of thinking my father was a serial killer, and [thought] "I need to be cleansed of this." I did some reverse psychology. My father was resentful over having to pay my mother alimony. He complained endlessly. My diabolical plan was to say, "Old women fall from bridges all the time." [She walked every evening at the same time by a river.] I knew my father would say, "Son, that is just ridiculous drunk talk." But that isn't what happened. My father lowered his voice and said, "There are 104 windows that overlook that bridge. So at any given moment, how many people do you think would be passing by a window?" It really took a moment for me to understand what he was saying. Then I understood it with perfect clarity. "My god. He's already thought of this."
Some people would have cut him out of their lives. You stayed in touch?
I maintained a relationship with him until he died. My partner, Dennis, and I would visit him and his wife of many years. She never knew the man I grew up with. He was completely different with her. And I never saw that peek out of him again. I was compelled to get whatever I could out of him, which in the end was absolutely nothing. His death was the final solidification of the fact that my father would give me nothing. I remember my father looking at me as though he was going to say something. You could see the decision just pass in front of his eyes. He had nothing to say.
Are you in touch with your brother and mother?
I live next door to my brother but I haven't been in touch with my mother in close to a decade. I love my mother, but I don't like her. I don't want her in my life. She's a leech.
Your mother is also writing a memoir. Memoir is a tricky medium these days, thanks to James Frey and Margaret Seltzer. The minute you come out with a memoir, people look for discrepancies, don't they?
They do, but you know what? I welcome the scrutiny. I do the best I can to be as honest as possible. ... [But] a memoir is a reflection of the experiences of one person. My mother would write a memoir of this time and it would be completely different. It would be from her perspective. Memoir is not a court stenographer's report.
Your epilogue is a poignant glimpse of what you missed out on.
I was on a book tour in Boston. My media escort was this fellow who was a dad, and the event was at Harvard. It just so happened his son was graduating from Harvard the following week. He saw the room where all the robes were kept. I said, "Let's go look for the robe." He's so excited, he's like a little kid. It hit me with the force of a neutron bomb that I could feel the love of this man for his son waft off him. I know fathers love kids. I have seen movies. I have read books. But I have never felt it before. It was the first time I'd felt a father's all-consuming love and pride for his son. It absolutely shattered me.
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