Exclusive Interview: Augusten Burroughs

Augusten Burroughs is the rock star of the tell-all dysfunctional memoir genre, thanks to his best-selling Running With Scissors. The New York-based writer took some time before swinging to Town Hall to chat about his new book, A Wolf at The Table: A Memoir of My Father, journalists (fuck), and how to housetrain a puppy.

Tell me how much you’re loving this rain.
You know what, I actually like this weather. I like the rain. What I like about Seattle is that people are so used to the rain that they still do stuff. They don’t stay indoors, take antidepressants, and read novels. They just go out and get wet.

What’s it like touring and promoting A Wolf at the Table? It’s about the tumultuous relationship with your father, but it isn’t funny like your other stuff.
I could’ve made it funny, but to me, that was disingenuous. My sense of humor is really nothing more than a flashy defense mechanism. But I hadn’t developed that yet when I was living with my father. I didn’t have that cynicism or snarkiness yet.

So yeah, I was definitely a little apprehensive. I’m not cracking any jokes. I’m just reading these dark, depressing essays. There’s no turning the situation over and tickling it on the underbelly.

Speaking of turning over a situation… some people are suspicious that these memoirs aren’t exactly… errr…. memoirs.
All I can do is maintain that I do my best job to tell the story of my life. I don’t need to embellish or make things up. My life has been very eventful. You know who it is that doubts me? It’s privileged, educated white people who went to good schools and got little journalism degrees. But my readers are from all walks of life and they know I’m not full of shit. I don’t even care anymore what the media says about me.

Do you care what your fans say about you? Are you worried A Wolf at the Table might alienate some of them?
You know, I used to work in advertising and when the ad people were working on a project, they’d identify the target market, say 18-34 year-old women, and then we’d clip out pictures from magazines. They’d say she drives a Ford and has two children. One plays soccer and the other one is in tae kwon do. They’d try to really humanize this audience and write ads to this very tailored person… And that’s why so many ads are so horrible and don’t mean a thing to you. If you want to connect with people, you have to connect with yourself.

Gotcha. Any projects you’re working on now?
I’m working on a collection of holiday stories. I love the holidays, but all of mine have been very hideous. I’m working on putting together these really awful but funny ones. I’m going to title it You Better Not Cry.

You’re a prolific writer, but you’ve said before that you have no formal education beyond elementary school. Do you ever think about going to college?
I think about it everyday. The problem is, I want to study astrophysics and cosmology. But I don’t know math. And when I say I don’t know math, I don’t even know division.

It’s okay. I barely do either. Anyway, I know you've gotta get to Town Hall pretty soon. I've gotta get going myself. I've got a new puppy on my hands.
What kind of puppy is she?

A Chihuahua.
Chihuahuas are smart. I have two French Bulldogs. They are very willful and stubborn. Even after they were housetrained, they would go on the carpet because they thought it was much easier than moving. Are you housetraining her?

I’m trying. She doesn’t seem to get it.
You’ve got to get these little drops that come in a dark brown bottle… they’re basically fake pee. You put two-four drops on the wee pad and she’ll smell it, and it will activate her desire to pee. And then get her freeze-dry liver. As soon as she starts to pee, say good pee and feed her the freeze-dry liver while she’s in the process, so she associates that with the liver.

Does this really work?
I’ve housetrained more than a dozen dogs.You’ll have her done in a week.

A week?!
It totally works. Trash me if it doesn’t work. But you’ve got to get those drops.

Topics: books

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