Big gulp: the author of the hilarious Running With Scissors writes about getting sober in his new memoir.Dry * Augusten Burroughs * St. Martin's St. Martin's or St. Martins may refer to:
Augusten Burroughs is a drunk. The funny kind who thinks the Serenity Prayer stems from the lyrics to a Sinead O'Connor song. The shallow kind who goes to gay rehab because he thinks he'll meet hot guys there. The smart kind who thinks AA is stupid but winds up hallucinating hal·lu·ci·nate v. hal·lu·ci·nat·ed, hal·lu·ci·nat·ing, hal·lu·ci·nates v.intr. To undergo hallucination. v.tr. To cause to have hallucinations. about spiders, blacking out, and eventually smoking crack with prostitutes. In other words Adv. 1. in other words - otherwise stated; "in other words, we are broke" put differently he's a fairly normal alcoholic. Burroughs's new memoir, Dry, details the last days of his time as a perpetually (and quite literally stinking stinking having an intrinsic fetid smell. stinking elder sambucuspubens. stinking hellebore helleborusfoetidus. stinking iris irisfoetidissima. ) drunk New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. advertising executive. His pressured entry into rehab, brief sobriety complicated by romance with a handsome crack addict, subsequent relapse, scary downward spiral, and moving late-stage epiphany is the stuff of which film rights bidding wars are made. It's also well-worn addiction-story territory. What's unusual about Burroughs, however, is his ability to stand back and observe his own life--he's also the author of Running With Scissors scissors Cutting instrument or tool consisting of a pair of opposed metal blades that meet and cut when the handles at their ends are brought together. Modern scissors are of two types: the more usual pivoted blades have a rivet or screw connection between the cutting ends , the harrowing yet hilarious account of his extremely traumatic childhood--without succumbing to sentimentality or dispensing trite recovery homilies. What's more unusual about him is his talent for turning horrifying self-destruction into deadpan comedy. Of his first week in rehab, during which other patients serenade serenade [Ital. sera=evening], term used to designate several types of musical composition. Opera and song literature yield numerous examples of the serenade sung or played by a lover at night beneath his beloved's window; outstanding is and love-bomb him with plush toys, he wonders, "Why a song about codependent stuffed animals? And why am I now holding them on my lap? And more essentially, what time is the first flight in the morning?" Even his stumble into a crack-smoking lesson from a weary hooker reads like a setup to a joke, but one that Burroughs knows is on him, so you can almost hear him reason, Why not laugh about it? And in the end, he dispenses with much of the romance of drinking, dives deeply into the temptation-filled grind of staying sober and the inevitability of "sound[ing] like a cloying self-help book," wisdom gained from learning that not dying from alcohol poisoning is the best revenge. We're lucky to have him still with us. |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion