Augusten Burroughs And Big Bad Wolves

Feature, By Jody Ekert, 1st September, 2008

This September on Same Same is ‘Daddy Month’, with Fathers’ Day being just around the corner and all. We kick things off by talking to Augusten Burroughs about his new book ‘A Wolf At The Table’, a dark tale about growing up with a sociopathic father.

Throw the name of the writer Augusten Burroughs into conversation and in my experience you’ll get one of two responses – blank faces, or total “Oh my god I would have his baby” rabid fandom. He’s a polarising kinda writer, with his fair share of controversy. He was in town last week to promote his latest memoir, A Wolf At The Table.

His reading at Shearer’s Bookshop on Norton St certainly bought out a cinema-full of the rabid fan types. It was also a good chance to observe him the day before my interview. At first glance he almost appears to have a mild form of Tourette’s – he’s twitchy, and full of energy and can’t stand still. He opens his reading with what he says is a verbatim recollection of the cinema announcements of his childhood. He makes a comment about the “double-edged sword of my memory”, but insists he’s not making anything up – acknowledging that there has been a very public debate as to the authenticity of his work.

After the reading he opens the floor to questions – and there are plenty of people who want to talk about bad fathers. He says that he was inspired to write the book after looking through book stores for books about fatherhood and only finding books that were a kind of Chicken Soup For Normals. The audience laughs as he launches into various tales and I can’t help but think he could easily be a stand up comedian. No wonder he was voted in at number fifteen in Entertainment Weekly’s 25 Funniest People.

The next day when my interview time rolls around, I’m nervously chewing gum outside his hotel, wondering if I’ll be able to keep up with his energetic pace. I have a list of questions, but as I saw the night before, questions turn out to be only suggested topics of conversation.

He’s a minute or two early, and friendly from the outset, and very polite. Early on I take the chance to ask him about the change in his writing with his latest memoir – he dropped his trademark humour to write A Wolf At The Table, and it has taken some readers and reviewers by surprise.

“That’s the whole point of the book. I mean it’s written from that point of view [a child living through it without defensive humour] and that’s what I’m good at because I can go back and travel back into time, and capture that. It never has left me. Those memories – not all of them, but a lot of them are very fresh and vivid. I don’t go back to think like “what would be a cool thing to put in…” There’s no thinking involved in my books. People can’t seem to understand that. And I don’t know why, because I never think, I almost never think about anything. I’m completely instinctive.”

I ask him about the whole idea of oversharing, and what it felt like to write such a book about his father.

“The whole oversharing thing? I can’t overshare to my audience because they won’t, they just won’t buy it, y’know, they won’t experience the overshare. And people who are interested in this, I mean this isn’t a book for everybody. Wolf is not a book everyone should buy. It’s not funny at all, it’s a horrible story, it’s a horrible story. There’s no happy ending to it really. And it’s scary. But there are people that will, that it will feel like medicine for, it will feel like a relief to them.”

After probably fifteen minutes of whirlwind conversation later, during which time we touch on transgendered youth, class differences in general, and then journalists he hates, I ask him if he’s regretted anything he’s written in any of his five memoirs.

“Um… No. See, I don’t think so. Well there are things that it’s so convoluted to explain. I mean, I regret some of the behaviours and the actions that appear in certain things, but I don’t regret publishing them, because they stand as vivid examples of bad behaviour, or whatever.”

Finally we get back to a topic I’m mentioned earlier – about people confessing things to him, since he has survived such horrid experiences with his father, and families in general. As well as the battle with alcohol. I mention that it’s as if he’s some sort of touchstone for people with similar experiences. He agrees and tells of a poignant example from the reading.

“People really identify strongly, and there was a guy last night absolutely broke my heart, it was killing me. He was there with his girlfriend and he’d read Dry a million times and had all these favourite things and he was just – he was so vulnerable, and he wanted so desperately that life [of sobriety] and he couldn’t get past ten days.”

Later on when I check in with Augusten’s blog it turns out he’s written an entry just for the guy in the audience. It’s obvious that as much as his writing has helped himself, he’s aware that now in turn he’s helping others and that he’s not taking that lightly.

We wander of into another few minutes of conversation and somehow get onto my own writing. I’d read in other interviews that Augusten can tend to stop and turn the interview around, and so for a brief moment I find myself justifying myself and my own struggles, while he asks the uncomfortable questions. When finally I get us back on him, we’re almost out of time.

I get to ask a few more questions including what he thinks of the whole writing process and what it means to him. He’s passionate and leans forward.

“I still find it absolutely astonishing that they pay me money for these books and that I don’t have to pay. It’s just shocking to me that they pay. I can’t believe it.”

Just for fun to wrap up with, I ask him if with his dark sense of humour he’d ever considered writing kids books.

“I did write it! No-one wanted it. I thought it was great. It was The Boy With An Extra Arm and he had this extra arm. It was a horrible stump. There was something in it that was sick; there was something that was too sick. My agent said it just disturbed people.”

And on that rather curious note, my time was up. I turn the tape recorder off and we have a funny conversation about my name, and lesbians in general, and his fan base.

He goes into one last off-the-record-rant, and to illustrate his story he tries to recall the exact sentence from one of his books that got him into trouble. I jump in and complete the sentence for him. I’m a little embarrassed, and guess now it’s obvious what camp I fall into when anyone mentions him at a dinner party – but he shakes my hand politely and walks with me to the lobby doors.

Augusten Burroughs’ A Wolf At The Table is out now through Hachette Books.

While in Sydney Augusten appeared as a special guest at a fundraiser for Aurora Group, a charity that raises funds for lesbian and gay communities. They raised over $5,500. Photos from the event are here.

Other articles in the Daddy series:

The Rise Of The Silver Fox.
The Gayby Issue.

All About

Your Thoughts

Hey there, you need to be logged in to get involved with SameSame, click here to login if you're already a member, or here if you need to become a new member.