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Falling on Scissors or A
memoir gone bad?
(Rant: August 2005)
There was little surprise last week when Augusten
Burroughs got slapped with a lawsuit for his memoir Running with Scissors.
The only surprise was that it didn¡¯t come any sooner. The yarn about
Burroughs¡¯s upbringing in the house of a Northampton (Massachusetts)
psychiatrist, alleges, rape, pedophilia, drug abuse, emotional abuse and
fecal forecasting¡ªI shit you not. Basically Burroughs portrays every
character in the book (including his parents who Burroughs says sold him to
the shrink) as a social deviant of the highest order.
How true is it? It¡¯s
interesting to note that Burroughs waited until the doctor in question had
passed and that his mother was (mentally and emotionally) incapacitated, to
publish the book. Katheryn Harrison pulled a similar stunt with The Kiss,
which alleged an affair with her father and pretty much blamed the whole
thing on him, even though she was a responsible woman in her twenties (she
waited for 3 of the four main principals to pass away before the book was
published). The point being, with no able firsthand testimony around to
dispute facts (assertions from memory), the author is free to heighten the
shock value (which sells like hotcakes under the banner of true)
without fear of legal reprisal.
Finally, now that Scissors
is being made into a movie starring Annette Bening and Gwyneth Paltrow, the
good doctor¡¯s family (which is given a fictitious name in the book) has
logged legal objection. Which begs the question: how creative can one be when
writing creative non-fiction and what is the author¡¯s responsibility to their
subject? If you think of it in terms of tabloid, it¡¯s essentially the same as
libel: if the author¡¯s accusations are gray, unfounded or even false, and in
turn causes a subject, direct or indirect, harm or prevents them from earning
a living, then the author¡ªas deemed by a court¡ªis responsible both
financially and legally.
I¡¯ve read Burroughs¡¯s
book (I had to for my book club). I won¡¯t shortchange it; it¡¯s a compelling
read. But even in the text you can sense there¡¯s a penning for shock
element. Through out the pages Burroughs tells us how as a boy knew he was gay
or at the very least, different because he had an affinity for
dresses, lavender color schemes and other such feminine things (his
words not mine). The few scant descriptions make him sound like the sixth
member of the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy crew, but the rest of his
prose sounds like a bummed out kid who go cut from a Little League squad¡ªand
his picture on the back of the book is one of a disheveled frat boy, not
someone who claims to savor the silky effects of hair conditioner, fragrant
scents or a fine chiffon.
- TBM
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