Augusten Burroughs Toil And Trouble

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Augusten Xon Burroughs (born Christopher Richter Robison, October 23, 1965) is an American writer known for his New York Times bestsellingmemoirRunning with Scissors (2002).

Early life[edit]

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Christopher Richter Robison was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the younger of two sons of poet Margaret Robison and John G. Robison, former head of the philosophy department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.^[1][2][3]

He is eight years younger than his brother, fellow memoirist John Elder Robison. He was raised in various towns in Massachusetts, including Shutesbury, Amherst, and Northampton. His older brother had already escaped the unstable home before their parents divorced on July 29, 1978.^[4] His mother then sent the 12-year-old Christopher to live with the family of her psychiatrist, Dr. Rodolph Harvey Turcotte, whose ever-changing collection of children, adopted children and patients lived in a large ramshackle property in Northampton.^[4]

Robison's mother assigned legal guardianship to Turcotte, who believed that children became adults at 13. A few months after Robison moved in, Turcotte allowed him to drop out of sixth grade.

Education and writing career[edit]

Robison obtained a GED at age 17. At age 18, living on his own in Boston, he legally changed his name to Augusten Xon Burroughs.^[5] He later enrolled at Holyoke Community College in Holyoke, Massachusetts, as a pre-med student, dropping out before the end of the first semester. He decided to settle in New York City and worked for a Manhattan-based advertising company. In 1996, he sought treatment for alcoholism at a rehabilitation center in Minnesota before returning to Manhattan.

Some of Burroughs' childhood experiences were chronicled in his successful first memoir, Running with Scissors (2002), which was later made into a film by the same name.

In addition to Scissors, Burroughs penned a second memoir, Dry (2003), about his experience during and after treatment for alcoholism. It was followed by two collections of memoir essays, Magical Thinking (2003) and Possible Side Effects (2006). His first novel, Sellevision (2000), is currently in production as a feature film.^[6][7]

Burroughs' writing focuses on subjects such as advertising, psychiatrists, religious families, and home shopping networks. It has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, House & Garden, BlackBook, New York, The Times, Bark, Attitude, and Out. Burroughs writes a monthly column for Details. Early in his career, he was a regular commentator on National Public Radio's Morning Edition.

In 2005, Universal Studios and Red Wagon Productions bought the rights to a film based on a then-unreleased memoir about Burroughs' relationship with his father. The book, called A Wolf at the Table, was released on April 29, 2008.

In October 2009, Burroughs released You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas, a book of short Christmas stories based on true events that occurred during his childhood.

In 2012, Burroughs released This Is How, a book of advice and memoirs.

Burroughs released his latest book, Toil & Trouble: A Memoir, in October 2019. The work details his experience coming out as 'a witch' and moving from his apartment in New York City into a mansion in Connecticut with his husband.^[8]

Burroughs' books are published by St. Martin's Press and Picador.

Personal life[edit]

In a January 2005 interview, reflecting on his life with his then partner, graphic designer Dennis Pilsits,^[9] Burroughs said paying tax should allow same-sex couples full legal entitlements:

That's what gay people need to be allowed to do – get married. Not have domestic partnerships; that's not acceptable. I don't believe for a moment [gay marriage] would destroy the sanctity of marriage. But let's just say for a moment that it does. Well, then the sanctity of marriage just has to be destroyed. It's just too bad. You can't have one set of benefits and only give them to some of the people.^[10]

Burroughs divides time between New York City and Amherst, Massachusetts.^[11] On April 1, 2013, Burroughs married his longtime agent and companion Christopher Schelling at the Staten Island Borough Hall of New York City.^[12]

Burroughs has been profiled in People, The Guardian, and Entertainment Weekly, where he ranked 15 on the 2005 list of 'The 25 Funniest People in America' and was named to the magazine's 'It List'.

Burroughs was presented with a special Trustee Award at the Lambda Literary Awards in 2013.^[13]

Lawsuit over Running with Scissors[edit]

The family of Dr. Turcotte (who died in 2000), Burroughs' legal guardian when he was a child, were concerned about the depiction of the Finch family in Running with Scissors.^[4] In August 2007, Burroughs and his publisher, St. Martin's Press, settled with the Turcotte family, who stated that their presentation as the Finch family was largely fictional^[14] and written in a sensational manner. The Turcottes originally sought damages of $2 million for invasion of privacy, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Burroughs defended his work as 'entirely accurate,' but agreed to call the work a 'book' (instead of 'memoir') in the author's note, to alter the acknowledgments page in future editions to recognize the Turcotte family's conflicting memories of described events, and express regret for 'any unintentional harm' to the Turcotte family.^[15]

In August 2007, when the suit was settled, Burroughs stated:

I consider this not only a personal victory but a victory for all memoirists. I still maintain that the book is an entirely accurate memoir, and that it was not fictionalized or sensationalized in any way. I did not embellish or invent elements. We had a very strong case because I had the truth on my side.^[16]

In October 2007, Burroughs further stated that he felt vindicated by the settlement:

I'm not at all sorry that I wrote it. And you know, the suit settled – it settled in my favor. I didn't change a word of the memoir, not one word of it. It's still a memoir, it's marketed as a memoir, [the Turcottes] agreed one hundred percent that it is a memoir.^[17]

Film and television[edit]

Running with Scissors was made into a film in 2006. It was directed by Ryan Murphy, produced by Brad Pitt, and starred Joseph Cross, Brian Cox, Annette Bening, Alec Baldwin, and Evan Rachel Wood. Bening was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role.

Burroughs is currently writing the screenplay for two upcoming television series: he is working on a Showtime series based on his memoir, Dry, and writing a drama series for CBS titled The Nature of Fire, which follows a group of firefighters.

Bibliography[edit]

• 2000 – Sellevision (ISBN0-312-26772-X) (fiction)
• 2002 – Running with Scissors (ISBN0-312-28370-9)
• 2003 – Dry (ISBN0-312-42379-9)
• 2004 – Magical Thinking (ISBN0-312-31594-5)
• 2006 – Possible Side Effects (ISBN0-312-31596-1)
• 2008 – A Wolf at the Table (ISBN0-312-42827-8)
• 2009 – You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas (ISBN0-312-34191-1)
• 2011 – Take Five: Four Favorite Essays Plus One Never-Been-Seen Essay (ISBN1-429-95854-5)
• 2012 – This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike. (ISBN9780312563554)
• 2016 – Lust & Wonder: A Memoir (ISBN9780312342036)
• 2019 - Toil & Trouble: A Memoir (ISBN9781250019950)

Contributions[edit]

• 2007 – Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's – John Elder Robison (ISBN0-7393-5768-9) (foreword)

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^'About – Augusten Burroughs'. Augusten.com. Archived from the original on July 21, 2018. Retrieved November 22, 2016.
2. ^'Augusten Burroughs and the art of memoir'. CBS News. 27 January 2009. Retrieved 22 November 2016.
3. ^'Christopher Schelling Augusten Burroughs'. Weddings. The New York Times. 7 April 2013. Retrieved 22 November 2016.
4. ^ ^abcEspinoza, Galina (September 23, 2002). 'Pain Relief'. People. Retrieved April 9, 2018.
5. ^Stuever, Hank (July 30, 2002). 'Growing up truly absurd'. The Washington Post. Retrieved April 25, 2010.
6. ^'Sellevison'. Hollywood.com. Retrieved November 22, 2016.
7. ^'In 'Sellevision,' expect silly, not satire'. Sptimes.com. 5 January 2005. Retrieved 22 November 2016.
8. ^'Augusten Burroughs offers amusing take on moving'. Boston Herald. October 6, 2019. Retrieved September 14, 2020.
9. ^'Augusten Burroughs on Twitter'. Twitter.com. 21 October 2009. Retrieved 22 November 2016. Dennis and I have split. It is painful. But we're talking, which we have not done enough of. For the dogs, it just means 2 sets of toys.
10. ^'Steve Dow, Journalist'. Stevedow.com.au. 25 January 2013. Retrieved 22 November 2016.
11. ^Bolonik, Kera (July 8, 2003). 'Shaken and stirred'. Salon.com. Archived from the original on September 10, 2009. Retrieved December 25, 2008.
12. ^Burroughs, Augusten (May 26, 2013). 'Losing a 'boyfriend' the best way possible'. The New York Times. p. ST6.
13. ^'25th annual Lambda Literary Award winners announced'. LGBT Weekly. June 4, 2013. Archived from the original on June 10, 2013. Retrieved June 4, 2013.
14. ^'Ruthless with Scissors', Vanity Fair, Buzz Bissinger. January 2007.
15. ^'Burroughs Settles Lawsuit with Scissors Family', USA Today, Rodrique Ngowi. August 30, 2007.
16. ^Entertainment News – Latest Breaking Celebrity, Film, TV, Music and Movie News. Townhall.com (2007-08-30). Retrieved on 2016-11-22.
17. ^Shankbone, David (October 12, 2007) Interview with Augusten Burroughs, Wikinews.

External links[edit]

Careful observers will note that something is missing from the cover of Augusten Burroughs’ new memoir, Toil & Trouble, in which he reveals his biggest secret yet: He is a witch.

What is on the cover: graceful, charcoal-gray ombre loops and swirls that wend their way behind and through acid green and stark white lettering. The undulating background and crisp type artfully combine into a visual that’s wholly intriguing, a bit unsettling and a touch electrifying, hinting at what readers will find inside.

But the cover doesn’t inform in the ways you might expect. There’s no “#1 New York Times bestselling author” banner, nor a mention of Burroughs’ best-known book (later adapted into a film), 2002’s Running With Scissors.

Rather, the author told BookPagein a call to his Connecticut home, “My only direction was, on the cover, just take off ‘#1 bestselling,’ take off every book I’ve ever written.” (Toil & Troubleis his 10th.)

He explains, “This is not a book for people who have read and loved my previous books—although it is! But really, this is for people who feel like they’re the only ones [who are witches], because I literally feel like the only one. I’ve felt like a freak my whole life because I’m a witch, a thing that doesn’t exist that absolutely exists.”

He adds, “I know from experience that if I feel this way, and I’m one, there are others that feel the same way who will hopefully find themselves in this book.”

Augusten Burroughs Quotes

What does Burroughs mean by witch, exactly? Well, he’s not the black hat-wearing, broomstick-riding, cauldron-stirring cackler the word so often conjures up. Think less Halloween, more Hogwarts—except, instead of having loads of similarly gifted classmates and teachers with whom to practice the craft, Burroughs discussed his abilities only with his mother and select relatives who were witches themselves.

Burroughs first learned of his witch-hood when he was 9 years old, he explains in Toil & Trouble. One day his school bus ride home was filled with anxiety and distress; he was certain something terrible had happened to his grandmother. It turned out she’d been in a car accident, which he had sensed because, his mother said, he was the latest in a long family line of witches.

This revelation was, he wrote, “simultaneously the most confusing and the most comforting thing anyone had ever said to me.”

Burroughs’ mother taught him to understand his unusual abilities and to keep them hidden. When she became overwhelmed by mental illness and sent him to live with another family (a stage of his life he chronicled in Running With Scissors), he no longer had anyone to talk to about this aspect of himself.

It became a secret he kept from everyone, including his husband, until he wrote Toil & Trouble, an experience that was itself more of a bursting forth than a planned endeavor.

He recalls, “Our Great Dane had horrible invasive surgery, and the vet said he couldn’t move [during his recovery], so we had to bring a foam mattress into the living room . . . and make a giant playpen.” The dog, Otis, stayed still if Burroughs was there watching him, so the author hunkered down with his laptop—and the words started pouring out.

“I destroyed my laptop, I broke the keyboard, it just exploded out of me—like it or not, there it was!” he says. He adds that his husband, Christopher, who is also Burroughs’ longtime agent, “didn’t have any idea what I was doing. As far as he knew, I was writing a thriller. I gave it to him, and he was like, wow.”

Augusten Burroughs Family

Wow, indeed. Not only was Burroughs’ typing ferocious enough to destroy his laptop, it also gave him tendinitis in his shoulder for about six months afterward. But with the damage, and with the freedom of declaring this is all of me, came relief. He acknowledges that this might seem surprising to those who’ve read his previous work.

I’ve felt like a freak my whole life because I’m a witch, a thing that doesn’t exist that absolutely exists.

“After writing so many memoirs, journalists would ask me if there’s anything in my life I haven’t written about, since I’ve written about stuff people would be embarrassed by, like sexual abuse, alcoholism, addiction,” Burroughs says. “But I always felt like, no, there’s nothing about myself I wouldn’t write about—except, obviously, the one thing I’m never going to write about! It was so off the table, I didn’t even realize I wasn’t replying accurately.”

Not least because, he says, “I get it, I really do. . . . ‘Oh my god, now he’s a witch!’ I wouldn’t believe it either, except I do.” However, those early years under his mother’s tutelage weren’t characterized by dissonance. He knew what he experienced, so it wasn’t strange to him that his mother or aunt practiced witchcraft in addition to their scholarly pursuits.

“My mother’s approach to witchcraft was not about spells, cloaks and herbs so much as, look, we possess neuroanatomy people haven’t found yet,” he says. “We have the ability to influence matter in ways that seem impossible and that would be called laughable and not taken seriously.”

There is the occasional spell in Toil & Trouble, particularly during Burroughs’ efforts to get Christopher to see the upsides of moving from New York City to the Connecticut country-side. These finely crafted snippets of poetry do help his goals come to fruition, but the author says spells aren’t a necessity.

“Magic is about specificity, about needing to know exactly what needs to happen, and writing can be a way to shape that,” he says.

But this shouldn’t be confused with mere wishing: “You do want to achieve an outcome, but you don’t achieve it through wanting. You achieve it through an incredibly disciplined and crafted and powerful focus in the mind.”

The men and their dogs ultimately did move to Connecticut, where they encountered neighbors whom Burroughs describes with a mix of acerbic wit and genuine warmth, from a foul-mouthed and highly skilled contractor to an aggressively odd opera singer. There’s also a realtor named Maura who takes Burroughs on some truly astonishing house tours (keep an eye out for the phrase “cake abattoir”) and is a witch, too.

Augusten Burroughs New Book

Majestic old trees loom over the couple’s new house in a way that sets Burroughs’ senses tingling, even as they prompt a deeper look at the eternal push-pull between humans and nature. The author also muses on things ranging from illness and addiction to gardening and tattoos, as well as the 1960s TV show “Bewitched.”

Woven throughout these topics—sometimes densely, sometimes more loosely—are Burroughs’ reflections on what being a witch has meant to him, from the teachings passed down via his ancestors to how he lives his life as a witch every day.

Of course, it remains to be seen what life will be like for Burroughs, now that he’s put Toil & Troubleout into the world and his being a witch is no longer hidden. “My husband says witchcraft needs a new name and a new PR agent. People immediately think of bat wings being boiled,” he says. Then he clarifies, “All those words . . . like ‘eye of newt,’ are just words for different herbs.”

He adds, “The thing we call ‘witchcraft’ is really a sense and an ability that probably a lot of people have, who would never say they believe in witchcraft—yet, through the sheer power of focus, they have achieved things that would seemingly be impossible. . . . It’s time to come out of the closet and be legitimized, because it’s not some fringe weirdo thing. It’s not actually supernatural, it’s hypernatural . . . the fundamental nature of the universe.”

Dry A Memoir Augusten Burroughs

Ultimately, though, Burroughs knows readers will come to their own conclusions. “Either I’m completely lying, or life is a little bit more complicated than we think it is.”

Augusten Burroughs Toil And Trouble Torrent

Author photo credit: AXB