Running with Scissors: A Memoir | 
| Author: Augusten Burroughs
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  795 reviews
Sales Rank: 1030
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.6 x 4.2 x 1
ISBN: 0312938853
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780312938857
ASIN: 0312938853
Publication Date: August 29, 2006
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Amazon.com
There is a passage early in Augusten Burroughs's harrowing and highly entertaining memoir, Running with Scissors, that speaks volumes about the author. While going to the garbage dump with his father, young Augusten spots a chipped, glass-top coffee table that he longs to bring home. "I knew I could hide the chip by fanning a display of magazines on the surface, like in a doctor's office," he writes, "And it certainly wouldn't be dirty after I polished it with Windex for three hours." There were certainly numerous chips in the childhood Burroughs describes: an alcoholic father, an unstable mother who gives him up for adoption to her therapist, and an adolescence spent as part of the therapist's eccentric extended family, gobbling prescription meds and fooling around with both an old electroshock machine and a pedophile who lives in a shed out back. But just as he dreamed of doing with that old table, Burroughs employs a vigorous program of decoration and fervent polishing to a life that many would have simply thrown in a landfill. Despite her abandonment, he never gives up on his increasingly unbalanced mother. And rather than despair about his lot, he glamorizes it: planning a "beauty empire" and performing an a capella version of "You Light Up My Life" at a local mental ward. Burroughs's perspective achieves a crucial balance for a memoir: emotional but not self-involved, observant but not clinical, funny but not deliberately comic. And it's ultimately a feel-good story: as he steers through a challenging childhood, there's always a sense that Burroughs's survivor mentality will guide him through and that the coffee table will be salvaged after all. --John Moe
Product Description
RUNNING WITH SCISSORS is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her unorthodox psychiatrist who bore a striking resemblance to Santa Claus. So at the age of twelve, Burroughs found himself amidst Victorian squalor living with the doctor’s bizarre family, and befriending a pedophile who resided in the backyard shed. The story of an outlaw childhood where rules were unheard of, and the Christmas tree stayed up all year-round, where Valium was consumed like candy, and if things got dull, an electroshock therapy machine could provide entertainment. The funny, harrowing, and bestselling account of an ordinary boy’s survival under the most extraordinary circumstances…
Running with Scissors Acknowledgments
Gratitude doesn’t begin to describe it: Jennifer Enderlin, Christopher Schelling, John Murphy, Gregg Sullivan, Kim Cardascia, Michael Storrings, and everyone at St. Martin’s Press. Thank you: Lawrence David, Suzanne Finnamore, Robert Rodi, Bret Easton Ellis, Jon Pepoon, Lee Lodes, Jeff Soares, Kevin Weidenbacher, Lynda Pearson, Lona Walburn, Lori Greenburg, John DePretis, and Sheila Cobb. I would also like to express my appreciation to my mother and father for, no matter how inadvertently, giving me such a memorable childhood. Additionally, I would like to thank the real-life members of the family portrayed in this book for taking me into their home and accepting me as one of their own. I recognize that their memories of the events described in this book are different than my own. They are each fine, decent, and hard-working people. The book was not intended to hurt the family. Both my publisher and I regret any unintentional harm resulting from the publishing and marketing of Running with Scissors. Most of all, I would like to thank my brother for demonstrating, by example, the importance of being wholly unique.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 790 more reviews...
 Hilarious. Honest. Amazing. May 13, 2008
This is definitely one of the best books I've ever read. Any praise I give it will probably not do it justice. Read this book if you need to laugh at yourself and the rest of humanity.
 Different May 12, 2008
Running with Scissors evokes emotions: humor and disgust. However, the disgust overshadows everything else. I found myself flipping through pages to get to something interesting. Indeed, portions intrigue with moments that speak genius.
But the book fails on two levels. First, certain chapters ponder pointlessness. If one agrees, given the premise, it still equals boredom.
The second issue the protagonist addresses, "No one would believe it." It's a clever trick to divert attention, but a trick nonetheless. Does the memoir speak facts without fluffing? Maybe. But again, my disbelief stayed throughout the entire work.
One item remained with me after finishing: Bookman. I'll not spoil the one plotline that did make me wonder afterwards.
Running with Scissors fascinates on a 'cannot look away from a train wreck' level. If you want a visceral reaction, this memoir can do it. Yet, I cannot recommend.
Wolfe
A Life Less Ordinary May 11, 2008
Having read Augusten Burrough's 'Dry' this past week, and wanting more of the same acerbic wit and pathos from the same author, I worked my way through 'Running With Scissors' just a few days after.
While I must admit that I completed the movie before the book (in fact, on the same day) I am grateful that I saw the film before indulging in the bulk of the story. The film leaves out some of the best, and most horrific, parts of the story that the author tells of his troubled childhood with his alcoholic father, mentally unbalanced mother, and eventually living with the psychiatrist's family that adopts him as their own.
Burroughs begins his account with childhood memories of being his mother's constant companion, cutting school, polishing his allowance, and wrapping the family dog in aluminum foil (because he liked shiny things). From early on, Burroughs believes he is destined for 'greatness' (like his poetry writing mother) and sets a course to own and market a 'hair empire' from early on - imagining himself bigger than Vidal Sassoon eventually.
But Burroughs' life takes an unexpected turn when his mother begins to suffer psychotic 'breaks', and no longer feels she can care for him. While the course of events after this are both entertaining and sad, in reading the description of the episodes with his mother, I found myself wondering what would have been worse for him? Being simply (as I saw it) a 'filler' for her life when it seemed to be lacking fulfillment (between a husband, a therapist, and other assorted lovers, as well as her poetry), or living with the strange and eccentric 'Finch' family, headed by Dierdre's therapist, and finding out that he wasn't quite so 'abnormal' after all, living amongst those that he did growing up.
Wildly entertaining, though not as caustic in tone as 'Dry', Running With Scissors is an indulgent look at a 'life less ordinary' which might make readers appreciate 'normal' a bit more in comparison.
 Running with Scissors: Shocking Memoir May 11, 2008
This was my first Augusten Burrough novel, so I really had no idea what to expect as I began reading. Burrough quickly moves through back story to main plot line and begins shocking the reader. If you are like me, there will be points where you will cringe and want more than anything to put the book down, but somehow you won't be able to. As you continue, the mastery of the text becomes more apparent.
I read this as part of a book group and it was interesting to see the variety of opinions, feelings and reactions brought up by this book. I truly think everyone will take away something unique from their read. There are so many emotions and situations that I think most everyone will be able to find something to relate to. Most interestingly, the novel makes you question things in entirely new ways.
The technical style of the book is unique. I cannot remember any time I've read a memoir that read so closely to fiction as Running with Scissors. It leaves me with the impression that while the main themes might be true, Burroughs has taken artistic privilege in embellishing and elaborating on the details. Then again, perhaps not.
I think Running with Scissors was enjoyable, but it certainly wasn't the best book I've ever read. If you choose this novel, be ready for the unexpected and don't bring too many preconceived notions. Of course, that is probably part of the message of the whole book.
 Running with Scissors May 9, 2008
Very funny and yet sad, too. Burroughs paints a clear picture of his youth, during a period when his mother sent him away to live with her disturbed analyst and his strange family. You'll feel for him and a few of the other characters. I highly recommend this great story. FYI - Don't waste anytime with the DVD; it simply doesn't give enough details.
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