Why do I keep picturing Augusten Burroughs as really, really short? He says right in "Dry" that he's 6'2" but that just doesn't jive with my mental image. Oh, maybe it's because he's a memoir writer, so I don't believe anything he says. Did James Frey ruin it for all memoirists? Or just those who write memoirs about addiction, sketchy childhoods, abuse, dysfunctional relationships and recovery? ...so yeah, all memoirists. Anyway, 1 star for "Dry" seems a little harsh, but 2 stars seems a little generous. This is a typical example of Burroughs' schtick which goes something like this:
he realizes his life is totally screwed up and takes steps to change it. Then something happens and he *really* realizes that his life was messed up, including after his first realization, and then takes an additional step toward recovery, healing, normalcy, what-have-you. It's just all so smug. Burroughs is occasionally funny and very occasionally poignant, but those bright spots are surrounded by so much smuggery it's hard to wade through it. I'll probably eventually read his newest book for the same reason I've read all the others: I think he has potential and I'm waiting for him to live up to it.

Read this one again...so good!

Brutally honest. Makes you want to close your eyes and run from the room - but you keep reading.

Probably 3.5

Looses steam somewhere around the middle and sort of tapers off... gets back up again, then tapers off again? maybe that was the point, cause of, you know, recovery. When everything is about his love interests and their story, rather than his psychology of the moment it tended to get a bit dull for me, but i realise that - in the overall arch of the story - it’s all equally important to the understanding of his path.

Anyway, Burroughs is a funny guy, self-deprecating in some sense, but also full of the kind of ‘i’m judging the shit out of you’ that we’re all guilty of. It feels real, it feels relatable, and even though he self-confessed hyperbole, it’s easy to see that these metaphors are rooted in some truth. I haven’t read running with scissors but i’ll be adding it to the list.

This was a second read, but a difficult one. Burroughs is horribly frank, exposing the raw, vile, agonising nature of addiction in a way that made me very uncomfortable and at times very depressed. His writing is brilliant, he can be funny about the most appalling things, and most importantly, his spirit, his ability to take a long hard and honest (as far as I can tell) look at himself in the mirror, makes this in some ways a hopeful book. And yes, a very compelling read. But not for the fainthearted. I am, however, looking for instalment three of his biography.

Depois do seu grande êxito “Correr com tesouras”, em que relata a sua infância extravagante, doado para adopção pela mãe, meia louca, a um louco completo, seu psiquiatra e com cuja família Burroughs vive uma adolescência sem regras e alucinante, o autor continua a descrever a sua vida, agora jovem publicitário em Nova Iorque, uma carreira de sucesso, fazendo de Manhattan o seu mundo e do álcool a sua vida.
É pois um livro autobiográfico que nos mostra a descida aos infernos do alcoolismo, dos processos de recuperação, mas também de toda a vida de Augusten Burroughs nessa altura, no campo profissional, e principalmente no campo afectivo, com destaque para a sua homossexualidade.
Muito bem escrito, faz-nos correr as folhas, nunca entediando o leitor.
Mas para mim, o maior valor do livro, como já sucedera no anterior é a forma que AB escolhe para narrar o seu livro – ele não ficciona o enredo, o livro gira sobre a sua própria vida e os seus sentimentos, exactamente como eu gosto e já agora como um aparte, a única forma em que me sinto à vontade a escrever.

After my recent essay on alcohol consumption, my day spent shadowing a substance misuse nurse, the seemingly daily media barrage of ignoramuses shooting their load over the Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) (Scotland) Bill, and my own modifications of my drinking habits, I thought this would be an interesting and drily amusing read.

Unfortunately, Burroughs lost my sympathy/empathy/interest/whatever quite soon into the book; how his longsuffering work colleagues put up with his crap for so long, and his month-long rehab break from work seemed almost an act of benevolence, in order to save their irreplaceable advertising genius (spot the sarcasm), seemed incomprehensible to me. This guy really is a million miles from some of the poor souls hooked up to Pabrinex I have met in my brief nursing career so far. Yeah, yeah, he had a f***ed up childhood, blah, blah, etc... But really, Augusten Burroughs is such a p***k that I'm not surprised he felt he had to drink to oblivion, just to get away from himself.

The reason for its popularity completely escapes me, hackneyed, repetitive, and uninspired as it is, and I will not read anything else by him. After feeling similarly about James Frey, I feel I should go back and re-read Caroline Knapp's memoir, as I remember really enjoying it about fifteen years ago - what made it so different to similar books I've read and hated since?

One positive though. The paper it was printed on was lovely and thick, so I got through it a lot quicker than I'd feared.

Burroughs had me laughing and nearly crying all in the space of 293 pages! I almost felt sorry for him at different times, but then he always ended up trying to pick himself up and recover. The great thing is that he knew he needed AA and even though he stopped going and fell off the wagon, he got himself back to recovery.

Why are we all so obsessed with the alcoholic memoir? I read this quick read for book group in under three hours - which was about all the time it deserved. The literary tradition of great intoxicated writers may fascinate those who never studied Beatnik literature or Hemingway in school. But to satisfy the niche of urban hipster- intellectuals who are looking for a step above Lindsay Lohan's faux-glam adventures in US Weekly, this book was just an edited down version of James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, which I read on spring break at Canyon Ranch while detoxing from my own underage escapades.

Although Frey was too audacious (and unethical, according to Oprah in 2006 and the recent issue of Vanity Fair...I cannot believe we're still talking about it) in his attempts to be a great memoirist through booz and bold moves, we all know that truth really can be stranger than fiction(whether 100% real or partially embellished); and those who live to tell about it in a well-crafted way deserve credit. The one rule of good writing I learned in school, however, is: keep talk about digestion, bodily fluids, or any other vulgarities people don't want to read about to a minimum. This is drugstore prose.

If we reduce Burrough's memoir to the level of a "quickie" that's as cheaply satisfying as a Danielle Steel novel, then his account of addiction, if well-documented, should read with as much vim and vigor as if we were chain-smoking it. But it doesn't. Subtract all the bloated summary of ingesting, vomiting, or verbal headache, and all we get is flat character development, flat dialogue, and a brief account of rehab/institutionalization that does not even begin to compare with the world described to us in "Girl, Interruped" or "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

This book's literary mediocrity is as cut and dry as a glass of Two Buck Chuck marked up to $14 - which is what I paid for this paperback.

The only part of the memoir that was interesting was the advertising part. How on earth did he survive a meeting with clients at the Met while openly intoxicated? Overcome the real challenge of returning from rehab to a boss who sent him away and then expects him to gush full creative brilliance on a German beer account, when alcohol had seemingly been the tour-de-force behind his sarcastic excess in the first place? Perhaps he blames corporate BS as the cause of his deterioration...but it's probably his messed up parenting - which is clearly the more interesting part of his troubled life, as documented in Running With Scissors. ("Interesting" because it was made into a movie - if we're talking commercial success.)

In the conclusion of Dry, his relationships fizzle, his significant other dies, and we are left with grotesque images of crack-cocaine and death that made me question why I was even bothering to finish this sophomoric and soporific "been there" "done that" Truth or Dare sharing. I felt like I'd forced myself to finish something that was all suds with little sustenance. Or stayed up for a party that was totally not worth it.

Wonderful book. Wonderful writer.

I am not a huge fan of Augusten after Running with Scissors, but his humanity becomes much clearer in this book. I'm glad I got to know him a little better.
Sequels to best selling memoirs should, generally, be avoided. This was one of the rare instances it was better. His writing has improved, and his vulnerability and likeability comes through as he knocks off the sharpest edges of "look at me, love me, pity me, but for god sake, WATCH ME."

He tones it down a little bit, which is saying a LOT, considering recovery is all about being self-involved- its mandatory. He becomes a little bit introspective, and it comes off more honest and human- less attempt to outrage, impress, or shock with a series of outrageous events, and more of a 'get to know me while I tell you the story of how I got to know myself'

What do Haruki Murakami (born 1949) and Augusten Burroughs (born 1965) have in common?

Nothing except they both love to drink and they both write stories, novels and memoirs. Everything else about their lives is full of contrasts. Murakami is a Japanese while Burroughs is an American. Murakami interweaves non-human fantasy in his human characters. Burroughs characters are human but they seem to be fantasy. Murakami is straight and very conservative while Burroughs is a flamboyant gay. You know that what you are reading is not true when you read Murakami while when you read the memoirs of Burroughs, you know that they can be true but deceptively true.

But the biggest difference for me is that as you read more and more Murakami books, as you get the same ingredient each time, you’ll get tired of him. Believe me, I’ve read 8 of his works (and have plan of reading the rest but I am taking a rest). My first book of him was Kafka and the Shore and I liked it so much that I read the two other books right away. He started with 4 stars and this last book, a memoir, What We Talk About When We Talk About Running only got 2 stars from me.

On the other hand, it is exactly the opposite with my Burroughs experience. I first read his boyhood memoir Running With Scissors and I gave it a 2-star. This was followed by The Wolf At My Table, about his relationship with his father and You Better Not Cry (2 stars each). But this one, Dry is not hysterical and very subdued. He is still gay and he goes out and makes out with different men, some of them casually, but it talks about more serious and believable matters like serious alcoholism, AIDS and seemingly faithful(translation: more than sex escapades) gay love affairs.

My favorite part is when Burroughs was out in a gay bar and he said to himself: this place is full of naked sad lives. This struck me as poetic and honest. Those gay men in a bar seeking for sex (that hopefully turn into love) are sad people. The music could be bouncy. The men could be good-looking with gorgeous body. They could be rowdy. But in the end, when they go home to their apartments, they can be alone and sad. Gay lives, excuse me if this is demeaning, can be lonelier than straight heterosexual lives.

Burroughs has two affairs here. One of them is Pighead who died of AIDS and the character that made me think that the shrieking gay boy in Running with Scissors is actually a sensitive man who could be lovable and respectable. The other lover is the other alcoholic Forster who is so handsome any gay can go crazy about him. This character brought the human aspect of the gayness of Burroughs. While reading, I told myself that the only difference of him being gay to a straight man is that his lover is another man. All the rest are the same.

Memorable characters that brought out the sensitive logical and probably lovable side of Burroughs. The more you read his works, the more you understand who he is. He could be exaggerating at times but that’s what they call as poetic license. But still, I liked this book. First time that I actually liked Burroughs. So, I expect more from his next book in my tbr pile: Magical Thinking.

Unlike Murakami’s books that you get tired of his style as you read his works one after the other.