"Dry" is Augusten Burroughs' autobiographical account about his life as a drunk while working in advertising in New York City. For the most part, it's a compelling, madcap read, but by the last few chapters, I was starting to tire of his ups and downs. He does have many humorous passages about his time in rehab, probably the most interesting part of the book. But he tends to be murky and vague when writing about his gay love life. The image that comes through is a young guy seeking quick gratification and unwilling or unable to make commitments to either friends or lovers. So any empathy we might have for him in his struggle with alcoholism gets trumped by our distaste for his conceit. Those who have read his first autobiography, "Running with Scissors," (which he references many times) may be inclined to cut him slack, since his childhood was so chaotic. Many alcoholics might question how typical Burroughs' journey was: even when he hit bottom, he never seemed to lack money or a few friends to rely on. For yuppies who manage to hold onto their jobs despite blackouts, the story may ring true. I much preferred his anthology of short stories, "Magical Thinking." He works better in sketching out short episodes than in sustaining a lengthy narrative.

I hardly write reviews for books, (isn’t that how everyone starts these things?) but this book was unexpected and I think that deserves a review.

When I began reading this book, I was uncomfortable and uneasy about my decision to read this. My eyes went wide and I shook my head, but I couldn’t put it down. This book was special - it had good characters, dark humor, and an ending like I never imagined (I won’t spoil it though).

This book was just the right amount of guilty pleasure and insight into the addict’s mindset. It was personal, but in a way that I didn’t expect. You could see how he changed, and how he didn’t, and how his mind was trying to keep up. You could see his world through fresh eyes and sometimes through half-opened and blurry lids.

Overall, I’m glad that I read this book and although I can not relate to substance abuse or rehabilitation, I can relate to love, to loss, to manic feelings, and to picking myself up when I fail.

After reading Dry I went over to Cedar Tavern for a martini. I don’t normally drink martinis, but according to Augusten Burroughs, the famous Cedar Tavern on University Place in Manhattan serves huge ones (“enormous; great bowls of vodka soup”) - so you get the most of what you pay for. But as it turned out their martinis are actually rather small, the opposite of Burroughs’ claim. And the bartender on the second floor told me that the martinis have been the same size for at least five years since he began working there. So what the fuck is Burroughs talking about?
Not that I was surprised by this. While reading Dry – a “memoir” about overcoming the “disease” of alcoholism - I couldn’t help but think Burroughs had, um, invented many of the book’s anecdotes and conversations. The Cedar Tavern trip confirmed the suspicions.
Do a little research and discover the writer Augusten Burroughs as a liar on many levels. First, his real name is Christopher Robison. I can’t fully read his twisted mind, but it’s pretty clear the name-change is supposed to lend his authorial presence more grandeur. Is he trying to sound aristocratic? Sophisticated? British? As if he were William S. Burroughs’ son? Or what? You really should know you’re on the wrong track when you do the opposite of Mark Twain, who changed his high-sounding given name of Samuel Clemens into something people like Augusten Burroughs would likely describe as common.
About half of Dry is dialogue, and I wondered how Burroughs could recall all those intricate conversations, word for word, especially if he was drinking a liter of scotch every night, as he claims. We aren’t even given any prefatory disclaimer, as memoirs often issue, about how the conversations are recalled to the best of the author’s ability. Here’s a typical exchange (note that “Hayden” is a friend Burroughs met at their Minnesota-based rehab clinic):

Hayden is aghast. “That seems hostile,” he says.

“Rick’s a fuck. He’s a homophobic closet case and he hasn’t got an ounce of talent. He just hitched his wagon to Elenor years ago and she’s too busy to notice he’s as dumb as a box of hair.”
Hayden takes a long sip of water. “You have to keep an eye on this Rick person.”

For starters, even if you had remembered saying something as retarded as ‘dumb as a box of hair’ you wouldn’t publish it for the world to see, would you? Anyway, that’s simply not a line someone just improvises in the middle of a chat. That’s a line a bad writer cooks up because he can’t think of anything else to put down on the page. Hayden taking a ‘long’ sip of water (rather than, say, a short sip) is a nice touch, don’t ya think? That’s true literary talent right there for you.
The only part of Dry I didn’t hate is the very beginning when Burroughs is still routinely getting shit-faced. The buzz is officially killed on page 33 when he checks into rehab. It doesn’t even get dimly interesting again until page 257 after Burroughs falls off the wagon. The 200 or so pages in between are of course replete with a lot of AA/rehab talk and sermonizing. But mostly for Burroughs, the sober pages are just an excuse for the author to tell us all about himself and his dull relationships with co-workers and boyfriends. Unlike some of his fellow AA friends, he says he has no trouble staying sober, and even quickly stops attending meetings, so that he can instead focus the narrative on the drama of his relationships, whether we like it or not. Alcohol is rarely mentioned during these pages except when Burroughs feels the need to remind the reader that this is still a story about alcoholism. For instance, somewhere in the middle of the book, he concocts a tale about how he once went to a bar by himself and almost ordered a beer but then pulled himself together at the last second, settling for a Diet Coke. We are supposed to care and empathize with what is obviously an imagined scene. And then he’ll end certain sections by pretending to have a craved a drink at whatever point he’s at in his fascinating relationship memoir: “I have a sudden longing for a Cape Codder,” he’ll tell us, out of nowhere, leaving it at that. In hindsight, I realize these lines are intended to foreshadow his eventual return to drink. This is a story after all, so it really doesn’t matter if any of those longings actually happened.
In one scene after he quit drinking he describes emptying a bottle of scotch into the toilet: “I flush twice. And then I think, why did I flush twice? The answer, [sic] is of course, because I truly do not know myself. I cannot be sure I won’t attempt to drink from the toilet, like a dog.”
Sorry folks, but I’m just not buying this schlock. And I’m happy to say that I didn’t buy this schlock – the book was given as a gift. One flush wouldn’t get rid of the booze?? One flush wouldn’t prevent Burroughs from sticking his face into the toilet bowl to drink the (now alcohol-free) water? I don’t know how anyone could believe any of this. To begin with, Burroughs wasn’t that bad an alcoholic. He wasn’t knocking back cologne or anything. He’s a rich-boy, then advertising copywriter whose worst offense was to overindulge on martinis and Dewar’s, with perhaps a little blow on the side. If you quit that, you don’t fall off the wagon by drinking toilet water. You simply go to the liquor store and buy another bottle.
And I think this yarn is the winner: He tells us that his spacious Manhattan apartment is “clean and modern in design” except that it is ridden with empty liquor bottles. “Three hundred one-liter bottles of scotch…And when I used to drink beer instead of scotch, the beer bottles would collect. I counted the beer bottles once: one thousand, four hundred and fifty-two,” he writes, expecting to horrify us. Now, I don’t believe any of this for a second, but if it is actually true, then the trouble here is that Burroughs is just a fucking nutcase, and alcoholism is the least of his problems. Think about it: he spends his time inventing stories that he passes off as biography. That’s pretty twisted if you ask me.
Burroughs himself tells us that he didn’t even realize leaving thousands of empty bottles on the floor was abnormal, until the subject was brought up in rehab. He also pretends to have not known that the very purpose of rehab is to make people dry. Without a trace of irony, Burroughs writes, “Sober. So that’s what I’m here to become.” Yeah right, like he didn’t know. For some reason, I can’t help but think that this sort of contrived stupidity plays well with the American public.
So here’s my verdict on this book: Like other “memoir” specialists Dave Eggers and more notoriously James Frey, Burroughs’ only goal is self-promotion. The book is a con job written for the sort of people who consider themselves hip and liberal but secretly watch America’s Funniest Home Videos. Ostensibly the memoir is about alcoholism but like I said that’s not what it’s really about. The only subject discussed at length is Augusten Burroughs and all of his tedious relationships. “Dry” is definitely the operative word here, but not for the stated reason. Alcohol is just the decoy plot, so that the author and publisher can rationalize the appearance of yet another Burroughs reflection on his ordinary or otherwise tiresome life. There are no ideas in this book. No insights. No worthy discussion of booze and drugs. It is shallow, written, apparently, for fans of Elle, People and Time magazines and for Oprah Winfrey, as the laudatory quotes on the back of the book indicate. And this is what pathetically passes for good, edgy, humorous writing in America these days. And I suppose the question of whether it’s memoir or as I argue fiction is ultimately trumped by the unavoidable conclusion that this book is quite simply the literary equivalent of dog shit, not fit for consumption by anyone who has taste, never mind an ability to detect fraudulence.

I can't really say if I "liked" Dry or not. It felt true. It felt like a grown up dysfunction that I first read in Running With Scissors. So maybe being Mormon shades my feelings ever so slightly with the book ("Rick is Mormon and although this is not a reason to hate him, I hate all Mormons as a result of knowing Rick"). I kinda of felt like I wasn't really who Burroughs wanted reading his books.

However that doesn't change how much I appreciate his honesty. The reason it feels true to me, just like Scissors, is that he is not like-able through a good chunk of the book. He is rude, he is a sloppy drunk, and he is incredibly self centered. It's in such a way though, that even though I never drink, I can relate. It is human and real.

I will continue to read his books. He makes me laugh. He impresses me, that he is functioning and alive after everything he has been through in his life. So I suppose that means I liked it.

And I sincerely apologize to Augusten for being Mormon, I hope he doesn't mind that I read and enjoy his books. I like to think I'm nothing like Rick. But to be honest I like to think I'm not like Mormons either... So maybe he won't mind.

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.

Dry by Augusten Burroughs. (Picador 2004)( Biography). The fine memoirist recounts his slide from functioning alcoholic to drunkard and his slow recovery. Burroughs is funny, insightful, and sad. My rating: 7.5/10, finished 2006.

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.

La historia de un alcohólico que recae en sus intentos de dejar la bebida, tenia pinta de trágica y aburrida. Los buenos comentarios sobre el libro me hicieron ignorar esa impresión y el resultado fue una lectura amena. El drama toma otro matiz de la mano de Augusten, con un humor a veces negro y siempre brillante, nos relata el proceso: la difícil tarea de reconocerse alcohólico, con sus múltiples justificaciones e intentos de minimizar la situación; el descubrimiento gradual de que la bebida no es realmente el problema, cual punta de iceberg, es solo lo visible que esconde el caos; y las cursilerías, insoportables pero necesarias, que abundan en los grupos de Alcohólicos anónimos; todo agravado por el frívolo mundo de la publicidad. El tratarse de memorias lo hace más interesante, sabemos que nos habla desde lo testimonial y no desde la mera ficción. Adentrase en las vivencias y reflexiones de un alcohólico resulta fascinante, de hecho, debería ser lectura obligada para toda persona que necesite superar adicciones.

I LOVED this book. At the time I was reading it (can't remember when, that should tell you something), I related to Augusten's struggles somewhat, and when he compares the lobby of the rehab to the Kitty Hawk Lounge at the Fresno Air Terminal...well, that was just too good. Fortunately, I never had to go to rehab, but I have been to the Kitty Hawk, and let me tell you, it was depressing as hell. Rough subject matter dealt with in a funny, humane manner.

Step by stumbling step this memoir takes the reader through the author’s battle with alcoholism. I think it is probably over dramatized, as was Running with Scissors, but some of it rang true. Why doesn’t Mr Burroughs just write these memoirs as fiction? That would eliminate the lawsuits and the skeptics.

He does write very well and the sex wasn’t as vulgar as in Scissors. Maybe the fact that the sex in Dry didn’t involve children helped! I could skim when I needed to in this book.

This book makes me wonder if all gay relationships are so insecure, intense, obsessive and possessive or is it just those indulged in by the author. Every lover he has is a jealous drama queen with way too much baggage.

I find no humor in any of the numerous books I’ve read by the Mr Burroughs - how can he be one of the 15 funniest people in America? He’s no match for Dave Barry, Bill Bryson or Tim Dorsey!

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.

Okay, I didn't finish this one. I got about halfway through and had to put it down because I reached my maximum amount of frustrated sighs per book (20).

I have several problems with this book. First of all, it says on the cover that it is a memoir, but Burroughs takes way too much license with dialogue and description. Although he states several times that he has always kept a journal, many of the details either have to be or better be made up. Here's an example of a detail he recalled that I really hope he made up: "When I stand up, I bring my hand around to touch my back where it had been in contact with the tub and my back is cold, like a dead person." That sentence is clunky, no doubt, but the real problem is: who in the hell remembers, twenty years after the event, feeling his back and thinking it felt cold "like a dead person" (by the way, you mean corpse, right?). Or, if we take into account that he kept a journal, why would he write this observation down? This completely unnecessary made-up detail is unoriginal at best and cloying sentimentality at worst.

Second of all, and the cause of most of my frustrated sighs, is Burroughs' excessive use of over-the-top metaphors, similes in particular. It was getting to the point where there would be at least one bad metaphor per page. And believe me, I love a good, well-thought out metaphor, as it can add insight and universality to writing. These metaphors, though, seem to serve no purpose than either to shock the reader or to prove how hilarious and cool Burroughs is. Here are some god-awful similes:
- "When I say 'rehab' I raise my chin, as though talking about the Oscars." [Maybe I have to be a gay man to get what this is supposed to look like?]
- "Like stopping into Baby Gap before having an abortion." [Ooo how scandalous!]
- "Paul concentrates, hard. He looks as if he can't decide between a vodka tonic or a screwdriver." [That kind of decision does take quite a bit of hard concentration...]
- (he is imagining what AA meetings are like) "Maybe there's even a secret handshake, like the Mormons who also don't drink." [What the hell is he talking about?]
- "So when you combine alcohol with a slob, you just end up with something that would appall an self-respecting heroin-addicted vagrant." [Wow, with one sloppy metaphor, Burroughs managed to elevate himself to be much superior to heroin-addicted vagrants and equate himself to the poor guys.]
- "In the shower I think about how I'm a drunk that doesn't get to drink. It seems unfair. Like keeping a Chihuahua in a hamster cage." [That makes NO sense at all.]

The third major flaw with this book is found on page 104: Burroughs has just arrived at his very first AA meeting, and the first thing the chairman of the meeting says is, "What you see here, what you hear here, stays here." Burroughs then spends the next four pages relating one woman's personal account of her struggle with alcoholism and her recovery. So here is the dilemma: either Burroughs is breaking that sacred rule or he is making up everything that happens in rehab and AA meetings. Undoubtedly he changes names, but I still think that is unfair to the other people in rehab and AA members who are only sharing their very personal stories because they know it is verboten to, say, publish these stories in a book. If he is making up these people and their stories, then perhaps he should call this book a fictionalized memoir.

A minor detail: when Burroughs checks into rehab, he is placed in the detox room. And yet we have absolutely zip description of what it felt like to go through withdrawal. In fact, the lack of physical description (as in, what Burroughs feels physiologically) makes me question the truth of Burroughs' account. Why doesn't he even mention what it felt like when he initially stopped drinking in rehab? If he didn't feel anything, which I would find difficult to believe as he claimed to drink a liter of Dewars nightly AND was allergic to alcohol, then wouldn't it be worth mentioning that he miraculously had no physical withdrawal symptoms?

I gave this book two stars instead of one for this reason: I think that Burroughs' goal in writing this memoir (and likely his other memoirs, though I have not read them nor do I have any intention of reading them now) is to yank an emotional reaction from his audience. If that is indeed his goal, then he has succeeded with me. I'm not sure Burroughs cares at all that my reaction is that I want nothing to do with him or his book(s).