The next sinking ship: The SS Augusten Burroughs

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 5:37pm

From Maureen Dowd's column of tomorrow:

There was a bit of a panic among publishers this week. St. Martin's Press hurriedly put a warning sticker on Augusten Burroughs's latest memoir, "Possible Side Effects," due out this spring: "Author's note: Some of the events described happened as related, others were expanded and changed. Some of the individuals portrayed are composites of more than one person and many names and identifying characteristics have been changed as well."

There are no successful contemporary writers I hate more than him. Good riddance to bad trash.

[Type_A_Tiff]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 5:40pm

You called this one a while ago too, didn't you?

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 5:41pm

Additionally, we are bound to see a lot of this paranoia from publishers thanks to Frey. But, that might be a very good thing, eh?

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 5:41pm

Yes indeed I did, thank you ever so much for remembering.

[Type_A_Tiff]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 5:54pm

You're welcome. What is it that tipped you off about Burroughs? I haven't read any of his books but I read the flap of "Magical Thinking" and thought that even if it WAS true, it would have the depth of Paris Hilton's "Confessions of an Heiress".

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 5:57pm

Everything about him is phoney from his stupid fake name on down. I read two chapters of that first stupid book and I told anybody who'd listen "This is all made up."

[popcultureboy]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 6:06pm

But if that's the case, why did members of the family bring a case against Burroughs for not disguising the doctor's identity well enough? Everyone who knew of the man Burroughs is talking about worked out who he was from the book.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 6:22pm

Because Chris, I'm sorry, "Augusten," was stupid enough to make up wild fantasies and placed "characters" loosely based on real life people in the middle of them.

[popcultureboy]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 6:27pm

How loose does it have to be before it's obscured completely though? And if he's making it all up how has he not been sunk before this? And why isn't everyone he talks about in the book suing up the ying yang for libel?

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 6:32pm

Well, we might be surprised. What I am saying is, real people exist, and if you're going make up wild fantasies about abuse, you should be sure not to place real people who can recognize themselves into those fantasies.

And of course, we ARE now starting to hear about this. As the new sticker for the new "memoir" indicates.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 6:35pm

Libel is a lot harder to prove in the US than it is in England.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 6:37pm

And it's foggier there, too.

[popcultureboy]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 6:38pm

But what I'm trying to get at is the only fallout that has occurred is from identities not being sufficiently disguised, rather than entirely fake situations being created around real people. If that were the case, don't you think the axe would have fallen on him a whole lot sooner?

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 6:42pm

You know, very often people don't want to call more attention to themselves than the author who uses them as characters already has. Sammy Davis, Jr., god love him, never bothered to sue Linda Lovelace for saying he asked her to teach him how to do her special talent on another man.

So, there's all sorts of reasons that people "let it go."

That doesn't mean there haven't been murmurings about Burroughs's flights of fancy before, just as there have been about JT Leroy for five years. It's just that we've reached a tipping point in the past few weeks and now publishers are cranking out stickers for books they wouldn't have thought twice about putting out as "memoirs" now that the market for fiction has collapsed.

[NYC4Life]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 6:43pm

I liked "running with scissors" and "dry" if they were fake or not. It was really dark and funny. It only took me a couple of days to read both. They were that entertaining.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 6:44pm

Sigh.

[popcultureboy]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 6:47pm

I knew that would get a response from you, Namo. For the record, I loved Running With Scissors and I loved Dry too. But show me absolute proof he made the whole thing up and I'll happily call him a c**t.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 6:54pm

These "memoirs" can be fabricated and still be compellingly written. However, that makes them "fiction."

Maureen Dowd's column today mentions Federick Exley's incredible book "A Fan's Notes," which Exley billed as "A Fictional Memoir."

Updated On: 1/28/06 at 06:54 PM

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 7:00pm

I don't think the sticking point is that a person has to have made up all of it for it to be fraudulent, popcult. What matters is that any substantial stuff is phoney.

I loved Maureen's suggestion for a new categoricization: non-non-fiction.

[popcultureboy]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 7:12pm

Ok, I overstated my point. If he's shown up to be as much of a fakey fakepants as Miss Frey has been, then my righteous indignation will kick in.

[iflitifloat]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 7:13pm

Smoke on the water
A fire in the sky

And that's all I'm sayin.

[respeck]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 7:31pm

There are notices like that in ALL of his books. ALL OF THEM!

At least he can do an interview and look people in the face. My goodness. James Frey comes off SO sheepish when he's on TV. Take a public speaking class.

Also, DRY is a much better (and truer) read that A MILLION LITTLE PIECES.


EDIT: I wanted to add that Burroughs books are very VERY different. Frey's book took a stab at a huge establishment, 12 step programs. He had a political message. Burroughs are purely stories of his life with no "messages" attached. Updated On: 1/28/06 at 07:31 PM

[DBillyP]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 8:08pm

To clarify, the notices in Burroughs' earlier books are not as strongly worded. For example, the note in Running with Scissors reads, "The names and other identifying characteristics of the persons included in this memoir have been changed."

However, it is my understanding that the notice for the new book was planned long before the Frey flap.

[respeck]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 8:12pm

True. Thanks Billy. :)

[CostumeMistress]

Posted: 1/28/06 at 8:16pm

In all seriousness, then, how does someone go about writing such pieces of literature? Can you recount the events of your life, slap them in a book marked "fiction," and just hope that nobody in the book reads it and says, "Hey, I think this fellow 'Bob' in your book is a lot like this 'Sam' guy you used to know..." Or do you label it a memoir, and say at the beginning that "the folks depicted in this book are sort of based on real people with different names, but all the really interesting stuff is probably made-up." How does an author who wants to write this kind of thing protect themselves?