Running with Scissors: A Memoir

I first read this memoir when it was published in 2002. Now that other memoirists are rapidly adding their voices to Burroughs' amazing "come clean until it hurts" style of tell-all, I wanted to revisit this modern classic. If you have not read the book, but only seen the movie, don't think you can begin to get a taste of what Burroughs is all about from that film adaptation. Burroughs' laugh-out-loud angst can really only be appreciated on the page, and he must be read to be fully appreciated.

This book, about a boy brought up by a silent, angry father and a mad, narcissistic mother until he is abruptly given away to the mother's insane psychiatrist and his whacked-out family, is a jaw-dropping page-turner. That the boy even grows up to write this memoir is a miracle, in light of the sex, drugs and weirdness he is subjected to over the course of his boyhood.

This is a must-read book, and should be a permanent fixture in any well-stocked home library.

This is a funny, at times laugh-out-loud hilarious book. It's also really interesting and offbeat. You'll find yourself reading one more chapter than you wanted to, and then another and another before you go to bed. It is at times disturbing and appalling, but that's just life. His funniest book, though is clearly Magical Thinking: True Stories

If even just half of the instances in Mr. Burroughs' book are true, none of these characters should ever raise children until they get their acts together. The story is funny, very quirky, extremely disturbing and labeling these people as excessively dysfunctional is putting it waaaaaaaay too mildly. The book will not give you any warm fuzzies, that's for sure. If it does, you need psychiatric help. Mr. Burroughs is a wonderful writer with excellent comic timing. But please be warned, some of this stuff is brutal and troubling to the point of almost making me ill. Talking with someone who works with such families, these kind of idiosyncratic qualities are not that uncommon. Well worth reading, but be prepared.

The reviews on the cover of this book were wildly misleading; I found no pleasure or humor in reading this tragic and twisted memoir. I actually felt sickened and violated after being exposed to the author's graphic depiction of his first and abusive sexual experience. I actually wish the toxic memory of this book could be erased from my mind. As a result, I will NOT donate this book to Goodwill to pollute anyone else's mind...it will go straight to the TRASH where it belongs.

If it was not for the overtly sexual and disturbing subject manner i would have thought this book was written by a ten year old boy. I got this book because it was at the dollar bookstore and i wanted a change a pace from the English Literature i have been reading lately.

I also got sick of all the pop culture references thought out the book. I also don't believe a lot of what in this memoir is true. The most appalling thing about this story is that all of the characters in this book felt it was ok for him to be sexually active when he was 13 and to have a 33 year old pedophile as a boyfriend. I gave this three stars because it was readable. Another thing that bugs me about this book is the way it is published. The words on the pages are too big and there is way too many spaces between the lines. This makes the book like 300 hundred pages. But if it was mass market paperback it would only be like 150 pages. With the enviorment in a state of decline i felt it should have used less paper. The only reason they made the book this way is too make it seem like it is a bigger book then it really is. If i paid the retail price for it i would have be livid.