Friday, October 12, 2007
I had an unofficial phone call from Gay Talese last Tuesday. He had just flown back from Colombia and he was cranky. “I’m happy to do an interview with you,” he said, “but what the hell could you ask me that’s not already out there? Have you even bothered to look?!”
“Jeez, Mr. Talese, lots of things,” was my response. I lied. The truth is that when I call people to interview them, I do not have a set of preconceived questions. My agenda is to talk to them and gain a sense of who they are; to flesh them out as humans. To find out what they think about the world around them at that moment. With Gay Talese I had little interest in talking about Frank Sinatra Has a Cold and with Augusten Burroughs I had little interest in discussing Running with Scissors. I want to know what they think about things outside of the boxes people have placed them in.
With a memoirist like Burroughs, even this is a challenge. What parts of his life he has not written about himself, other interviewers have strip-mined. When we met for dinner at Lavagna in the East Village, I explained to Augusten this issue. I suggested we make the interview more of a conversation to see if that would be more interesting. “Instead of you in the catbird seat,” I said, “let’s just talk.”
We struck an instant rapport. What set out to be an hour and half interview over dinner had turned into four hours of discussion about our lives similarly lived. I removed half of the interview: the half that focused on me.
Below is Wikinews reporter David Shankbone’s conversation with writer Augusten Burroughs.
David Shankbone: It’s difficult to be creative and innovative. When you come up with an idea and then come across a place where it has already been done, how do you overcome disenchantment that can ruin your inspiration?
DS: You started drinking when you were 13, but 16 was when you were really–
DS: How did you get over the problems of dating? Just by being sober-?
DS: Which is what one tends to do.
DS: As happens.
DS: I know that feeling.
DS: You saw all this, but how long did it take before you started saying, ‘I need to stop’?
DS: Gin blossoms kind of stuff.
[food arrives]
DS: You were proud of it.
DS: That accomplishment is so difficult.
DS: That gives you some amount of respect for people who write a book of crap, but yet write a book.
DS: It’s like, you can have the talent, but if you don’t have that discipline to actually carry it through, the talent’s wasted.
DS: How did you get the discipline?
DS: You were sober at the time?
DS: And you couldn’t have probably done all this without being sober.
DS: Did you read the Vanity Fair interview with the Turcottes?
DS: You just don’t have an interest?
DS: A debate that is not a debate.
DS: It’s like Holocaust denial.
DS: Do you think the memoirist has a responsibility to inform people that they’re writing about that they’re writing about them?
DS: Although you could with this.
DS: Did you listen to the NPR interview with your mom?
DS: She’s still in that ‘I’m Anne Sexton’ thinking?
DS: It’s ironic that the notoriety she’s received has been via you; do you think that in some ways she likes it?
DS: There’s no such thing as bad publicity.
DS: Make that time.
DS: Intellectually, that’s nice, but I mean, in the end —
DS: — it’s still your experience too, and what you went through. It’s almost like someone who pleads the insanity defense. You can’t really blame them. But they still killed your mom, raped your sister or whatever.
DS: She takes credit for your writing career.
DS: Does that bother you at all?
DS: Elizabeth Berg writes a lot about parental and domestic relationships. Do you think that you’re dealing with latent issues with your mom through your love of Berg?
DS: In the Vanity Fair article Teresa said that she had come down to New York to visit you with her kids–
DS: And that you were saying that you want to marry her, how great she is, what a kind person she is…
DS: She’s really going to be there with you.
DS: Do you think that’s what it was, the motivation?
DS: They got what they wanted apparently from settling with Sony?
DS: Setting the record straight?
DS: Yeah.
DS: Do you read reviews of your work, and commentary on it?
DS: Did it ever bother you if you came across somebody using the Twelve Steps in a review of your work?
DS: I mean comparing the things you did with your writing and comparing them to how they conform to the principles in the Twelve Steps. It happened with Frey too, where all of a sudden you had these alcoholics coming out and saying, “Oh, this is such a typical alcoholic, doing this or doing that. It’s not very Step Eight,” or whatever… You never came across that?
DS: Do you still feel that way?
DS: That’s the ‘nothing’s original’ thing, isn’t it?
DS: Do you know anyone who is?
DS: How does it feel to be a hero to addicts?
DS: You replaced it with writing?
DS: Have you ever had an alcoholic write you and ask you to be their sponsor?
DS: When people write to you, and they say they relate to your work, what element do they say they responded to–your upbringing, your relationship with your mother, your contending with alcoholism? You write on such a variety of topics–
DS: Is there a theme that seems to resonate most with people in your life?
DS: George W. Bush?
DS: Do you believe in a higher power?
DS: Did you ever come close to believing?
DS: Through a program?
DS: Did it feel false to you?
[dishes are removed from table]
DS: Which I think a lot of people do.
DS: ‘Fake it ’til you make it.’
DS: What was your higher power, then?
DS: [chuckles]
DS: Sounds like something–that it would be great if one of your fans drew for you.
DS: [chuckles]
DS: A swarm of cows and cartoon Jesuses. You’ll have to start a collection.
DS: When did you lose it, though? When did you lose the belief in the higher power?
DS: I meant more so in recovery, when you said to yourself, ‘I’m just not getting the higher power thing’, or, ‘I just have to give up on the cartoon Jesus.’
DS: Once you were stronger.
DS: It’s a very small thought.
DS: What are your feelings about the gay community? Do you feel part of it?
[Waiter stops by]
DS: You had bigger issues to–
DS: I always found the idea of pride–I mean, I understand the genesis of it.
DS: I do understand where it came from. But now when I hear it, it sounds like such an anachronism. It’s like–
DS: “I proudly serve Starbucks coffee.” The word “pride” is so bandied about in so many venues, and it’s like, what do you mean, you “proudly” serve Starbucks coffee? What do you mean that you’re “proud” about being gay, or —
DS: You accepted yourself–
DS: Yeah. I can understand that.
DS: [Laughs] That’s great…
DS: How did you teach yourself to write about difficult things in your life with such humor?
DS: But originally you didn’t, right? I heard an interview where you said you started writing something and you were like, ‘Oh, God, this is just so depressing’–
DS: And then you put it away, and decided that you were going to write something funny, which I think was Sellevision?
DS: Did you make a choice–
DS: Why was the choice made?
DS: Did you try to write it funny at first?
DS: ‘Oh, another Burroughs!’
DS: No.
DS: But also, too, your fans should realize that you’re not one-dimensional.
DS: With your writing, that you don’t have a–
DS: It’s like, “Oh, we wanna see Data from ‘Star Trek’ be Data; we don’t want to see him in his full range of emotions,” you know–
DS: Versatile.
DS: Why do you think you are so serious in person?
DS: Is it like a purpose-ness? That you’re very purpose-driven now, or–?
DS: Do you and Dennis yuk it up at home?
DS: How can anyone–
DS: What’s your favorite curse word?
DS: [Chuckles] That’s always the one that–
DS: It does.
DS: It’s a cutting word. Do you have a favorite euphemism for women’s breasts?
DS: [Chuckles] What would you name your breasts?
DS: Would Claire be the bigger one?
DS: [Laughs] Really?
DS: You’re not like most gay men who have a fascination with breasts?
DS: Do you like them on other people?
DS: Do you have a breast fetish?
DS: My sister has stretch marks on her stomach that she’s really self-conscious about–
DS: We’ve been talking about that!
DS: I had suggested to her tattooing a band of stars across it, that–
DS: Yeah, like where it starts out small, and goes like bigger over the marks?
DS: And she was all for it. We were going to take her to my tattoo guy, over here on First Avenue–
DS: And she all of a sudden has been like, “Mmmmm, I don’t really know.” And she’s like, “Maybe I’m going to get a belly button ring.” But that’s going to highlight it!
DS: No! So–
DS: [Laughs] I should–it would only take one drink with her.
DS: Was it difficult losing your hair?
DS: It’s really hard.
DS: I freaked out on my mom one time because she made a joke about it. I went overboard, I just freaked out. This was years ago, when it was just first starting to go a little bit. But I also always had a high peak, always.
DS: As a matter of fact, people made fun of me about it in my Georgia high school.
DS: Yeah. [In a southern accent] “Sportin’ a pretty big forehead, there, Day-vid.”
DS: I freaked out. “You don’t know what it’s like! You don’t have any idea!” It was Christmas. But a person has to get to a point where he accepts it.
DS: Like when you see guys who try all these creative styles to–
DS: You know, pushing all their hair forward, when it’s really–
DS: You know, and you think–
DS: Let it go. It makes it seem like they have trouble dealing with things.
DS: There’s wider implications.
DS: Or reflection of psychological issues.
DS: Yeah. You look very nice, without…
DS: Yeah, yeah.
DS: Like a hat.
DS: Wouldn’t it be great if you were Jewish, and you could have a yarmulke with a hairpiece underneath it?
DS: Or, or you wore a hairpiece as a yarmulke.
DS: But you have one of those really great heads that are conducive to having a shaved head. Like sometimes you see guys, and you’re like, “Oh, you don’t really have the head for having a shaved head,” you know?
DS: Misshapen heads…
DS: Thank you, thank God. I was told that by my sister, and I was like, “Oh, thank God,” And she’s very honest with me.
DS: And I said, “Thank God,” because I don’t really have a choice?
DS: Well, this is why I also do the scruff here, because I’m losing my hair. It’s completely like…
DS: I used to think that beards were a form of male self-mutilation. Now, if I don’t do it I feel like I look like Norman Mailer or something.
DS: Do you have nightmares?