by Happy writer

Created on: April 27, 2008

Comparing Running with scissors to a food that sums it up

What to say.... What to say.....Well, I will always take my hat off to anyone who has the discipline and heart to write a book. I can only imagine that it is a daunting prospect to begin a story that is heading to be 300 pages long. That said, Running With Scissors was a bit like anal sex...it did nothing for me and left me with flatulence. I think I was supposed to be either, shocked or in awe of Burroughs outrageous extreme childhood yet I was neither. Over and over I got the impression that someone must have said to him ..."Shit your childhood was crazy dude you need to write all those stories down,write a book or something man..hey.. hey don't boggart that joint dude"... And that was exactly what he did, he wrote a book. Yet his stories were really his to keep to himself.

We follow his life from the ages of 13 to 17 and in that time his parents divorce, his mum goes nuts so visits and befriends a psychiatrist called Dr Finch, later she hands Burroughs over to the custody of this Doctor and his family who have all taken a sip from the "wacky grail". He floats from his mum's madhouse to the Finches' unhinged refuge. And voila..... that's it. I'm not sure what I was meant to take away from this. Burroughs writing also nettled me as much as his childhood anecdotes as his sentences were made up with no more than eight words at a time. I was fed up with full stops and got a headache from all the dots. I don't know where he was going with this novel, what he wanted to tell me; what his point was. All I was left with were stories that had that "you should have been there" feel to them.

Running With Scissors is like tofu. Unless you season tofu well, or put it with a delectable sauce or dish, it will never be a substitute for meat. You cannot eat tofu alone and say wow what flavor I think it will go perfectly with a 1982 St Emilion. It needs taste. It needs to soak up another flavor to morph itself into something edible. I feel that this is what Burroughs needed to do, find other flavors....juice up the story...create a taste.

I hate giving a bad review because like I said, I admire all writers even Burroughs, but I do love a good story and this was more like a gag a minute. How much crazy stuff can be jammed into a cover with no port of call waiting. I am sorry Burroughs.

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