I already had some background information about Augusten Burroughs life as I began to read his memoir A Wolf at the Table. I had read Running With Scissors, which is his memoir about his childhood from about 12 and up, and also his memoir Dry, which is about his struggles with alcoholism in his early years of adulthood. Both of these books contain some pretty disturbing stories as Burroughs seems to lay himself bare to the bone in his memoirs, even when he is showing the darker side of himself. On top of this Burroughs has had a very troubling life, judging from the events that he described in previous memoirs, yet he always seems to write about these events in a wry, almost amusing sort of way. I expected something similar to this from A Wolf at the Table, and I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest.
A Wolf at the Table is a memoir that centers on Burroughs father, who he only lived with until he was 11. Burroughs’ remembered memories of his father paint a very dark, disturbing picture that shows his father as a terrible monstrosity living a double life. At the beginning of the memoir, when Burroughs is remembering his very early childhood around the age of five or six, he only wants to have his love returned by this ominous father who we don’t understand much about. However his love is never returned and all of the father’s actions are shown as hollow and without any care. Burroughs’ memories of his father become much more frightening and violent as the memoir progresses and he becomes older, as he begins to realize that his father is a violent drunk, who shows the outside world one personality while he terrorizes his family with another. Burroughs begins to hate his father with a burning rage, even though he still yearns for his father’s approval, and he even thinks about killing him. In fact the way young Augusten pronounces dad actually sounds more like “dead,” showing perhaps the morbidity of his thoughts. Several times throughout the book Burroughs says that he realized that there was something essentially “wrong” about his father. “That word, again, came to my head: wrong. Something inside me uncoiled. It was knowledge. It was the knowledge that my father was actively missing an essential human part” (Burroughs 118). Throughout the memoir Burroughs memories of his father only continue to grow more and more disturbing, even after he escapes from his father’s clutches.
Asides from being riveted by the dark story that Burroughs had to tell, I was amazed at how much detail he had in his memoir. The majority of this story about his dysfunctional home life with his father took place when he was very young, yet he includes incredible amounts of detail, such as dialogue that occurred between his father, mother, brother, and himself, even when he was only five years old. I personally don’t think I can remember any conversations I had when I was five years old. I can remember some events, but only ones that were especially exciting when I was five years old. This leads me to wonder how much of these memories Burroughs truly remembers, and how much he has had to recreate in order to make them complete memories. Or, maybe, since so much of Burroughs childhood was traumatic it gave more meaning and memory to each and every event in his life. I, on the other hand, lead a pretty happy, easy going childhood so it mostly just blended together and was forgotten by my uncaring, five year old memory. Either way, even if Burroughs had a significantly better memory than I, I still doubt that he could’ve remembered all the precise details he used to create this memoir (unless he had a photographic memory). Yet I understand that there is some leeway when telling a memoir, as everyone remembers past events differently, and Burroughs seems to be harshly honest about everything in his memoirs, which leads me to believe that his story is as accurate as he could portray it according to his personal memory. All three memoirs that I have read of his seem to match up pretty well, despite being about three completely different times in his life. Each time he critiques himself, his life, and the people around him very honestly, even when this turns out to be very revealing on an intensely embarrassing level.
A Wolf at the Table is definitely a must read for anybody who wants to know how to write a good memoir, or is just looking for a good read, as Burroughs is a master story teller. By using his dark style of humor, Burroughs gave a riveting recounting of his traumatic childhood that kept me entertained and on the edge of my seat for the whole ride.
Works Cited
Burroughs, Augusten. A Wolf at the Table: a Memoir of My Father. New York: St. Martin's 2008. Print
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