Book Review: A Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burroughs

           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

My Thoughts On Religion

When people ask me what religion I follow I like to reply with "I'm not religious." I think that this describes how I feel more than the pre-described categories of the varying levels of religion. People like to classify everything though, and if I had to throw myself in one of the categories I would probably be agnostic, though I teeter on the edge of atheism. I don't believe in God, or gods, or any greater being that is all powerful and mighty. There is just no hard evidence (or that much logic) behind the majority of religious claims, especially when you look at all the contradictory elements of religion as it has spread out into different sects throughout the ages.

Yet, I also don't see any evidence that eliminates any possibility of a god-like figure, some being that isn't human and possess vast, unknown abilities that are incomprehensible to even our smartest scientists. I know that we simply just don't understand enough about the universe yet to know with any certainty how the whole thing came about.

It is theorized that the universe started from an explosion, the Big Bang, and all matter came from that one instantaneous moment. But what was before that? Nothing? That hardly seems possible either. Because what is "nothing?" There's another concept that I don't think the human race can comprehend. I certainly can't. Nothing is the absence of anything, which means it's impossible to picture it even because nothing would have no color, neither black, white, or anything in between. It's very confusing to think about.

But what I'm trying to get at is that the Big Bang theory is just that: a theory, which in effect is exactly what religion is: a bunch of different theories. The problem is that religions are very outdated, and unlike scientific theories of today, they were made with a limited understanding of the world and the universe at large.

Nobody knows exactly how the universe came about, or what reason there is for all of us to exist on this planet. There are many who say they know without a shadow of a doubt, but there really isn't any evidence to back up their claims. I won't tell you I have any idea, because I honestly have no idea, and I don't think anybody truly does. That's why I don't flat out reject anyone's ideas, even though I know that many are pretty ridiculous. Because who knows, any idea just might turn out to be the right one.

Tired

I'm tired.

Not just because I was up until 4 am last night. Life is making me tired. It just keeps rushing on and on.

Classes.
Homework.
Work.
Friends.
Relationships.
THE FUTURE.

There's never a moment when one of these isn't looming in the back of my mind. The older I get the larger the pile-up of worries grows in my mind, like a pile of dirty laundry growing in my closet. The laundry is easy to get rid of. I simply have to quit being lazy and carry it 50 feet to the laundry room. The worries aren't so easy to wash away.

I sometimes wish there was a pause button I could hit to stop the rush of life, if just for a moment. If I could stop the ebb of time I could stop the perpetual pile up of worries and stress. All I want is a few days without anything to think about, with nothing to plan for, no assignments due, and to be relied on by no one. A few days of solitary nothingness to just catch up on some much needed rest of my mental state. Because life is tiring.

I guess going to bed earlier could help too...

The Day I Drifted

Last week, as I began to rise from my chair at the end of a class, I was flooded with a sudden and startling head-rush, that feeling that occurs when you get up to quickly and feel like you're going to faint. The sensation was so swift and intense that I had to grasp the table in front of me to keep from toppling over. Instead of going black my vision simply disappeared in a fuzzy wave of non-existence. I felt as if my body no longer had any mass and I was aware only of the desire not to lose total consciousness. Thankfully, my clutch on the table in front of me kept me anchored as I weathered this storm.

The sensation quickly faded, but as I picked up my backpack and headed out the door, I felt oddly detached from everything around me. It seemed like I was drifting over the uneven sidewalk, instead of striding as usual in my lanky, sometimes awkward gait. I paid no attention to the people I passed. I wasn't ignoring them, but their presence simply didn't matter to me in my listless, drifting state of mind. Normally I observe the world and the people that pass by around me, but for a few eternal minutes I felt like I wasn't part of the world that I was passing through. All of my worries, joys, and cares no longer mattered. I just existed, and that's all there was to it.

When I made it back to my building this feeling started to fade just as the head-rush did. When it was gone entirely I felt a strange sense of loss. It had showed me an entirely different perspective of life, and though I had felt emotionless and detached, it had been oddly comforting. To be without feeling is to be without pain, and that is what I achieved for those few minutes as I drifted through the world.

All The Time In The World But No Time At All

It seem to me that I never have the right amount of time to do anything. I either have to much, or too little.

What's the problem with having too much time you ask? Well it may not be a problem for some people but when I find myself with nothing to do and lots of time on my hands, it's almost impossible for me to get any work done. Even if I have multiple long assignments due, I just simply can't bring myself to do them, unless they're due in less than 24 hours. It's not that I don't try though. I'll open Microsoft Word, write a heading, read over my assignment, sit and attempt to think about what I'm supposed to do... and then I find myself getting agitated. I start thinking about how much time I have, and how I can easily finish this work later. I might leave Microsoft open in hopes of feeling motivated while I surf Facebook or Stumble endlessly across random websites, but I always fail to return to my work until I start to feel the due date looming.

Even on the rare occasion that I am able to kick start myself into being productive before the pressure is on, it seems like  I'm always interrupted before I get too far. My roommates will start doing some fun activity that ends up drawing me away, or they'll convince me to join them in a round of video gaming which then turns into hours of gaming. Or, I might write a few really good sentences and then feel so good about starting early that I allow myself a break that ends up being more of a sabbatical.

If I'm not feeling the pressure of time beating down on me, it's just not time for me to do work. I turn the saying,  "work first, play later," on its head. I'm not always proud of this, but since it works for me, I'll just have to deal with having too much time, or none at all.

Writing Dreams (Workshop Essay)

What are dreams?

It's not such a simple question. Think about it for a second. During our waking moments we perceive all around us as reality. We know that the people, the buildings, the trees, the earth, and the sky are all tangible things. We accept gravity and the limitations it imposes on us and our lives. You drop a ball and it will fall to the ground. Birds can fly and we cannot. Fish can breathe underwater and we humans are stuck on land. Rarely if ever do we question whether the rules of our world make sense.

Yet, this is also the way it is when we’re in the dream world. There are no constant rules that ever apply, yet we almost always accept the events that occur there as reality, or at least we do while they are happening. I have met animal human hybrids, flown through the skies on an airplane that could fit through an open window, and fought in wars against an army of Alice in Wonderland card warriors. Any of these should’ve shocked me into questioning the reality of my world, but when I was dreaming about them I had no doubts about their authenticity. I only recognized how impossible they were when I awoke from my slumber. To me, those dreams were as real as any reality that I had experienced in my 20 years of life.

This brings me to the question: How real is reality, when we have trouble deciphering the difference between reality and fiction? That’s all dreams are after all aren’t they. Fictional events that we perceive as real. Our minds create these fictional situations and stories much as a writer would create the plot to a novel, albeit an extremely jumbled and scattered novel. Instead of reading about the events taking place we are placed into them, and are told (by our minds) that what we are experiencing is real. There is no protagonist to root for, as we are the main characters in every story. Sometimes our minds even decide to write our dream stories in the third person, and we witness ourselves living out the events from somewhere outside our bodies. (If this has never happened to you it’s so surreal that it’s hard to explain. It’s another experience that should certainly make us realize the impossibility of a dream, though it rarely does.) Our minds may decide to write a horror story one night, a comedy the next and then a sultry romance the night after that, and we are stuck in whatever role that we are thrown in. These stories created by our minds unfold in ways that sometimes leave us breathless, excited,  or relieved, just as a good book often will.

I started thinking about these similarities between a fiction story and a dream, and it made me wonder… would it be possible to take over control from my subconscious and compose my dreams the way I wanted them to be? It seemed like a ridiculous question when it first popped into my mind, but one day I found an article online on lucid dreaming. I had never heard of this phrase, but as I began to read I started to become excited. Lucid dreaming, it said, was the ability to recognize that you’re dreaming, and then control the events of your dream. The possibilities were limited only by the boundaries of the dreamer’s imagination, and the best part: it was possible to train yourself to develop this ability. I was ecstatic! I immediately decided that I would train myself to lucid dream, no matter what it took, and experiment with this whole new world of unlimited boundaries.

I started keeping a dream journal and wrote down every dream that I could remember. Whenever I woke up during the night or in the morning I would record everything that I retained in my memory. This was supposed to allow me to remember my dreams more vividly each night, and it began to have an effect. I began to remember three or four dreams a night, and I recorded each one in my notebook. Contrary to what one may think, everyone has several dreams a night, even when they can’t remember a single one. As I became more in touch with my night time world, I increased my chances for becoming lucid during a dream. I also tried to look for visual clues to show that I was dreaming. In the dream world letters and numbers never stay constant, so if you look at a book or a clock, look away for a moment, and then look back, the letters/numbers will have changed if you are dreaming. This should allow you to become aware that you are in a dream, and hopefully achieve lucidity. You have to truly believe that you are in a dream though, or it won’t work. For a month or two when I was first trying to become lucid, I would randomly glance at words or letters to see if I was dreaming, but unfortunately I was always in reality.

When I finally achieved my lucidity one night, it wasn’t through the use of any of the techniques that I had read about, though I do give credit to my dream journal for allowing me to become more comfortable with the dream world. I was in my bed in my room at home, and for some reason there was a river flowing across my floor that gushed out of my doorway in a waterfall. As I sat there in my bed, the simple idea occurred to me that I was dreaming, because there wasn’t a river in my room.

As soon as this thought crossed my mind I sprang to my feet and I realized that I was lucid. I was aware that I was dreaming. It was a shocking realization, because it meant that I had control over my body in the dream, while back in reality my physical body was asleep. Even more shocking was the fact that I could literally do anything that I wanted. Anything. No consequences. This possibility simply doesn’t exist in the real world. I had the power to write any story I wanted. I could be the hero, the villain, the observer. I could run my dreams in whatever setting I wanted, from blazing deserts to the bottom of the ocean. The world wasn’t the limit. My imagination was.  

Smiling from ear to ear, I jumped off my bed… and flew out the door.

Random Smells/Emotions/Memories Class Exercise

Last week was my turn (along with my partner) to run the class exercise. We decided to bring in a bunch of random items with distinct smells, put them in covered cups, and then pass them around. Everyone then wrote down a word or two that each cup smell reminded them of. Then, we gave them the task of picking the two smells that evoked the most emotion in them, and then asked them to write about these emotions.

Some of the most interesting stories of emotion were the ones that you would never have guessed could be connected back to the particular smell. For instance my favorite one was a short reminiscence of loneliness. The person smelled salt and vinegar potato chips, and it sparked in them a memory of a lonely time in their life. It is these unique moments like this that I was hoping to get out of this exercise.

After everyone wrote about their two emotions, we asked the class to then write a story that combined their previous two stories/emotions/memories in any way that they could. This ended up being a little more challenging. I think that for some people it was difficult because they're two pieces were too different from each other, and there just wasn't enough time to connect them. What I was hoping for was for the class to find new ways to connect different emotions and memories from their lives, or discover new insights into these emotions and memories. and in some instances I think this happened. One of my favorite combined memories/emotions story for this was a classmate who contemplated how much easier it would be to do his laundry if he could be hypnotized into thinking it smelled like donuts. This is such an interesting and unique thought, and it only came to be by attempting to associate two random smells/memories/emotions.

The exercise went pretty much as planned, and it resulted in some pretty interesting stories. It made me realize that something profound could be written by connecting even the most random and inconsequential instances in our lives.