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And Now We Know Why It’s Not a Good Idea to Run with Scissors
For fans of Augusten Burroughs’ deliciously bizarre memoir, Running with Scissors, an unwanted epilogue is getting a lot of attention now. In the current issue of Vanity Fair, Buzz Bissinger writes extensively about pending litigation filed by the principal family in Scissors, the Turcottes (a.k.a., the Finches), who brought suit against Burroughs in 2005, alleging invasion of privacy and libel. They claim that Burroughs (formerly Chris Robison) fabricated or embellished large sections of his memoir, particularly the more outlandish episodes, and resurrected haunting memories for the family, which left many of them in extended states of depression.
According to Vanity Fair, the family claims that the book “‘falsely portrays’ the Turcotte family as an ‘unhygienic and mentally unstable cult engaged in bizarre, and, at times, criminal activity.’ In so doing, the author, with the full complicity of the publisher, literally has fabricated events that never happened and manufactured conversations that never occurred.’” Burroughs counters that he kept extensive diaries of the period discussed in the memoir and claims that he still has the journals, which confirm the veracity of his account. However, he has not made those diaries available as of yet.
For fans of Scissors, of Burroughs, or even of memoirs in general, the VF article, which arose out of interviews with most of the living Turcottes, offers an illuminating alterna-account to Burroughs’ memoir and examines the legal ramifications of the so-called “genre of appropriation.” It’s a fascinating read and an important post-script to the James Frey controversy of last year. A legal victory for the Turcottes could potentially chill the efforts of future memoirists, particularly given the Turcottes’ legal claims that Burroughs misquoted them — something that has to be somewhat expected for a book written 20 years after the fact. At any rate, check out the piece.
