A Wolf at the Table, Book Review
Augusten Burroughs' Memoir of His Relationship With His Father
Oct 3, 2009
“One night instead of grading papers, [my father] sharpened every knife in the house…I was very nervous…when I wiped myself there was blood on the toilet paper,” an excerpt from Augusten Burroughs’ book A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of my Father. It is a memoir of disturbing reflections, impossible to erase.
From Comic Drama to Tragic Drama
There is no room in this autobiographical story for hilarious tales, unlike his infamous novel turned into film, Running with Scissors. In Scissors, scenes of his psychiatrist interpreting the symbolism of his own bowel movements or his psychiatrist’s wife eating dog treats while sitting down to watch TV, are just examples of how the story initially shocks and then drives readers to deep belly laughter.
In A Wolf at the Table, Burroughs’ style is completely different. The book starts off in a troubling fashion of Burroughs envisioning his father ferociously chasing him through the woods, like a wolf chasing its prey. The trouble is that the author is not sure if this had been a recurring dream or an actual occurrence.
Full Disclosure of Burrough's Painful Past
This daring author reveals his most unsettling memories of his relationship, or lack there of, with his dad. His father, an alcoholic, psoriatic, rage-filled animal led a double life. By day he was a successful Head of the Philosophy department for the University of Massachusetts. When he came home, at the end of the day, he was a parent who refused to show any physical affection towards and barely acknowledged his own son, while conversations with his wife mostly involved mutual anger and yelling.
The neglect Burroughs felt led him to fashion a dummy out of pillows and some of his father’s clothing, creating a replacement paternal figure that he slept with each night and snuggled with often during the day. Although comforting, he also felt ashamed of this level of dependence he had on his “faux-father”.
Perhaps one of the most unsettling recounts in this memoir is when his father, at the time living elsewhere, calls Augusten while he is home alone. In a drunken fury, Father threatens to kill him. Augusten calls the police, and when they arrive to where his father is staying, he has replaced his Jekyll persona with his daytime professional façade.
Boldly Burroughs divulges that he eventually has chronic fantasies of killing his father; luckily these fantasies never turn into reality.
Although many of the scenes in A Wolf at the Table are difficult to stomach, there are random flickers of hope that seep through, showing that even at a young age Augusten believed he would survive his dysfunctional childhood. The closure of his story shows peace felt by the author as he realizes he is not the same person as his monstrous parent.
Too Barbaric to be True?
In Entertainment Weekly’s review of A Wolf at the Table, Jennifer Reese calls Burroughs an embellisher and suggests he is "full of baloney". She mentions that Burroughs was sued by the family he describes in Running with Scissors. They claimed “that he fabricated and sensationalized events” in the autobiographical novel. This gives Reese reason to believe that Burroughs exaggerated the evil of his father in his 2008 autobiography.
In the case of A Wolf at the Table, the accuracy of Burroughs’ portrayal of his father should not be questioned, because it cannot be quantified. The memoir is a full admission of the author’s feelings of neglect, fear, and loneliness, but also confusion: he finding it difficult to distinguish between illusion and reality. This book was not written based on cognition but on emotions. It represents the truth, because it is truly what he felt at the time of writing. He should be applauded for his brutal honesty expressed in his own successful anecdotal, metaphorical, descriptive and elegiac style.
References:
References
Burroughs, Augusten. A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of my Father. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 2008. ISBN-10: 0312342020; ISBN-13:978-0312342029
Reese, Jennifer. Book Review - A Wolf at the Table. Entertainment Weekly. April 18, 2008. http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20192440,00.html
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