Book 85: Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs

Augusten Burroughs is messed up. There is no doubt in my mind that an army of therapists could not make a dent in his screwed up mountain of problems. Despite that, he is an apt and enormously entertaining writer.

A few years back, I read Burroughs’s bestseller, “Running with Scissors,” which he claims is a true account of his life growing up as a gay male, complete with negligent, detached parents. He was eventually sent to live with a liberal family with lunatic (though well-educated) parents. The book was very disturbing but also, kept me well-entertained.

Burroughs is a moderately successful ad-copy writer who has published several essays as part of his work for a magazine. “Magical Thinking” is a collection of his essays, written from true life odd occurrences. They show the best of Burroughs’s crude (if hysterical) sense of humor, his life as a single (later, partnered) gay male living in New York. Some of his essays are laugh-out-loud funny, and others are deeply introspective.